Google Analytics - Referral traffic being reported as Direct traffic
-
Hi,
I have a link on my www homepage to another subdomain website. Both websites are served on https, and have independent Google Analytics properties.
However, the traffic from the www site to the subdomain site is being reported as Direct, and not Referral traffic.
Any ideas why? See image provided for context...
-
There are lots of things that could be going wrong here, but that requires asking more questions. I see you have Tag Manager loading the GA tracker, is that right?
Also, how do you have the settings for the two subdomains in GA? Direct only means that there is no referring information, so somehow, probably in Tag Manager or in your GA setup, there is data being lost.
And finally, how are you testing this?
Thanks!
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
-
Query on Not Set In Product List Performance in Google Analytics
Hi All, I have query for given below screenshot-1. What is Not Set here? For column no. 2 only purchase and revenue showing other column blank why? I have properly implemented enhance ecommerce via tag manager. And my product list impression, clicks all working fine for all categories now I don't know from where I am getting Not set - Please check screenshot-2. So what is Not set here? Thanks! QcBGT OCrEp
Reporting & Analytics | | Arnold30 -
Google Analytics - Tracking multiple thankyou pages?
Hi Guys, I want to track email opt-ins for multiple thank you pages. The setup is as follows: http://image.prntscr.com/image/57632e05a15f42fda0b8ffec2d176460.png I have not yet built the thank you pages, so i was wondering what the URL should be to make it easy to track them in GA? I'm thinking: domain.com/thankyou-page/page1 Then using regular expression in GA to track /thankyou-page/ Would this be a good way to go about it? Cheers. f6c7r0
Reporting & Analytics | | spyaccounts110 -
The best way to track internal links in Google Analytics
Hi there, we are a retail business and we have invested in quality editorial content which sits in our Blog at ourwebsite.co.uk/blog/ The Blog links to the main site (an online store) and I want to track the 'value' of the blog by how many clicks the blog content generates back to the main store. At the moment we're using this code on the end of every link in the Blog: ?utm_source=Blog&utm_medium=Widget&utm_campaign=FromBlog Does this affect SEO and is there a better way of doing it? Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | Bee1590 -
How to exclude traffic for a specific mobile device in Google Analytics view?
Hi, Need help on how to exclude traffic for a specific mobile device in Google Analytics view. I have been searching and the only information available is excluding IP address of internal traffic. Is there any way to exclude traffic through a mobile MAC address?
Reporting & Analytics | | Khadija_K0 -
Cross domain tracking Google Analytics
Hi there, Got a question on cross domain tracking: We have a couple of TLD's to serve localized content to our visitors, next to our main .com TLD where our app is running as well in a subdomain. Situation is this: Local sites:
Reporting & Analytics | | jorisbrabants
marketingsite.be
marketingsite.com.br
marketingsite.fr Main site: marketingsite.com
app.marketingsite.com Conversion gets triggered when somebody ends up in app.marketingsite.com/firstuse for example. People can sign up at the local site filling in their email but they end up in app.marketingsite.com/firstuse Reading this article on cross domain tracking I'm getting a bit confused on the setup of the tracking code itself. The sample code provided shows these two lines: ga('require', 'linker'); ga('linker:autoLink', ['maindomain.com','targetdomain.com']); Now the question 🙂 Is it correct when I think that maindomain should be replaced with our local TLD's on every one of those, and that targetdomain is where the conversion happens? In this case the .com site?0 -
Google Analytics Goals - Different Domain
Hi, We currently need to setup a goal that involves a different domain. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated. more info: the checkout process is redirected to a secure.domain Just let me know if I can provide any additional info that may helpful.
Reporting & Analytics | | opusvo0 -
Best top 5 actionable insights from Google Analytics
Buongiorno from 14 degrees C cloudy wetherby UK 🙂 With a whole gamut of books out there are written around the topic of "Actionable Web analytics" where you have to wade through chapters of how to suck eggs and how to get analytics part of your business culture (whatever! most clients who look after their websites are entry level Marketing Execs who pay the digital agencies to do the thinking for them) I'd like to cut to the chase and list out say a top 5 of actionable insights a client would actually give the time of day for so heres my top five, whats yours? 1. Landing page bounce - showing them the £5k landing page designed with no conversion thinking is turning off customers
Reporting & Analytics | | Nightwing
2. Synching up PPC campaigns to analytics and showing them how much money they are waisting
3. Goal funnels - Showing them there 20 step shopping conversion funnel gets abandoned at step 3
4. Non brand keyword traffic (although a stack of this gets blocked by "not provided" Big groan...)
5. Event tracking on there 10 page carousel anner showing them no one clicks on banners 2 - 10 So under the strict label of "Actionable data only" from Google analytics whats your best insights you share with clients in the hope that they may actually give data reports the time of day! Grazie tanto,
David1 -
Sudden Drop in Direct Traffic
We recently had a some changes to our site, adding new sub categories, moving products around, etc... We implemented the changes on Thursday of last week and had a normal day around 800+ visitors. The very next day our # of visitors dropped in half to around 400+ and has stayed that way all weekend. I thought it might be that some links may have changed but I checked all of the links and they are the same as before with the exception of new pages. I checked to make sure that the google analytics code was still in the code and it is. I read that it could be DNS propagation timing issue but it's been 3 days and nothing's changed. I'm fairly certain that we are not being penalized or pandalized by google as our referrals and organic search results have not changed only the amount of direct traffic. Anyone have any ideas on what to look at or what to do?
Reporting & Analytics | | LizIslCo0