undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • MozCon
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Digital Marketers
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
    Moz Pro

    Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

    Try it free!
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • MozCon

      Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Digital Marketers

      Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
  4. I think Google Analytics is mis-reporting organic landing pages.

Moz Q&A is closed.

After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

I think Google Analytics is mis-reporting organic landing pages.

Intermediate & Advanced SEO
2
2
1.3k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • FPD_NYC
    FPD_NYC Subscriber Banned last edited by Aug 17, 2016, 2:14 PM

    I have multiple clients whose Google Analytics accounts are showing me that some of the top performing organic landing pages (in terms of highest conversion rates) look like this:

    /cart.php

    /quote

    /checkout.php

    /finishorder.php

    /login.php

    In some cases, these pages are blocked by Robots.txt. In other cases they are not even indexed at all in Google.

    These pages are clearly part of the conversion process. A couple of them are links sent out when a cart is abandoned, etc. - is it possible they actually came in organically but then re-entered via one of these links which is what Google is calling the organic landing page?

    How is it possible that these pages would be the top performing landing pages for organic visitors?

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • Joe.Robison
      Joe.Robison last edited by Aug 17, 2016, 7:21 PM Aug 17, 2016, 6:56 PM

      The simple answer may be that users enter through organic traffic, add something to their cart, then go to some other tabs or do some comparison shopping, the session times out (after 30 minutes is standard) and so when they come page to the cart page directly they start a new session but they're still tagged as coming from organic.

      David Sottimano has a really good write up on this Deepcrawl post:

      "If a user enters a site via Google / Organic, allows the session to time out, and then navigates to a non-indexable page, that non-indexable page will be credited as Google / Organic Landing page.

      I had been skeptical about this for a long time, even though experts like Mike Sullivan answered me on Quora, I had to test this many times to make sure this was actually the case – I also had a former colleague double check my test results (thanks Tom Capper)."

      Another post on Jfet.io discusses the same idea:

      "My guess?  People are adding items to their cart, then doing comparison shopping or coupon hunting.  This process lasts over 30 minutes (maybe they wander off to lunch or for a coffee break), and when they return to the browser with your site’s cart open, a new session starts.  In that new session, the landing page is the cart and it’s direct traffic.  Because GA rolls with the last non-direct source, it’s attributed to search/email/whatever."

      I'd recommend testing out all the action items on both of those posts and see if their solutions work. My take is that it's probably people revisiting their cart after a timeout session! Let me know what you find out.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
      • 1 / 1
      1 out of 2
      • First post
        1/2
        Last post

      Got a burning SEO question?

      Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


      Start my free trial


      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.

      • See all categories

      Related Questions

      • Virginia-Girtz

        How can I avoid duplicate content for a new landing page which is the same as an old one?

        Hello mozers! I have a question about duplicate content for you... One on my clients pages have been dropping in search volume for a while now, and I've discovered it's because the search term isn't as popular as it used to be. So... we need to create a new landing page using a more popular search term. The page which is losing traffic is based on the search query "Can I put a solid roof on my conservatory" this only gets 0-10 searches per month according to the keyword explorer tool. However, if we changed this to "replacing conservatory roof with solid roof" this gets up to 500 searches per month. Muuuuch better! The issue is, I don't want to close down and re-direct the old page because it's got a featured snippet and sits in position 1. So I'd like to create another page instead... however, as the two are effectively the same content, I would then land myself in a duplicate content issue. If I were to put a rel="canonical" tag in the original "can I put a solid roof...." page but say the master page is now the new one, would that get around the issue?

        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Apr 18, 2024, 4:42 PM | Virginia-Girtz
        0
      • Ashcastle

        URL structure - Page Path vs No Page Path

        We are currently re building our URL structure for eccomerce websites. We have seen a lot of site removing the page path on product pages e.g. https://www.theiconic.co.nz/liberty-beach-blossom-shirt-680193.html versus what would normally be https://www.theiconic.co.nz/womens-clothing-tops/liberty-beach-blossom-shirt-680193.html Should we be removing the site page path for a product page to keep the url shorter or should we keep it? I can see that we would loose the hierarchy juice to a product page but not sure what is the right thing to do.

