need help in explanation of reports in UA or maybe our analytics is broken , for example Top conversion paths in MCF reports.
The model of our customer journey is this : first important conversion is sign up then the second main important is transaction. In most cases (75%) transactions are made within first day after user sign ups.
We have our goals established such as Ecommerce transactions and sign ups on the website. So in top conversions path reports when I choose transactions as selected goal I see mostly top paths that contain only Direct traffic but not paths including just like Paid search or Paid search -> Direct. As there is huge amount of users who come from the paid traffic, they sign up and then make purchase.
The question - why are they attributed so much to Direct traffic, and why paid traffic are not counted in the conversion paths reports like here on screenshot. Just example of user behaviour:
User from paid traffic sign ups and goes away, and then makes first purchase in 6 hours entering the site from direct.
So what conversion path follows this example - paid search->direct? Assuming standard non-direct attribution model of UA and touchpoint of sign up from paid search should not it be only paid search?
Appreciate any help to understand this problem.
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I have a goal which detects if someone made a purchase on my website. I want to know where that person came from (adwords, facebook, organic, etc).
The problem is that Analytics tells me the source of all these people is the payment processor. This isn't surprising as the flow looks as follows:
Checkout Page -> Paypal.com -> Payment Success Page
It tells me all my goals came from paypal. I want to know where these people came from originally. How would I do that?
You probably forgot to add the payment processor to the referral exclusion list in the property settings. If you do that it will be ignored as a traffic source and the original channel information will be retained. It will also affect the number of sessions - a change in traffic attribution starts a new sessions, so after the change you should expect somewhat fewer sessions with more pageviews.
Unfortunately the setting is not applied retroactively, so traffic data up until you implement the setting is lost for good.
Google Analytics Documentation says the following:
hese limits apply to the Web Property / Property / Tracking ID.
10 million hits per month per property
If you go over this limit, the Google Analytics team might contact you
and ask you upgrade to Analytics 360 or implement client sampling to
reduce the amount of data being sent to Google Analytics.
For monthly total Analytics 360 limits, please contact your account
manager or service representative.
What does this mean exactly ?
I know there is sampling , the one which you see in your reports..
But if your traffic exceeds the 10 milion hits per month, is there an automatic sampling system which forbids you to capture all incoming traffic?
In other words : Does google limit your traffic automaticly at the source? Not in the reports but in the source, let's say I capture 20mil hits a month, will i have all that traffic in my property or does it stop at a certain point?
AGAIN : i'm not talking about report sampling but about the actual captured data a month
Thanks in advance
No, Google does not limit data collection. You have to implement this yourself, although they give you a means to do that at least in the Javascript Tracking code. Implementing sampling yourself would be a little tricky since you want to sample out whole sessions, not individual pageviews.
If you record 20 mio hits you will have them in your property. But at that point you operate outside your quota and Google has the right to terminate your account (they will not do that without getting in contact with you, provided you respond to mails send to the Google accounts authorized to use your GA properties).
So far Google has been, in my experience, very generous even with large overruns, but you should not base something business critical on the violation of TOS for a free service.
I've just set up a tool on a client site that users can use to request a quote from our client. To do this the user lands on a form page, fills in their details, submits and then lands on a thank-you page. Pretty basic.
I set this process up as a goal in Google Analytics, using the destination type goal: "begins with /thank-you" and shared that goal as a conversion in Google AdWords.
I decided to run a few Google AdWords ads to promote the tool. I also wanted to double-check the conversion data that AdWords gives you so I set the destination URL in Adwords to www.example.com/form-page?adsrc=adwords1 (2, 3, 4 etc. for each ad) and I configured the DB so that there was a column that tracked which URL the user was on when filling in the form (this would be the column I counted to get the number of conversions that came from AdWords so I could compare)
Further to this, I made sure that the initial URL parameters that the user landed on were stored in the session so that if the user browsed to other pages and came back to fill in the form later, it would still attribute the conversion to AdWords.
I tested this thoroughly on a staging and production environment and everything was working correctly.
I ran the campaign for a week and when I checked, the conversion results in the Data Base vs the ones coming from AdWords are wildly different. The DB tells me I've had 5 conversions while AdWords gives me 21.
Is there anything in the way Google uses its gclid that may be causing this issue? Or is there a problem with the way I've set up the measurement structure?
