Huge Analytics discrepancy when I turned off Analytics Module & Turned on GA via GTM
-
Hello,
I was running universal GA via a GA Drupal module. We setup Google Tag Manager and setup a GA tag to run through GTM. When we pushed the GTM container live our Real Time was at around 1900 and when we turned off the Drupal module the Real Time was reporting around 1100.
After 24 hours the sessions for that day were about 100k lower than what they usually are.
Any ideas Why the larger discrepancy? Any places that are obvious to look?
*I didn't setup the original Drupal GA module, nor do I know who did.
Thanks
-
Thanks, Dirk. I had the devs move the data layer above the GTM container snippet. The GA tag is still not firing on pages with a data layer and firing on pages without a data layer.
Obviously, it looks like there is an issue with the data layer -- I can't figure out what it is. I took a screen grab of the data layer in the source code.
-
Can only give you a theoretical answer - don't have that much experience with debugging the tag manager. From the "manual":
Data layer needs to be above the container snippet
Datalayer should be added above the container snippet. Variables pushed to the data layer after the container snippet will not be able to fire tags on page loads with a matching condition.
Variables pushed to the data layer after the container snippet will not be able to fire tags on page loads with a matching condition.
Move the datalayer to above the container snippetCheck also https://www.optimizesmart.com/google-tag-manager-data-layer-explained-like-never/ - it seems that you define your data layer after the position of the tag - so the tag cannot send the info from the data layer to Analytics. Check your source code & check where the data layer is defined. Probably it's ok on your category pages but not on the detail pages (compare both types to see the difference)
Hope this helps.
Dirk
-
Hey Dirk,
I checked the debugger and on the pages where the tag isn't firing the console isn't even acknowledging GTM.
The Tag Assistant is showing this error on pages where the GA tag is not firing: 'data layer needs to be above the container snippet.' Do you think this could be the issue?
I work with a journal site, and I notice that on landing pages the GA tag mostly fires correctly, but on article pages the tag doesn't fire and I get the 'data layer' error from tag assistant. e.x: the tag fires on /news but not on /news/some-random-article-from-today
-
Apart from the Tag manager assistant - you could also check the debugger -https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-analytics-debugger/jnkmfdileelhofjcijamephohjechhna?hl=en-US - like Martijn mentioned there should be an error somewhere - did you check the messages in the console?
-
That is possible, the coding is a mess. How could I see if there were or were not JavaScript errors on the page? And if there were, how to pinpoint which are interfering with my GA tag firing?
Thanks, Martijn!
-
Are you sure that there are no JavaScript errors on the page?
-
I found a subdirectory that the GA tag is not firing on though the GTM container is present.
When I use Debug, I get this message:
No tags were evaluated because there was no Event in the selected Message
I have no idea as to why the tag is not firing.
-
Hmm yeah that seems right to me!
-
Thanks, Dirk. I'm going to follow your suggestions.
Martijn, the track type id is 'pageview' and is set to fire on 'all pages'. For my Tag Firing Options I have selected 'once per event.'
Does that seem to be right?
-
What Dirk is suggesting would be the first thing to do in my opinion as well. But the second one is what trigger are you using in Google Tag Manager. Are you targeting all pages in there or something else?
-
Run Screaming Frog - and check if the tag id is present on all pages. Apart from checking - you could also extract the code from the source to double check that the ID is correct; check here how you can do this
In Analytics reporting (Behavior > Site Content > Content Drill down) set the day after migration & compare it to the day before migration - check if there if the drop is generic (=all pages) or linked to a few sections. If the drop is higher in specific sections - go down to next level & do the same. Check the pages with the highest traffic loss using the Tag Assistant plugin for Chrome. It checks if the tag is properly implemented on these pages (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tag-assistant-by-google/kejbdjndbnbjgmefkgdddjlbokphdefk)
You can also use the Tag Assistant plugin on your main pages to see if it is sending data as you would expect.
Hope this helps.
Dirk
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
-
Search and Replace filter on Google Analytics?
Hello! On our GA account for one of our clients, we'd like to add a search and replace filter to the Views section of the account. The URL is www.askergoworks.com (it redirects to askergoworks.com), and Google has flagged us to have redundant hostnames. This is why we'd like to add the filter. Would the regular expression be askergoworks.com|www.askergoworks.com ? Any help would be great - I'm not a regex expert, so I really don't how to go about this. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | AGILITY0 -
WMT data vs. Analytics
Hi Each month I export my data from WMT and go through analytics. I also export our non brand queries from analytics and not WMT - I haven't had an issue before, but this month the impression data is quite different. In the hundreds of thousands different for keywords, everything seems to have taken a big jump and it seems strange. However, not everything is different, I've spot checked some and its; consistent in both, I'm not sure what's going on? One example would be: <colgroup><col width="281"> <col width="72"></colgroup>
Reporting & Analytics | | BeckyKey
| industrial shelving | 1016 |
| industrial racking | 999 | These appear as impressions from Query data in analytics, but they appear nowhere in my WMT query data. Analytics query data shows: | industrial equipment | 670 | WMT Data: | industrial equipment | 143 | Anyone have any idea? Perhaps some kind of tracking issue? Also I've triple checked dates etc...0 -
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 -
Whats 'Other' in Google Analytics (in Acquisition)
When i look in GA under Channels (under Acquisition) 'other' is listed What is 'other' ? I have been told its other unidentified channels as they did not allow 3rd party cookies or surfers were in anonymous/private mode. Other is usually organic traffic that couldn't be identified for the aformentioned reasons. This data is encrypted and available but it violates Google guidelines as they are not allowed to pass personal info//data to third parties so it is automatically filtered. But they are not 'Not Provided' (since that still shows under organic) but is usually/mainly some form of organic visits. Hence Seo can take credit for much of that traffic, is this correct ? Many Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
How would I create this type of report in Google Analytics?
I work for an e-commerce site. I would like to run a weekly report to see what every category pages increase and decrease for pageviews would be. How would I do that?
Reporting & Analytics | | EcommerceSite0 -
Question on regular expression for filters on GA
Hi guys, I am creating profiles on some of the countries sites in my network, and have managed to establish the filter for tracking certain url patterns, for example: ^/japan-english- is tracking all my urls in the Japan site that start by japan-english great! however, it is not tracking the japanese instance of the urls. The pattern for the latter is : www.mysite.org/jp/japan-english I could then modify the filter to track the jp subfolder like this: ^/jp/japan-english- but it will then only track the urls on the /jp/ subfolder does anyone know the regex command for tracking the two url patters as follows: /jp/japan-english- & /japan-english- thanks in advance david
Reporting & Analytics | | BritishCouncil0 -
How to see traffic for specific keywords in GA
Hell guys, What i want to achieve is to generate a list of specific keywords showing traffic for a certain periode of time. I also want so be able to compare this time period with historical data. I want a list as shown in: Traffic sources -> sources -> search -> organic. This shows a list of keywords generating traffic out of the organic search results. When you use a filter you can only use one word so it seems. I just want to create that list but with the specific keywords i choose to display. I tried advanced reports and advanced segments but that doesn't really give me what i want. The idea behind this whole thing is that i want to give my client an overview of the traffic received on the words we are optimizing for. this traffic has to be compared to the previous month so they can see clearly if there were changes. Thx !
Reporting & Analytics | | 5MMedia0 -
Google Analytics' Goals and Cold Fusion
We are having an issue tracking goal completions in GA with a cold fusion site. I would like to know if anyone as had similar issues and found a solution.
Reporting & Analytics | | JamesBarry0