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Category: Reporting & Analytics

Discuss the best ways to report on performance and communicate results to stakeholders.


  • Hi all! This is a weird one that I've never encountered before. So basically, an admin granted me search console access as an "owner" to the site in search console, and everything worked fine. I inspected some URL's with the new tool and had access to everything. Then, when I realized I had to remove certain pages from the index it directed me to the old search console, as there's no tool for that yet in the new version. However, the old version doesn't even list the site under the "property" dropdown as either verified or unverified, and if I try to add it it makes me undergo the verification process, which fails (I also have analytics and GTM access, so verification shouldn't fail). Has anyone experienced something similar or have any ideas for a fix? Thanks so much for any help!

    | TukTown
    1

  • Hello, We have 7 sites and have noticed that for one site, we don't see any backlink info in Search Console even if it's been linked for over 8 months. Other tools show thousands of backlinks, but Search Console is still pending. I also see very little info in regards to Performance even if we are getting thousands of hits a day. Could this be a sign of a bigger problem? In summary, the site is up and running, getting hits, getting backlinks, but Search Console still looks like it's a new site with no activity several months after being installed.

    | CJolicoeur
    0

  • I've been doing a lot research on GDPR impact and implementation with GTM-GA for clients, but it's been 12 months since GDPR has gone live I haven't found anything on how GA traffic has been impacted if users don't accept cookie consent. However, I'm personally seeing GA accounts taking huge losses in traffic since implementing GDPR cookie solutions (because GTM/GA tags aren't firing until cookies are accepted). Is it common for websites to see significant decreases in traffic due to too many users not accepting cookie consent? Are there alternative solutions to avoid traffic loss like that and still maintain GDPR compliance? It seems to me that the industry underestimated how many people won't accept cookie consent. Most of the documentation and articles around GDPR's start (May 2018) didn't foresee or cover that aspect properly, everything seems to be technically focused with the assumption that if implemented properly most people would accept cookie consent, but I'm personally not seeing that trend and it's destroying GA data (lost traffic, minimal source attribution, inaccurate behavior data, etc). Thanks.

    | Kickboard
    2

  • Is the meta meta referrer tag still used and is it affective. I have an issue with traffic going from one of my sites to a client site and our referral is going into their direct traffic (in Googel Analytics) instead of being seen as a referral from our site. I saw that people were using the meta referral tag, but I can't find any MOZ info about it other than a blog article from 2015.

    | dpsoftware
    1

  • So what a morning.... Did a search for our website and looked to see how we were doing with a couple of search terms and it turns out our website is GONE. I mean not a slap down or fluctuations in positioning but we are literal gone. I see that the contact page is pulls up on page 8 but effectively we dont exist. This is so odd and strange that i feel that this is a dream. The fact that we dont pull up on any search terms anymore is of a concern that this is something more than a penalty. What on Earth could have caused this? This is fluke? Can i call Google? Seems that index page has been removed from the search results Website www.catdi.com Catdi Printing Search Terms Houston Printing Houston Direct Mail EDDM Printing EDDM Help! C

    | CatdiPrinting
    0

  • Hi, We are setting up the URL structure for a big webshop and this raised the following questions regarding the URL's for products that belong to several categories (most of the products do, so the same approach would be used for products that just belong to one category). There are three options in my point of view: Use root-level product page URLs (limits trackability in Analytics software because you can not specify on product types)
    URL: example.com/product-1/ Use product type URL directories for all products (which at least offers minimum trackability of all separate product types in Analytics software)
    URL: example.com/book/product-1/ Use product URLs built upon category URL structures, but ensure that each product page URL has a single, designated canonical URL.
    URL: example.com/category-A/product-1/ with canonical= example.com/category-A/product-1/ URL: example.com/category-B/product-1/ with canonical= example.com/category-A/product-1/ Which option is the preferred one? Thanks!

    | Mat_C
    0

  • Hi there, We recently changed our domain from .COM to .NET so that all our subdomains from external pages matched. Right now in Google Console we have our new .NET website being tracked, but in GA we are still tracking .COM. It is also causing issues with MOZ crawling our site because of the .COM/.NET discrepancy. My question is what is the best way to change our Google Analytics from .COM to .NET without losing historical data and what considerations do we need to change before implementing this? Our team was concerned that just downloading the old data would be too vast and it we wouldn't be able to continue manipulating it dynamically in GA. Thanks!!

    | cPanel-LLC.
    0

  • For the longest time, our company policy has always been to put PDFs in a secure folder (hence they are not indexed and do not appear in search results). After evaluating this strategy, there has been clamor in recent months to allow Google to index our whitepapers. My question: Once PDFs start appearing in search results, what is the best way to start tracking clicks due to these "downloads"?

