Universal cookie loss specific traffic
-
Hi there,
A month ago we have installed the Universal Analytics tracking code on our website (www.smartphonehoesjes.nl). Since that time, direct traffic has risen unnaturally and organic traffic dropped unnaturally. I dived into this problem and I discovered there is a cookie loss on when visitors are switching from /cart to the first step checking out.
The problem is that not all browsers cause these cookie issues, only Safari and IE older versions (9 and older) and some cases of Chrome. All iPads cause cookie issues (50% of all cases). iPhones cause not a single problem because we are using a separate mobile (m.) site which does not cause cookie problems. We don't have a mobile site for tablets yet, soon it will come.
My biggest question is: how can I fix the Safari desktop cookie loss after switching domains from /cart to the first step of the chckout process? Olders versions of IE will slowly fade out and the iPad problem will be fixed when the mobile website is available for tablets.
I hope someone can help me.
Thanks in advance.Marcel
-
Gladly Lightspeed (formerly SEOshop) has resolved this issue and a webshop like Telefoonhoesjestore.nl will lead to a checkout page on the same domain
-
Hi Jeff,
Thank you for your response.
The multiple domains are not the problem since all browsers except Safari are working fine. Cookies are passed correctly from our domain to the webshopapp.com domain.
The thing is only Safari is having problems with the switch from our domain to the webshopapp domain. Something tells me that Safari isn't fully understanding the new Universal Analytics script yet because we didn't have any troubles back when we used the 'old' asynchronous script.
Marcel
-
Marcel -
I do see on your site that if you start the process of purchasing, you are on the http://www.smartphonehoesjes.nl domain.
But when you go to checkout on the site, the checkout page is here:
https://smartphonehoesjes-nl.webshopapp.com/checkout/method/You have a subdomain of the Webshopapp.com.
The challenge with this is that cookies set from the www.smartphonehoesjes.nl won't be able to be accessed when you move over to the *.webshopapp.com domain.
You could get around this if the Webshop App system allows you to add tracking codes, such as a conversion tracking code as a 1 pixel x 1 pixel iframe on their site, and then you can read and set the cookie from there.
Or, you could migrate your checkout page to the main domain, so that you're not taking the end user to a different domain for the checkout process.
Hope this helps!
-- Jeff
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
-
Is there a way to filter all computers on a specific IPv6 network in Google Analytics?
Is there a quick way of filtering the IP addresses for all the computers on a network that's using IPv6? I want to filter out visits to our websites from the devices on our office network, but each computer (and phone and tablet) seems to have a different address. It _looks _like they all start the same way, though. One computer is xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:aaaa:aaaa:aaaa:aaaa, another is xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:bbbb:bbbb:bbbb:bbbb, my phone is xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:cccc:cccc:cccc:cccc, etc. Does this mean that xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx is the address for our network as a whole, and I can just set up a Google Analytics filter for "IP addresses starting with..."? Or would doing that also filter out hits from, like, every visitor within a 20 mile radius of our office? If I need to simply put in the individual addresses for each and every device, I will. I'm just hoping it doesn't come to that. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | BrianAlpert780 -
Spam Direct Traffic
Hello, Lately, I have been receiving a big amount of unexpected direct traffic from Boston. After analyzing with Analytivs, this is what I get (please, check attachment). Normally I would be blocking this traffic source straight away from my Google Analytics account, and also blocking this traffic from accesing my servers, but check out the analytic metrics: this traffic represents 12% of my total traffic right now!!! av. session duration is 4:53 !! bounce rate is 72% !!!! pages/session 1.44 !! Service provider is "Microsoft Corporation" who looks like one of the typical spammy service providers. My question is, is this a bot?? what do you think ? Thanks, Luis zUlVHIi
Reporting & Analytics | | Yeeply.com1 -
Does Universal Analytics auto generate events?
Hi Mozzers, I have been noticing for one of my clients that there are thousands of events generating which I never added a code snippet for ga('send', 'event', 'button', 'click', 'nav buttons', 4);. The code I am seeing instead is following the syntax **PDF FILE NAME.**I don't even use Tag Manager. So are these auto generated? Label names of files aren't great though so I still believe that adding that piece of snippet _ga('send', 'event', 'button', 'click', 'nav buttons', 4);_can still bring some added value. Do you think it still does? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Self-Reffering Traffic After upgrading to Universal Analytics
Backstory: We have always had an issue with self-referring traffic but in waiting for the UA upgrade we put it on the backburner for getting fixed. We have now upgraded to UA and I was under the impression that GA would automatically exclude the domain associated with a property as a referral source. However this is not what I am seeing under my referral traffic source. With 10 websites having issues with this I need some help. Should I use the referral exclusion list? Also on a handful of our sites we have region specific URLs, I am also seeing these come in as self-referring traffic. I should also mention that about 85% of our sales are being attributed to the self-referring traffic. Here are two sites for example sake: ZootSports.com and K2snowboarding.com
Reporting & Analytics | | K2_Sports0 -
How to transfer 5 domains under one Brand domain without using 301 redirect with minimum SEO loss
My situation is rather complicated , I have 5 domains with different but identical services. Some with good traffic some without, but 2 main domains have manual penalty from Google (I have tried a lot to get rid of the penalty but no success) so finally I have decided to move all our websites under one anchor website 'a brand' and pass all the seo juice + blog articles under the same. Now the problem with the procedure is that we cannot redirect the penalized domain urls to new one as penalization will also be transferred and the whole motive of creating a new brand will be lost. So if somebody could guide me as of how I should proceed transferring SEO value with minimum traffic loss but without using 301) **One way I could figure out is using canonical (Am not confident over it) but say I create 5 identical pages on new domain and declare them as canonical of old domain pages (So is it safe? will it transfer the penalty of old domain to canonical new urls? ) ** Rest i am bifurcating all the traffic sources like direct / organic / referral / Social etc and chalking out what we can control manually and in what ratio, gradually I will work on each section to transfer the traffic. Main Problem is of Organic and Not available. Some suggestions or blog urls would be appreciated.
Reporting & Analytics | | ngupta10 -
Overall site traffic - 3 quick questions
3 things : 1. Does Google factor in overall site traffic in rankings? So for 2 sites, all other things being pretty much equal, the one with higher traffic will be listed higher? 2. Does this logically imply that sites with lower traffic overall face an uphill struggle to be ranked highly??? 3. As an extension to this, would it be true to say that by increasing site traffic, say with Google Adwords or other online or offiline or whatever advertising, that might help get higher SEO rankings??? Thanks so much for your responses. This forum is great!
Reporting & Analytics | | inhouseninja0 -
Why does Google Analytics think PPC traffic is organic?
I have a bastard of a problem... Google Analytics is incorrectly tracking PPC traffic as SEO which is screwing up all my reporting . I don't care for rankings, I care for actual SEO traffic and I can't be sure that what i am seeing is correct which is driving me nuts. Any ideas?
Reporting & Analytics | | Red_Mud_Rookie1