We are using Google Ads and facebook Ads to promote our website and using Google analytics (GA) to track.
We created a test FB ad like link to our website, i.e., having FB like UTM params in the link.
( ?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Paid&utm_campaign=Test )
When we did a test with 10 users all coming by clicking that link, GA is showing 10 users in realtime reports. We further checked the source of those users, it properly showed as "Facebook / Paid".
However, after 7 mins realtime shows the same user's source as "direct" instead of "Facebook / Paid".
Can someone help me understand why GA is treating those users in realtime as "Direct" after sometime.
Note: I haven't changed any code related to session timeouts.
Real time report does not give accurate information, especially for the source and medium. It is a known fact so there is no solution. You have to wait for the data to appear in the actual report.
From documentation
[...] As a result, you'll see traffic and conversions incorrectly attributed to a Source of (direct). You'll only see this in Real-Time reports; in standard reports, traffic and conversions will be attributed correctly
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1638635?hl=en&ref_topic=1638563
Related
I'm trying to finish my analytics setup and I've got a bit confused what is the best way forward. The end goal is to have tracking setup that enables me to optimize my Google and Facebook campaigns towards approved users instead of just signed up users. Our product has the following funnel:
User visits our website
He signs up for our product using website lead form (at this moment I have user's email, name, phone number etc.)
Based on our evaluation (that can take hours or days) the user is approved or disapproved in our CRM
I want to provide the advertising systems (mainly Google Ads and Facebook Ads) with an information when the user was approved with all the required ids so the system can trace the event back to the ad the user clicked.
I have the following analytical stack that I am working with:
Website GTM container
Server GTM container (GA4+ UA clients, GA4 + UA + FCAPI tags)
Facebook Conversion API implemented in sGTM
What would be the best way in your opinion to implement the tracking of the event that is fired from our CRM when user is approved? I was thinking about using Measurement Protocol to send the event to sGTM/GA4 or Enhanced conversions for leads for Google Ads but neither solutions seems to fit 100 % to my scenario. What would you recommend? Thank you for any inputs.
GA4 Measurement Protocol or Google Ads API and Facebook Ads APIs are the right way to go.
You'll have to store click & user identifiers ad platforms use (fbclid, fbp, gclid/_ga etc) and then pass them to Google Ads (either through GA4 measurement protocol and GA4-GAds connection or directly to Google Ads API) and Facebook CAPI together with the conversion. There are services like Able CDP that do the entire process - recording ids, getting conversions from CRM, sending them to APIs.
Doing it with sGTM or something like Zapier alone would be significantly limited. They don't remember what click ids, IP address, browser etc the user had when signing up and only around half of the conversions without click/user ids recorded at a lead form submission and sent together with the conversion will be attributed typically (the ones for which ad platforms recognise the users' emails).
I believe I have followed the instructions for adding Google Tag Manager to the letter -- including adding the scripts to all pages of my website. I then added the tag for Google Analytics 4. I have tested this tag many times via the Preview and Debug mode in Google Analytics. In debug mode, I could see when pages were loading, in terms of the basic functions. I have also gone live and have supposedly had this functioning for a few weeks now. If I monitor the Real-Time Report in Google Analytics , then call up my website, I can see my activities showing up including additional tags for monitoring YouTube videos and their progress. When monitoring the Network activity in the browser debug tools, I see data is being sent and replies (presumably from Google) acknowledging them with a 204 thumbs up.If I go to another computer under another name, I can also get those visits to show in the Real-Time data. However, there has been no data accumulating for website visitors. My website is new and does not get a lot of hits, but it gets many more than GA is reporting. I see something like 23 for the last three weeks. Cloudflare Analytics shows over 1,100 unique visitors in the last month with between 30 and 97 new visitors per day. There must be something simple I have missed but I cannot seem to find the answer anywhere through searches or YouTube video aids. How can I install GA4 and know for sure that the data is being accumulated by Analytics at Google? I really want this to work.