    | marshdigitalmarketing
    0

  • Hi everyone, I found this 'anomaly' in my google search console data. As you can see from the picture the impressions skyrocketed in a few days and then sort-of plateaued. The clicks remained almost the same because the keyword is highly informational (Wikipedia takes all the traffic). The keyword has around 650 000 searches per month. Btw. We are not doing off-site SEO. I would like to hear your opinion on what could have caused this. A Google update maybe? 5lERKef

    | filip-balun
    1

  • There must be an easy answer to this, but I can't seem to find it. All I want to do is create a segment in Google Analytics that shows all pages and search strings with "orthopaedics" in the title, with pageviews, uniques etc. If I simply navigate to "All Pages" in Google Analytics and then click Advanced Filters and do an Include Page Contains "orthopaedics" it works just fine. (See attached Screen Shot) But when I try to recreate this as a segment, it pulls in all other pages the users visited before arriving on the orthopaedics page I want to include, which I don't want. I can manually exclude each URL I don't want, but this is tedious and I feel there must be a simpler method I'm just missing. At the end of the day, I'm trying to create a list of every page and dynamically created query string that includes the word "orthopaedics" to say doctor X, your orthopaedics section generated X views, and here's a list of the pages. Mm6YTKa

    | Patrick_at_Nebraska_Medicine
    0

  • I have had a huge increase in direct traffic to our website but not sure why this suddenly happened? (no promos during this time period), traffic up 200%+ according to Google Analytics

    | Julia_a1a
    1

  • We are at a loss. We have been following Google Pagespeed Insights which gives us horrible marks. Nothing we do seems to really make a difference. GTMetrix and Pingdom give us much better scores. We don't know what to do...

    | HashtagHustler
    0

  • When i look in GA under Channels (under Acquisition) 'other' is listed What is 'other' ? I have been told its other unidentified channels as they did not allow 3rd party cookies or surfers were in anonymous/private mode.   Other is usually organic traffic that couldn't be identified for the aformentioned reasons. This data is encrypted and available but it violates Google guidelines as they are not allowed to pass personal info//data to third parties so it is automatically filtered. But they are not 'Not Provided' (since that still shows under organic) but is usually/mainly some form of organic visits. Hence Seo can take credit for much of that traffic, is this correct ? Many Thanks

    | Dan-Lawrence
    0

  • I set my client up with an unfiltered view in Google Analytics. This is the one with historical data going back for years, so I don't want to do anything that will affect this view. Recently, the website moved from HTTP to HTTPS. There's a setting for the property that will allow me to change the property name to https://EXAMPLE.com and change the default URL to https://EXAMPLE.com. Questions: 1. If I change the property name and the default URL, will this somehow affect my unfiltered view in a way that I'll lose historical data or data moving forward? 2. I have heard that changing the default URL to HTTPS will help me avoid a common problem others have experienced (where they lose the referrer in Google Analytics and a bunch of their sessions go to direct / other). Is this true?

    | Kevin_P
    3

  • i want to know how to use the feature for the www.alazharquranteaching.com learn Arabic online and Quran Online.

    | saharali15
    0

  • This page on our client's website seems to be an absolute magnet for bots, and it's skewing our Google Analytics stats: https://cbisonline.com/us/catholic-socially-responsible-esg-investing/proxy-voting/ We already filter out lots of bots in GA, primarily through a segment we created several years ago and continue to build upon, but plenty of spam traffic still manages to slip through – mostly to the page above. Last quarter, almost all of it came from two random cities in Europe, so we're going to filter out traffic from those places. (At least for now – not an ideal solution, I know.) But I'm really wondering what drives so many bots to that page in particular. Any insights would be greatly appreciated!

    | matt-14567
    0

  • Hi I was recently reading this article https://moz.com/blog/how-to-get-search-console-data-api-python and found it really helpful to get started with the search console API. However, it makes note that it is designed to return data for each day individually in a date range. I don't know python very well and was wondering if anyone knew how to edit the script to aggregate over the given date range for each url in a list of urls.

    | aranzato
    0

  • Hello Everyone, I would like to know if I need a separate Google Analytics ID for a subdomain on my website? I have a sub-domain within my website, and the software for the site on the subdomain is asking for a Google Analytics ID. Should I be using the same Google Analytics ID as the main domain or should I be creating a new Google Analytics profile or ID? Thanks. Ryan

    | RyanUK
    0

  • 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.

