Referral Traffic vs. Campaign Traffic in Google Analytics
-
I have two sites: a blog and an ecommerce site. The blog funnels people to the ecommerce site. In Analytics I'm seeing declines in referral traffic from the blog to the ecommerce site. During the same time I'm seeing an increase in campaign traffic to the ecommerce site, with most campaign traffic coming from the blog. I believe the increase in campaign traffic is largely a result of simply having installed more tracking links. This leads me to believe that the declines I'm seeing in referral traffic is simply a result of the increase in campaign traffic. In other words, what was once counted and reported as being referral traffic is now being counted and reported as campaign traffic. So my question is this: In Google Analytics is campaign traffic ALSO reported as referral traffic, or is campaign traffic reported separately and not duplicated in referral traffic reports?
I'll provide a concrete example to make this more clear in case it isn't:
Say site X sends 1000 visits each month to site Y. Say 50 of those visits come from a single link on X. If that link is changed so that campaign Z data info added (via the Google URL Builder), would you expect to then see 950 referral visits each month from site X to site Y plus 50 campaign visits to site Y via new campaign Z, or would you continue to see 1000 referral visits plus the new 50 campaign visits?
Many thanks in advance to anyone that can shed some light on this.
-
Thank you very much, Martijn and ThompsonPaul, for your responses. I searched everywhere for an answer online, but couldn't find an answer to this somewhat obscure question. Your answers finally clarify this for me. Thanks again!
-
As long as the link is correctly tagged with full primary Analytics variables (utm source, medium and campaign) it will show only under campaigns, Mark. It's an either/or process. Traffic can't be recorded under 2 sources or else your analytics would be completely inaccurate (artificially inflated for every tracked link).
Hope that makes sense?
Paul
-
Hi Mark,
This really depends on how you've tagged your outgoing links to your ecommerce site. If you provide another medium or source within the UTM parameters it might be that it will only pop up under campaign traffic instead of referral traffic. Could you provide us with an example to help you out?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How long does Google Analytics credit a source?
I was under the impression that GA credits the source with a conversion if it is the source for the current session but it seems that if the user returns later that the source may still be credited. Is this the case? How long does GA credit a source?
Reporting & Analytics | | bearpaw1 -
Does Google Analytics track conversions in real time?
Looking at the section: Conversions > Goals > Overview - does Google Analytics provide real time / same day metrics for this conversion data or does it take 24 hrs?
Reporting & Analytics | | Rich_Coffman0 -
Google Analytics
Looking at a client's analytics - one page doesn't seem to record 'average time on page' data (it just displays 0.00 despite it receiving traffic) This isn't an issue for the rest of the website's pages. Any idea? http://www.smilestyledental.co.uk/ppc/general-dentistry-at-smile-style.html thanks for any help!
Reporting & Analytics | | dentaldesign0 -
Tracking in Google Analytics
My site has just recently (or maybe not so recently...) had a great deal of https URL's indexed (I was really only able to find this out thanks to the recent update to the GWT Index Status). It appears that Googlebot picked up an ssl somewhere (I already know where) on my site and then proceeded to crawl and index pages with https rather than http. Since I understand the issue, it should be an easy fix. My question is, does Google Analytics support (track) both http AND https for one site, or would I need to set up two different tracking codes for http and https? I figured that I might as well grab some data from the https pages that are indexed before I try and remove them. I've done a little research on using Groupings/Groups but I figured I would reach out to the MOZ community to see if anyone else has worked with a similar issue. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | GalcoIndustrial0 -
Google Analytics VS target="_blank" internal links: How much wrong is it?
I am working on an e-commerce website, and our CEO is sure that having target="_blank" in internal search result is boosting the conversion (not sure, but it's not an issue at the moment). The problem is that Google Analytics sees all URLs visited from search results as entrances/direct visits, hence the Booking Funnel Tracking does not work as it was supposed to. Is there any way to recover the tracking? Or we shall get the rid of target="_blank" attribute?
Reporting & Analytics | | apartmentGin0 -
Google Analytics data - Canonical problems?
Hi everyone, We're trying to determine why Google Analytics is showing multiple versions of the same page as having "landing page traffic". For instance, these 2 pages are both shown as landing pages in GA: www.oursite.com/product_page
Reporting & Analytics | | darkgreenguy
www.oursite.com/product_page/ This occurs many times in Google analytics. Also, there are instances such as these: www.oursite.com/index.php/custom_product_url www.oursite.com/custom_product_url I can't find anything in Google Webmaster tools that would indicate a problem. However, this GA data is making me think there are duplicate content issues on the site... Thanks in advance for any help...0 -
Google analytics - help
Hello, What is meant by campaign expiration in Google analytics ? The default value is 6 months. what does it mean ?
Reporting & Analytics | | seoug_20050 -
New Google Analytics Site Speed tool and excel
Hello, I was wondering if there is a good tool or method to pull the new Google Analytics Site Speed data into excel and use this document to track site speeds on a weekly basis for multiple clients? Any good articles or how-to's would be awesome!
Reporting & Analytics | | Hakkasan0