Hello everyone, I have a client who completely messed up their Analytics set up. They are running on two domains - let's just call them domain1.com and domain2.com - and haven't set it up as a multi-site thing. Both sites are tracked under the same account with the same tracking code implemented for both host names. What I find in the data: A good 20% is referral traffic from one page to the other. All referral paths from domain2.com have the host name domain1.com and vice versa. So far, so good, built an advanced segment to separate it, that's fine. But - visitor type completely messes up my mind now! What I expected to find: When looking at the segment itself, I thought that all referrals would be listed as returning visitors. They've visited the site before (under the hostname of where the referral is coming from), so they should have the cookie and be listed as a returning visitor. What I did find: Statistics now show that they have a New Visitor percentage of only 57%. How can that be? I'm absolutely puzzled. Thanks so much if somebody can help me! Cheers, Andy
Hi Andy, Using analytics this way can cause many weird and hard to explain behaviors. My recommendation is to create 2 new properties (1 for each site) and start to track it. Then go back to the old data and compare - learn how to read that data after you see how these sites really behave separately. Hope this helps