Referral Data Q's
-
1. We recently ran a promotion on both FB and Reddit, which is https, linking to our non-https site. We utilized UTM links to our landing page. Our GA campaign data returned extremely low hits in comparison to what we actually received (and recorded via FB/Reddit dashboard). Obviously our Direct traffic spiked during these times, caused by a secure to nonsecure referral, I'm sure.
I'm also noticing a spike in referral traffic from lm.facebook.com that correlates to the ad times. Does this mean Facebook's link shim is stripping away my UTM data?
My question is why we receive SOME properly UTM-tagged referral traffic in our campaigns? What's allowing some of it to go through?
2. I've tagged our email signature links with UTM as well, hoping to clean up some of our Direct traffic. I understand that external clients like Outlook and Thunderbird likely won't pass referral data, but do hosted clients like Gmail, Yahoo, and such? And if so, would the https to http difference obstruct this again?
I'd love some insight onto these questions, especially if I'm off the mark with a few of my assumptions there.
-
Hi Tom,
Yes, we ran ads for both Desktop and Mobile. Yes, there was a correlation. lm.facebook.com shows the same numbers as Facebook Network Referrals and they're all Mobile traffic. lm is the redirect for Mobile, I believe.
-
Thank you for the response, Peter. I appreciate the help.
-
So...
1 - there are many Facebooks - desktop, mobile (few versions), 0 (mobile and text only), iOS app, Android app and many other. So why this is important - some of them strip UTM tagging, other pass them and 3rd sent direct traffic. Example - mobile apps sent direct traffic - there isn't referral. From mobile/desktop web - due stripping HTTPS to HTTP referral is also stripping so you get direct traffic. That's why you need to start working little bit with your HTTP web log files and analyses them. There you can find pattern.
Also i heard (but i'm not tested this) that Facebook uses canonical URL of page. So when you make ads Facebook bot come and crawl page content, extracting canonical and later ignore your UTM parameters. As i said - i only heard about this so i can't confirm or deny this. That's why you need to implement "facebook tracking pixel".
That's why some of campaigns there are passed over URL shorteners as - bit.ly, ow.ly or other. Because you can check what's passed to shortener before come to your site. I won't recommend this because one more redirector is killing mobile performance with between 300-600ms (or over!) delay.
2. Yes. Since your site is HTTP this strip referrers from HTTPS. Clicks from desktop apps are direct and there isn't referrer. Also please note that there is new HTML tag about this:
https://moz.com/blog/meta-referrer-tag
and there you can be restricted also what kind of information will be shared with you from browser. -
Regarding Q1) I'm just wondering - did you run these ads on both desktop and mobile? And if so, can you see any correlation between the lm.facebook.com referral and the 'proper social traffic' and the device that they came from?
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
-
Stripping Out Referral Spam From Past Reports
Hi, I'm looking to confirm the best approach for retroactively stripping away referral spam (free buttons, SEMalt, etc.). Now to be clear, I already have filters in place to ignore them from current stats, so moving forward I'm fine. However, I'd love to go back and check untainted stats. I've setup segments using a regex to strip the root words away and it seems to be working. I have a regex setup to strip out things like: social-buttons|seoanalyses|copyrightclaims|classifiedads|jobsense|free-share-buttons|e-buyeasy|acrobats.hol|cheap-online|amezon|search-help|qut-smoking and so forth. I've been going through my referral data, noticing obvious spam, and adding their domains to my segment. Is this the optimal way for me to get a clear, untainted view of my past stats?
Reporting & Analytics | | kirmeliux0 -
Is it possible to import data from an old Google Analytics profile to a new Google Analytics profile?
