Google Analytics – one month in and already causing problems

I’ve been using GA now for a month or so since its launch. Google seem to be slowly fixing the problems that dogged it in those early days (like the ability to link/unlink Adwords accounts), and now I am getting to grips with the data.

However I have a few gripes that I hope someone will be able to help with. Does anyone know if there is a page that provides referring URL’s? I know there is a report showing referring domains (Marketing Optimization > Visitor Segment Performance > Referring Source), but some domains have thousands of pages and it would be nice to know which page led to the referral!

Also, does anyone know whether there is a report that will show when spiders have visited the site? I take it that GA removes spiders from the visitor and page view stats (as confirmed when comparing my server logs with the GA numbers), but do they record the visits anywhere?

 

I asked the spider question yesterday and it looks like the answer is no to that one. That's the only thing Im not happy with about GA.

 

Yeah, that would be nice.

 

I just wish they would call the reports what they are...

'Keyword Activity' rather than 'Keyword Conversions' would make so much more sense.

I haven't been able to find out anything about the spiders either.

Very annoying.


I'm also seeing a pretty big discrepancy between the G stats and statcounter and cpanel on a few sites...

The results aren't perfect that's for sure.

 

Well, I just realized that if you click the arrow next to the source (domain) and you select under "Cross Segment Performance" the option "Content", you have the actual URL path (you will have to add the domain before it).

Unfortunatelly, it does not show query variables (those after the '?'), so it is only useful for static pages.

 

mmm, that helps a little - but like you say, totally useless for dynamic sites. It's annoying because spider activity and referrer url's are such a key feature that I will have to continue using two seperate trackers.

Another irritant is that my Adwords data isn't being updated correctly (i.e. nothing in the cost columns) despite the two accounts being linked. But that's for another day...