Google Analytics Q&A - Ask me anything

Hello - I am a Google certified Analytics expert. By no means is this an ad about myself or services. I am posting this to offer free advice to new google analytics users.

I have been dealing with Google Analytics for the past 7 years and know almost everything there is to know. I have test, implemented, optimized it for over 100 companies from a lot of different industries.

Best way to get a quick response to your questions:
- Be specific as possible.
- Don't post about a question that was already answered (make sure you check the post thread)
- Be honest about your experience with Adwords.

Any experts - please feel free to post as well.

 

Why is there a massive time lag gap in the realtime analytics? I've a video that's showing up as 11,000 views and on my YouTube page it's at 1,560 views.

 

I have problem with eCommerce tracking. I check eCommerce it is showing revenue 17,975.00, when I check product revenue it is showing 433,070.74 I don't have any idea that how it is showing too much amount.. Any guesses please help me ?

 

Google analytics is not capturing e-commerce transactions on some products, there seem to be missing codes on these pages.
How to trace out the issue where is going wrong im site. Code is available in all the pages.
Plz can any one help me out to resolved the issue

 

I have a lot of visitors with 100% bounce rate and average time spent on site 0 seconds. Are these some kind of spybots and how can I remove that so that I have a clear report for my site?

PS: Most of that clicks are from Russia and some of them are from the US.

 

Hi,

I created goals on 5 pages and just I was able to see activity on 1 page and other 4 pages are getting activity and but the goals which are created are not showing the activity.

please help

Do I need to place the Google analytics tracking code on all pages that my website has? I mean I need to place it in all master pages?

Thanks in Advance.

 

If you know the name of spybot then you can use robots.txt file to block.

 

You can use "tag assistant chrome" to track google analytics.

 

I am facing fake referral in analytic s. Most of referral from Porn site . I check in my webmaster but not found any porn url where i get back link .
I am also try to filter in analytic s to stop referral but again i see new site referral. What is the harm full effect on my site? Please give me solution .
Thanks

 

That is not a massive time gap. I think you are looking at 2 different metrics. If you want to check how many views a video got then you should check youtube stats. When you checked analytics, you probably saw the views on the page that video is on.

I am not sure I can help much. Not enough specifics about your issue.

I am not sure I can give you a solution as I would need to check your analytics account and do a complete diagnosis. In your case, it would be an error in one of the products pricing which is affecting the total revenue. You should check product revenue by product.

Let me know if that helps!

For sure. In your analytics account, you will need to either create a custom report showing a list of products and their product revenue. You will then see which products are not showing revenue, etc... and fix it. The reason that is happening with you is probably because some products are pulling their information from different pages than the page you have the ecommerce code on!

Spybots? No. They are just crawlers or bots checking your site. In the properties settings menu, you can find a check box that will allow you to remove all "known bots" activity from your analytics account. Google analytics added that feature a few months back. Another option would be for you to create a filter and block them out.

What - have no idea what you mean!! You need to have the google analytics code on ALL pages.

If you are only getting visits and no backlinks then nothing to be worried about. Just make sure that there are no backlinks that you can't see yet (Are not indexed) - that would mean someone is spamming you.

 

As a google analytics expert, I am just curious if your job responsibilities also covered situations like: how you will be able to decrease the bounce rate of the site, or how you will be able to generate more traffic, something like that?? Or it is really just pure analysis/data report that this is the site performance blah.. blah.. blah??
I hope you get what I mean, I am interested in Analytics and I want to know if it is a difficult job to learn.

 

Hello,

I've added Analytics code in my website and blog to but blog I couldn't get the blog traffic stat is Analytics. Even I'd tried to add in body header and footer too. But still not showing blog traffic.
What else I can do for it?

Regards

 

You got that right! You are basically looking at data and turning it into actionable insights. You will learn a lot yourself from the data.

Assuming your blog is on your site and not on a seperate domain - you can add the same code that is on your site to your blog. Can you give a little more detail about your situation? there could be a million reasons Thanks

 

Heres a question: Why is Google Analytics so inaccurate?

 

Probably because you don't understand it enough yet!

 

Please do not embarrass yourself by assuming what I do or do not know.

Explain this then:
Of I do a google "phrase site:myurl.com" search in google for a collection of words from my site that are so unique that there is not the remotest possibility that there is going to be anyone else searching for the same thing; then click on the link in the google search results page thru to my site. ... when I check my GA a few days later that phrase shows up, but GA tell me that there were 20 or so searches for that same phrase ... not possible, so I ask you again, why is Google Analytics so inaccurate?

 

Easyy there...

I don't assume that you don't know - but the fact that your post wasn't even a question and just a negative phrase that doesn't add value shows your level of frustration with the tool, which indicates your lack of knowledge in it.

I also know that I don't know everything so don't expect me to fix everything. I am merely trying to help out as much as possible from my knowledge. That being said, below is an answer to your dilemma.

#1: Google analytics doesn't provide you with data on how many people searched google for your keyword/term. You get that info from either google keyword tool (which shows an estimation of that on monthly basis) or some other competitive research tool that shows keyword search volume. That information is also estimated so its not even that accurate.

#2: You can also find out how many times your url appeared for a specific keyword (if you are ranking for it) in Google webmaster tools. That would the number of impressions your site got for the search query.

Both #1 and #2 don't show "searches for that your same phrase" so technically the answer to your question is that:

1. The data you are looking for doesn't exist. Google will never tell you how many people searched (typed in) a keyword in the search box!! Their keyword research tool estimates are b.s anyway.
OR
2. You are incorrectly interpreting data from a report in Google analytics.

 

You totally misread what I wrote. It is Google analytics that is telling me that there were >20 searches for that very unique phrase that clicked through to my site. ... that is impossible. I have run this experiment numerous times and see it repeatedly. Perhaps you should give it a go.

I ask again, why is Google Analytics so inaccurate?

 

To explain further, here is an example. I will use DP rather than my site.
If I did a search for, say: agent000 google analytics inaccurate site:digitalpoint.com (a phrase so unique, its impossible that anyone else used it) in Google, then click on the results to go through to the site:
https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome-psyapi2&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8&q=agent000 google analytics inaccurate site:digitalpoint.com
Then check Google analytics a few days later, it tells me that ~20 people came through to the site using the terms or phrase: "agent000 google analytics inaccurate site:digitalpoint.com" - it should only say '1'!
That is just not possible unless Google Analytics is inaccurate.

 

Ummm... Nope! I get your question but the data you are looking for doesn't exist and your answer shows that you are misreading the report.

Google uses secure search now so almost all organic keywords are obscured in Google Analytics. Read this: http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/ne...d-data-google-moves-entirely-to-secure-search. Your keyword report for organic traffic should have about 85% unprovided keywords (if not more), which means those keywords are hidden. This was about 1.5 yrs ago. Google stopped showing accurate organic keyword traffic to try and obscure that data from SEO people.