We have encountered a situation where a client's old SEO firm is refusing to grant us Admin access to our client's existing GA account. For security purposes (so the other SEO firm doesn't delete the existing GA profile) we have started a new Google Analytics profile. Again we do have access to the data in the old account. Is it possible to migrate this old data over (if we just have user access)? Thanks for the help
Reporting & Analytics | | RosemaryB0 -
How to detect where Google gets indexed URL's
Google index some kind of way some links that create duplicate content. We doesn't understand how these are created so we would like detect where Google robots find these links. We tried: Moz Crawl Diagnostics but it shows 0 as Internal Link Count for these kind of links. Find some information from Google Analytics, that maybe there is trace (site content - all content) from visitors side. There wan't. We tried to find some information in Webmaster Tools under Internal link and HTML Improvements but didn't find any trace. Tried some search commands. Is there maybe some good one to search. TO search URL's form code with https://search.nerdydata.com.
Reporting & Analytics | | raido0 -
How to safely exclude search result pages from Google's index?
Hello everyone,
Reporting & Analytics | | llamb
I'm wondering what's the best way to prevent/block search result pages from being indexed by Google. The way search works on my site is that search form generates URLs like:
/index.php?blah-blah-search-results-blah I wanted to block everything of that sort, but how do I do it without blocking /index.php ? Thanks in advance and have a great day everyone!0 -
Moving data between Google Analytics Properties
Last summer we setup another Google Analytics property for us with Universal Analytics and have been running this alongside the old Google Analtyics property. is there a way of exporting all the old data from the old property into the new Universal Analytics property?
Reporting & Analytics | | ese0 -
Google Maps not passing referral data
Google Maps is not passing referral data (URLs, not KWs). Google+ Local is referring, but nothing from maps. Maps referrals appear to be coming across as direct. Any ideas? We haven't found anything online, one of the guys at the office documented what we did find, using Chrome's debugger - http://manofactionmetrics.com/2012/11/02/google-maps-not-passing-any-referral-data/
Reporting & Analytics | | Danieljacobree0 -
URL Structure Q - /UniqueURL/ProductA or /SubcategoryURL/ProductA?
Hi Mozers, I have a niche ecommerce site http://www.ecustomfinishes.com that sells custom barn wood furniture. I have about 600 products online. 2 weeks ago I started rewriting my urls from /subcategoryurl/ProductA to /UNIQUEURL/productA for my individual products, For example for my subcategory farm tables (150 products) I had /rustic-farm-tables/productA, /rustic-farm-tables/ProductB ...."rustic-farm-table" about 150 times. 2 weeks ago I started changing the 150x "/rustic-farm-table/" to a more descriptive URL such as /white-farm-table/producA /rustic-square-dining-table/ProductB /Black-harvest-table/ProductC Here is why I am need advice: I have 1181 pages, the page with the most entrances with "rustic-farm-tables" is #31/1181 based on entrances. the 2nd most is #71/1181 Alternatively, I have 13 table product pages such a as /12ft-Rustic-Farm-Dining-Table-p/12-foot-table-with-inlay.htm" that get more entrances than any product that includes "rustic-farm-tables" Since changing the urls to be product specific, my overall traffic has dropped 20%!!! So here is my question: do i continue to have the /UNIQUEURL/product be unique to the product, which is consistant amongst my best preforming pages, yet has dropped my traffic 20% in the last 2 weeks, OR do i keep /SAME-URL/product which written as a best practice, and be happy with the traffic I had? Could the 20% drop just be a temporary shock? Why would this happen? This would be a good long tail/head term experiment. Try to get more head terms, or do what you can do focus on long tail. I hope i was able to explain this well, I say follow the best practices of my best preforming pages, however the 20% drop has me worried. Thank you in advance for your help
Reporting & Analytics | | longdenc_gmail.com0 -
What's the difference between landing pages and entrance pages on Google Analytics?
I'm confused about the difference between entrance pages and landing pages on Google Analytics. If I compare our search traffic to entrance pages with search traffic to landing pages it seems very similar -- but not identical. But this is probably because all of our GA analytics is sampled (we're a huge site). Can anyone help?
Reporting & Analytics | | CecilyP0