Google Analytics Report -- One Month
Cloudflare One Month Requests
Cloudflare One Month Unique Visitors
I'm very new to google analytics. I'm using it to know the performance metrics of a website, this website is not mine. I'm assigned to analyze the performance metrics of that website. The step i do is i sign in, put the url to the website and then i'm directed to the home but somehow in every dashboard i check, there's no data at all. The website is https://www.latihid.com/.
I'm very confused right now because I thought simple sign in and putting link url is enough for the google analytics to show me the dashboards of the data and i have seen in every tutorial I found that when they open the google analytics it will show them the dashboard with data (not blank dashboards).
Please help me, what's wrong and how to fix it
steps to begin using Google analytics.
Create account on google analytics
Add Tracking script to your website JavaScript snippet
Account creation latency (1)
When you create a new google analytics account on the google analytics website it can take between 48 -72 hours for this account to start recording data. This has nothing to do with the age of your website it has to do with the time it takes to prevision your account.
Data processing latency (2)
Once your account is ready to start displaying data and you have added the JavaScript snippet to your website and have begun sending hits to Google
analytics. If you check the real time reports on the Google analytics website you will begin seeing it recording data.
It takes 24 -48 hours for data sent to google analytics to complete processing and be shown in the standard reports. Again this has nothing to do with your website it has to do with the data processing latency on Google analytics.
I have started using GMP on an eCommerce website as I am concerned about transactions not being tracked correctly due to ad blockers and subsequently the conversion data in Adwords being incorrect.
However, I've started using it and I've found it to be a nightmare to get to work as you'd expect. I found this question still unanswered which is worrying!!
Measurement protocol transactions from Google Analytics to Google AdWords
However, my question is similar. But not the same. I'd like to know if I'm supposed to set the referrer, source & medium only once? For the first request?
i.e. Lets say someone clicks an eCommerce shopping ad (So it has a glid). Comes onto the site. And I set the medium to cpc and the source to google.
Then they start to browse around the site before making a purchase. The referrer will then be registered as the current domain and the source and medium will not be recorded.
Is this correct? As currently it's attributing all conversions to the site itself and not to google even though I am passing in the glid on the first request.
On a website with affiliate links, where there is no programmatic access to the conversion logs, I treat it as offline conversions.
My Setup
Online
A user visit my website, see the affiliated ad and a promotion view hit is being sent.
When the user clicks the ad, a promotion click hit is being sent and the user is redirected to another page on my site.
On the "redirection page", an product view hit is being sent, and the user is being redirected to the affiliation link, passing his Google Analytics clientId.
Offline
Once a week I download the stats from the affiliate program, which looks something like:
clientId visits conversions revenue
4444444444.3333333333 1 0 $0
1234567890.1234567890 1 1 $16.40
Then I use the Measurement Protocol to send offline events:
For each line of visit, I send a product click hit.
For each line of conversion, I send a product purchase hit.
My Problem
The conversion shows up on the eCommerce report:
Because the offline hits are being sent after the original session is already closed, a new session is opened which doesn't contain the info about the user.
So I can't see the conversion on the demographic report, for example:
Optional Solution?
I'm thinking of using the user-id feature of Google Analytics.
Even though the users are not identified, I can identify them by their clientId.
Sure, this is not what Google intended when they introduced that feature, but I believe it will solve my issue. I'm just not sure about the negatives.
My Questions
Any feedback on my setup?
Why is it even necessary to pass the clientId after the session is closed? what kind of information is being shared between the real session and the offline hit?
Is it a bad idea to pass the clientId as a userId to Google Analytics? Why?
Relevant Articles
A Comprehensive Guide to Tracking Offline Interactions in Google Analytics using the Measurement Protocol
Google Universal Analytics isn’t Linking Offline and Online User Properly
We were able to link offline action through as you did with measurement protocol but the problem is that those sessions are not included in demographic and age report.
Rather looking those report I used them to do segmented analysis E.g. pages they have look at, sources they used to come also I used it with attribution model to understand best channels to drive more conversions.
Yes you can use CID as a user ID but I haven't tried it with offline tracking. Share the result with us.