        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Aug 11, 2018, 11:15 AM | Ashcastle
        0
      • Online-Marketing-Guy

        Substantial difference between Number of Indexed Pages and Sitemap Pages

        Hey there, I am doing a website audit at the moment. I've notices substantial differences in the number of pages indexed (search console), the number of pages in the sitemap and the number I am getting when I crawl the page with screamingfrog (see below). Would those discrepancies concern you? The website and its rankings seems fine otherwise. Total indexed: 2,360 (Search Consule)
        About 2,920 results (Google search "site:example.com")
        Sitemap: 1,229 URLs
        Screemingfrog Spider: 1,352 URLs Cheers,
        Jochen

        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Nov 5, 2015, 6:10 PM | Online-Marketing-Guy
        0
      • shauna7084

        Multiple Landing Pages and Backlinks

        I have a client that does website contract work for about 50 governmental county websites.  The client has the ability to add a link back in the footer of each of these websites.  I am wanting my client to get backlink juice for a different key phrase from each of the 50 agencies (basically just my keyphrase with the different county name in it).  I also want a different landing page to rank for each term.  The 50 different landing pages would be a bit like location pages for local search.  Each one targets a different county.  However, I do not have a lot of unique content for each page.  Basically each page would follow the same format (but reference a different county name, and 10 different links from each county website). Is this a good SEO back link strategy?  Do I need more unique content for each landing page in order to prevent duplicate content flags?

        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Oct 12, 2015, 8:59 AM | shauna7084
        0
      • KJ-Rodgers

        Location Pages On Website vs Landing pages

        We have been having a terrible time in the local search results for 20 + locations. I have Places set up and all, but we decided to create location pages on our sites for each location - brief description and content optimized for our main service. The path would be something like .com/location/example. One option that has came up in question is to create landing pages / "mini websites" that would probably be location-example.url.com. I believe that the latter option, mini sites for each location, would be a bad idea as those kinds of tactics were once spammy in the past. What are are your thoughts and and resources so I can convince my team on the best practice.

        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Sep 4, 2015, 3:06 PM | KJ-Rodgers
        0
      • vivekrathore

        Google indexing pages from chrome history ?

        We have pages that are not linked from site yet they are indexed in Google. It could be possible if Google got these pages from browser. Does Google takes data from chrome?

        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jun 19, 2015, 2:37 PM | vivekrathore
        0
      • navidash

        How do you check the google cache for hashbang pages?

        So we use http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:x.com/#!/hashbangpage to check what googlebot has cached but when we try to use this method for hashbang pages, we get the x.com's cache... not x.com/#!/hashbangpage That actually makes sense because the hashbang is part of the homepage in that case so I get why the cache returns back the homepage. My question is - how can you actually look up the cache for hashbang page?

        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Apr 14, 2015, 8:41 PM | navidash
        0
      • fablau

        Google Analytics: how to filter out pages with low bounce rate?

        Hello here, I am trying to find out how I can filter out pages in Google Analytics according to their bounce rate. The way I am doing now is the following: 1. I am working inside the Content > Site Content > Landing Pages report 2. Once there, I click the "advanced" link on the right of the filter field. 3. Once there, I define to "include" "Bounce Rate" "Greater than" "0.50" which should show me which pages have a bounce rate higher of 0.50%.... instead I get the following warning on the graph: "Search constraints on metrics can not be applied to this graph" I am afraid I am using the wrong approach... any ideas are very welcome! Thank you in advance.

        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jun 27, 2013, 12:57 PM | fablau
        0

      Get started with Moz Pro!

      Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

      Start my free trial
      Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz API
      • Moz Data
      • STAT
      • Product Updates
      Moz Solutions
      • SMB Solutions
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Digital Marketers
      Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Authority Checker
      • Link Explorer
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • Brand Authority Checker
      • Local Citation Checker
      • MozBar Extension
      • MozCast
      Resources
      • Blog
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Help Hub
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • How-to Guides
      • Moz Academy
      • API Docs
      About Moz
      • About
      • Team
      • Careers
      • Contact
      Why Moz
      • Case Studies
      • Testimonials
      Get Involved
      • Become an Affiliate
      • MozCon
      • Webinars
      • Practical Marketer Series
      • MozPod
      Connect with us

      Contact the Help team

      Join our newsletter
      Moz logo
      © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
      • Accessibility
      • Terms of Use
      • Privacy

      Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.