    | Bee159
    0

  • Hi, My client has some strange urls appearing in GA which lead to error pages. Please see the following image: https://imgur.com/a/6TPO8yL e.g URLs like /h/6445738.html I've used screaming frog to see if these pages exist on the website and I can't find them, anywhere. Therefore how are they coming up in GA? If anyone could please help I'd really appreciate it.

    | SolveWebMedia
    0

  • Hello there, 
    I currently have a website that offers services to both domestic and business clients. Currently these are hosted on a single URL, then split out .com/business and .com/domestic We're going to be moving the .com/business structure and content to an entirely new URL which will be dedicated to only the business part of the business. This will also mean a change in the branding of the existing content as the new URL will come under the name of the parent company. My question is two fold: (1) What's the best way to go about this? (2) What would be the estimated effect on the traffic? Many thanks for your help in advance.

    | CraigFairgrieve
    0

  • Hey everyone! Quick question; there have been problems in the past with some of our accounts' Search Console integration becoming unlinked from Google Analytics without us knowing about it. I did some digging into Google Analytics to see if there was a way to create an alert for search queries dropping off, but there doesn't seem to be any options for Search Console alerts like there are for other integrations like Google Ads. Has anyone discovered a way to have an alert or some type of notification set up for when a Search Console integration is unlinked in Google Analytics or if search queries drop off significantly? I'd appreciate the help!

    | ReunionMarketing
    0

  • We have a client who has been searching high and low to gain access to the GA account that is tied to their website, but previous agencies keep stating they don't have access. Is there a way to find out who the admins are on a GA account with the tracking number so we can reach out to that person and ask them to admin the client?

    | marketingmediamanagement
    0

  • We saw our keywords ranking for Image Packs consistently on both desktop and mobile. Then July came and our image packs for mobile completely went away. We still have them for desktop, and we are still seeing the other Featured SERPs (ex. featured snippets) on mobile, but nothing for Image Packs. Has anyone else seen this happen? Any ideas why or how to change it so we can rank again?

    | Brenda.Haines
    0

  • Hello, My company uses a tracking system that allows our employees to apply a short code snippet to the end of our URLs for marketing attribution. An example of such a code would be: https://www.schoolofmotion.com/?ref_id=moz-test However, in Google Analytics we are seeing duplicates of our content, where the pages with the individual tracking codes are counted separately from the pages without. From a reporting perspective, this is annoying and definitely worth a fix. However, I'm curious if this problem is affecting our search potential as well. Could this tracking system be splitting traffic in Google's eyes? From an SEO perspective, how should we approach this? Would canonical tags fix this duplication issue in Google Analytics? Is there something else that we should use? Thanks in advance. The Moz community is incredible.

    | CalebWardSoM
    1

  • Hi, Our company has changed their domain almost a year ago and after the migration, they created a new Google Analytics account rather than changing the address on the existing GA account. Now I can still see that Google indexing the old domain. Just wanted to ask if we can still tell Google that we've changed the domain on the old one? Or, should we just go ahead and use the new one and delete the old one? Very confusing, but our traffic is constantly dropping although we rank for on the first page for tracked keywords, just want to understand if there is a connection between the organic traffic droppings and not telling Google we've changed the domain. Thanks! NJt7vbJ

    | Lucidica
    0

  • We have about 600k downloads of our app and would like to know what cost effective analytics tool you use to gain insight into what your app users are doing? Thanks! Best... Mike

    | 94501
    1

  • Google is erroneously reporting a server error and I just can't figure out the source of the issue. My links work, and GoDaddy ensures me there is no server error. This issue arose when I moved from HTTP to HTTPS and CPanel hosting, but I've got no idea how to fix it. I thought maybe I have duplicate content, but it does not appear that way. Any suggestions? I'm at a loss. www.thedishmaster.com

    | TheDishmaster
    0

  • My client site, https://www.helpinhearing.co.uk/ - has regularly been showing traffic of between 1000 & 1500 sessions per month. I've just looked at their Analytics for September and the sessions have dropped to just over 600! And not only was there a period of around 11 days from September 19th onwards when there was either zero traffic or 1 or 2 visits, but also from October 4th to today (8th Oct) also no visits at all. This has never happened and we've managed this website for several years now. I cannot fathom out why this may be the case. We haven't changed anything on the site from a technical point of view, just added content and usual blog etc pages. Search Console lists 147 pages as 404 errors but there are no urgent messages or alerts/warnings. I really don't know how to proceed and try and find out what is going on with the site. Can anyone offer suggestions?