This can be caused by few things, but I think this is the GA/AdWords issue, more than your DB/session set-up.
Gclid shouldn't influence your goal, since it is used only for AdWords/Analytics interactions, Goals should not be affected in your set-up.
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2938246?hl=en
Probable cause: If your goal set-up only contains "begins with /thank-you", isn't it possible, that you are counting all the sessions which reach thanks-you page? Not just AdWords?
Solution: if you need to count conversions in AdWords (for performance improvements), use AdWords conversion code at the same page, this counts only those users, who clicks an ad and reach your thank-you page in x (default 30) days. Be sure to count only unique conversions (users by cookie).
Differences between GA/AdWords conversion count:
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2679221?hl=en
Google attributes conversions to the last marketing channel, where direct visits do not count as a marketing channel (if you look at their attribution flow visualization you see that the penultimate step is to check for existing campaign information for the user). So GA might overcount Adwords visits (or other campaigns) and conversely shows fewer conversions for direct visits.
On contrast your database probably records the last traffic channel without an elaborate attribution model, so it will show less campaign traffic.
Also IIRC the adwords interface records the conversion for the time of the ad click, not the actual goal conversion, so the timeframes for the conversions differ.
I have been asked to provide recommendations on "Verified Analytics" for the next iteration of my company's site. Verified to mean that when we sell ad space, it's based on a number of page-views, and the people who buy that space want a way to verify that the numbers we give them are the actual numbers we're delivering.
I have turned to The Google and the only services I can find for this sort of thing revolve around Google Analytics and the sale of a domain name. I export my analytics numbers to a PDF, have Google email the PDF to my auctioneer, and they look for signs of tampering. If no signs of tampering are found they put a little "Verified" badge on the domain auction. (Here)
Other than this, and something similar on another domain sales site, I haven't found anything like what I've been asked to find.
Currently we are using Google Analytics, however I've been also asked to recommend a replacement for that based on the ability to be verified. I'd rather just stick with Google Analytics since we also use Google for advertising.
Google analytics is a third party service, so you can't modify the stats data yourself anyway. If google is sending them the report directly there's not even scope for you to be editing the numbers so their concern is more paranoia than reasonable.
a) You can add another user in google analytics and give them report-only access. This way they can look at the stats themselves.
b) Add another hits tracking service such as http://www.hitslink.com/ and give the client access to these reports too.
Quantcast / Comscore / Compete all make estimates of site traffic based on limited amounts of data. As an ad buyer I would never take these stats as proof of anything really.
Online Audience Measurement is a term to search for - you're looking at providers like Quantcast, Comscore or Compete. These work alongside, rather than replace your current web analytics package.
Qauntcast actually measures traffic directly. You insert a tag, same as Google Analytics. Most ad agencies and advertisers accept Quantcast numbers for traffic validation.
We have some third parties that are sending us traffic and have asked us to put a tracking pixel on the confirmation page so they can track through the sales.
We are currently using Google analytics for our own usage.
Google will remember the original referral through cookies. This may be a good or bad thing. If someone purchases through company B's link but they had originally found our site through company A - then company A still gets the 'referal'. That doesn't seem fair, but it seems to be the way google analytics works:
For example, if this is the user's
first visit to your site, the tracking
code will add the campaign tracking
information to the cookie. If the user
previously found and visited your
site, the tracking code increments the
session counter in the cookie.
Regardless of how many sessions or how
much time has passed, Google Analytics
"remembers" the original referral.
This gives Analytics true
multi-session tracking capability.
Currently we only have one tracking pixel on our 'receipt page' from a company that we're not even doing business with. Having a second company ask me for us to add one makes me thing 'wait a minute - we're going to suddenly be inundated with these things!'. Plus it means someone can look at the source and see all the people we do business with.
This isn't Oprah - you cant ALL have tracking pixels. Right ?
How should we manage sales from multiple traffic sources in the most honest way for both sides - especially if they already have a system set up that they insist on using?
Here's how I solved the problem at our company: we gave our partners a URL that has a parameter in the query string. This parameter triggers a cookie. On the "goal"/confirmation page (where the tracking pixel is usually inserted), we insert some logic to see if the cookie value is correlated with a one of our recognized partners (chained if-else or switch statement). If a match is found, then the tracking pixel is displayed.
Even though you asked this question a while ago, I hope that this still helps you or someone else with the same problem!