Google Analytics Numbers Are Weird
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Hi,
I'm having a strange problem from past one month. My website gets about 10k pageviews a month with an average bounce rate of 50%. Lately, I observed a strange thing. The avg time on page of visitors from selected countries is less than 1 second and the bounce rate is zero!! How is this possible? This is happening from past one month and it would be really helpful if you guys could tell me what exactly is happening??
Ive attached a screenshot for better understanding.
website url : https://www.specbee.com/
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Imagine you have a website and are using Google Analytics to track how many people visit it. Google Analytics does many cool things to give you insights into your website traffic, like showing you how many visitors you've had, where they came from, and what they did on your site.
But sometimes, the numbers can be a bit puzzling. Here are a few reasons why:
Real-Time vs. Standard Reporting: Google Analytics has a real-time reporting feature showing your site's events. This can be exciting to watch, but it may not always match up exactly with the standard reporting numbers, which show data over a more extended period. So, don't be surprised if the real-time numbers fluctuate a bit.
Data Sampling: When you have a lot of data (like millions of website visitors), Google Analytics might use "data sampling" to speed up the reporting process. This means it takes a sample of your data and makes estimates based on that sample. While this can be accurate most of the time, it's essential to know that it's not always 100% precise.
Bot Traffic: Not all the traffic to your website comes from real people. Bots and crawlers from search engines or other sources can also visit your site, and Google Analytics may count these visits, too. This can sometimes inflate your visitor numbers, making them seem higher than they are.
Filtering and Segmentation: Google Analytics allows you to filter and segment your data differently to get more specific insights. For example, you can look at traffic from a particular country or users using a specific device. Depending on how you set these filters, your numbers can vary.
Cookies and Privacy: Google Analytics uses cookies to track user behavior, but not everyone allows or has them enabled. This means that some visitors may not be fully counted in your analytics data, leading to discrepancies in the numbers.
In summary, Google Analytics is a powerful tool for understanding your website's performance, but it's essential to interpret the numbers with context. Factors like real-time reporting, data sampling, bot traffic, filtering, and cookie settings can all influence the numbers you see. These will help you make more informed decisions based on your analytics data.
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Let us know what happens please.
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Installation of the tracking code twice might be the problem. Because, we had the GA tracking code on the website, and also the Universal GA tag on GTM. I have taken down the tag on GTM, let us see what happens.
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Often when the bounce rate is zero, it means your tracking code has been installed more than once. Check that. Also check to see if you're using both Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager on pages. If you are, make sure tag manager is tracking events and not pages which could lead to the same outcome (bounce rate = 0).
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Hey Donna,
Nope, we do not use any call tracking service on the website. Is there any other explanation?
Thanks.
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Agree that when the user has not viewed multiple pages, the avg time will be **zero ** and the bounce rate 100%. However, in my case, the bounce rate for the pages with almost 0 seconds time on page is **0.00%!!! (please see the attached image in the question). **So that means a user is going to another page before 1 second??? How do you explain this??
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That's likely easy to explain: if the user doesn't do the second pageview or you don't fire another event through event tracking with Google Analytics they have no way of knowing how long the user has stayed on the page or if the user has stayed on the site for a bit viewing multiple pages. In that case, the time on page is 0 second and the bounce rate 100%. That is what you seem to be experiencing here.
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Are you using a call tracking service? Sometimes they log events in your Google Analytics account, events with no associated page views.
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