    | mfrgolfgti
    0

  • Hi Guys So I just wanted to know if there is an option to force google to index your desktop version instead of the mobile version after the mobile first indexing by Google. Cheers Martin

    | martin1970
    0

  • Hi,
    We have a website that got redesigned with new urls in Jan 31, 2018. Since then our SEO traffic has gone down big time and to never recover. We did not do any 301 redirects back then (very stupid I know but I was not in charge then). So my question is would it be beneficial to 301 redirect old urls that were once ranked but now have all 404 errors or is it too late to do these 301 to gain any benefits? If a page that was once ranked and then have a 404 error, how long does google keep that 404 page in their database? I have heard information saying that although the page is a 404 it may still be indexed in their backend for some time and then it completely drops off all together. If so do you know how long time they would keep those 404 in their database? The old urls may have had good backlinks pointed to them because the organic traffic was good back then. So I wonder if doing 301 right now would help send some link juice over to the new urls? Or would this be a complete waste of time? Cheers Martin

    | martin1970
    1

  • Hi, I have two campaigns running in Google Adwords or Google Ads now and I saw in Google Ads account that I had 5 clicks today (09/18/2018) but when I try to search for this clicks in my Google Analytics in ACQUISITION > All Traffic > Channels I don't find nothing about "Paid Search" or something like that. Bellow is a picture of my Google Analytics account to prove it. The accounts are linked and I can find the 2 campaigns in the Analytics. How can I interpret this picture? Where the paid traffic is showing? or not showing there? Thanks Leandro uvAtrsg

    | lmoraes
    0

  • Hello, In Google Search Console under Crawl > Crawl Errors > Not found I have strange URLs like the following: https://www.domain.com//UbaOZ/
    https://www.domain.com//UPhXZ/
    https://www.domain.com//KaUpZ/WYdhZ/SnQZZ/MOcUZ/ There is no info in Linked From tab. Have you seen this type of error??
    Does anyone know whats causing it??
    How should it be fixed?? Thanks for reading and the help!

    | chuck-layton
    0

  • The Google Search Console is showing recent "Not found" errors for pages that haven't been on my site for years. The pages are not in my sitemap and there don't appear to be any internal links to the pages. Is this normal? Should I be concerned? (Google Search Console > Crawl > Crawl Errors > URL Errors)

    | nkolson
    1

  • I have linked the account to the Google Search Console. In top spot is says (other) followed by other keywords the (other) data is the majority.

    | GSAstonMoz
    0

  • Hello everyone, I have been doing the SEO on the following site: www.painters-decorators-london.co.uk for the past few years and the rankings are slowly declining since last year. (not the recent Google update). I can't seem to figure out what exactly is causing this to happen The page authority and domain authority is higher than my competitors. The on page SEO I believe is done appropriately but I'm not sure whats causing this decline. How can I find out exactly using the MOZ Pro account that I have. I don't think I'm totally aware of the important metrics that one can use on this site to determine the problem. Please advise!

    | Ready2Paint
    0

  • Hello, I would like to know if it is possible in Google Analytics, to generate "non-Interaction" Virtual Page views. In other words, Virtual Page Views, that do not affect the bounce rate (exactly like when we set "non-Interaction": True when we fire an event). I am presently fixing a Google Analytics implementation, where virtual page views were used all over the place instead of events. I am pulling my hairs. Cheers Luca

    | Lvet
    0

  • I'm currently doing a bounce rate analysis for our resource pages. These are information article pages - mix of plain texts and those containing either images, infographics, videos or even podcasts. By the way, I did search for bounce rate topics here, but I felt like i still need to post this. Unless I've overlooked a similar post, my apologies. It's a first for me to do an in-depth BR analysis, so I need to clarify few things. What is a good or bad range bounce rate? Is there even a range comparison? Like when can you say a bounce rate is high for an information type page? I've read some stuff online but they're confusing. What other Analytics factors should I consider looking at together with bounce rate? For pages (which purposely educate visitors) with high bounce rate, can you guys suggest tips to improve it? I would appreciate and value any advise. Thanks a lot!

    | ktrich
    1

  • When I look at my real-time site traffic in GA, I'm seeing a lot of direct traffic from Montvale, NJ. However, when I go to the audience tab for today or any day in the past, Montvale doesn't even show up in the list of cities sending traffic. What am I missing here?

    | jimbeaux_slice
    2

  • Hi, Recently our website after 5 months of launch started seeing more organic traffic, thanks to the seo effort being put. However, off late the growth is quite slow and we don't see much increase in organic traffic any more. Any idea on what could have happened to cause this or is it normal. Here is the link to the website to check and if you can recommend anything - https://www.keyhub.com Thanks, Search-Console-Search-Analytics-https-www-keyhub-com-1.png

    | kh-priyam
    1

  • Is there any way in analytics where we can check Users by time of day for speicific country?

    | BPLLC
    0

  • Hi guys, Our CEO is having an interview with a known broadcaster on radio. During the interview he will mention a specific URL www.example.com/marketingcampaign that we want track on Google Analytics, therefore behaving like a vanity URL redirecting to the actual URL www.example.com/resources/primary-keyword-2018. Would this work the same way a vanity URL in terms of tracking or not such as following guideline here ? I am asking because vanity URLs are supposed to be completely different domain name that gets purchased and in our case it is the same domain name just with a different URI. thanks guys!

    | Taysir
    0

  • Anybody else noticed a change in SERP position over the last couple of weeks? I've dropped a whole page from 6 to 18 and similar drops across the board.

    | Libra_Photographic
    0

  • Hello Dear Community, I'm running a photography website and have a question about the indexability of "No indexed Content" inserted on indexable pages. Background : I read everywhere that best practice is to "no index" all useless pages with few content, what I did with Yoast plugin : I no indexed all my nextgen galleries and "ngg_tags" since they create single pages for every photo, tags or slideshow. I did the same for all my porfolio-posts, price lists, testimonials and so on... Nevertheless, I inserted these galleries and portfolios on SEO optimized page for my target keywords. + Nextgen plugin automatically adds these images in the page sitemap. My idea is to have only my Seo optimized page showing in Google and not the others. Problem: I've been checking the results in Google Search Console, filtering by images : I discovered that most of the images featured in these Masonry galleries are not showing in google, and actually almost all the images indexed are the Wordpress from media gallery. I double checked with Screaming Frog, and the software doesn"t see images on these pages. My question is: Is the low indexablilty of these contents are related to the No indexation of the original contents ??? Does somebody has experienced the same issue that these contents doesn't show on Google ? in advance many thanks for your help

    | TristanAventure
    0

  • Hi guys, I have recently seen a large drop in bounce rate (from GA) which seems unnatural for one of our clients website. Since the start of 2018, the bounce rate was consistently between 40-60%, and then saw a random spike, and now for the past two weeks, the bounce rate is below 10%. I was wondering if anyone had any ideas if this is a problem with GA, or the site itself. Site: https://www.zoomocarcredit.com/ Any comments/feedback is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance! Jack. SnP0Hc4

    | ChemistryMarketing
    0

  • Hello! I have a question about how to assure email traffic is properly tracked in GA > Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels. **First, some background... ** Our company (Wisconsin's largest group dental practice) is about to revamp the way we try to re-capture patients who don't have a future appointment set with us. Part of that process will include emails. Those emails will point back to our website to request an appointment. Now to the question... Is there anything special we should do to assure that links coming to the website and the resulting appointment request goal conversions track appropriately and appear under "Email" in the Default Channel Group of Analytics > Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels area of GA? For example, should we use Campaign URL Builder to establish UTM links? Thanks in advance for any feedback. Erik

    | SmileMoreSEO
    0

  • We append our urls with channel identifiers (?cid) to help us analyze where traffic is coming from. Recently, our appended urls with channel identifiers are showing up in the SERPs. How can we stop this from happening and prevent in the future? Has anyone had similar issues?

    | jmigdal
    0

  • Hi, How to integrate GA opt out cookie using GTM? Thanks

    | Alick300
    0

  • Hi guys, Google Search Console gives me an error on these pages: info:https://www.conversal.be/?utm_content=bufferbaaa4&utm_medium=social&utm_source=plus.google.com&utm_campaign=buffer info:https://www.conversal.be/?utm_content=bufferece3f&utm_medium=social&utm_source=plus.google.com&utm_campaign=buffer I see there's an UTM tracking in the URL from Google+. We do have an account there but I don't see how this might give an error. Is this hurting our ranking score? How can we solve this?

    | conversal
    0

  • Hi there, A month ago we have installed the Universal Analytics tracking code on our website (www.smartphonehoesjes.nl). Since that time, direct traffic has risen unnaturally and organic traffic dropped unnaturally. I dived into this problem and I discovered there is a cookie loss on when visitors are switching from /cart to the first step checking out. The problem is that not all browsers cause these cookie issues, only Safari and IE older versions (9 and older) and some cases of Chrome. All iPads cause cookie issues (50% of all cases). iPhones cause not a single problem because we are using a separate mobile (m.) site which does not cause cookie problems. We don't have a mobile site for tablets yet, soon it will come. My biggest question is: how can I fix the Safari desktop cookie loss after switching domains from /cart to the first step of the chckout process? Olders versions of IE will slowly fade out and the iPad problem will be fixed when the mobile website is available for tablets. I hope someone can help me.
    Thanks in advance. Marcel

    | MarcelMoz
    0

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