I have a web-server with 50+ domains hosted. I am trying to find a tool that would give me some stats on incoming traffic for those domains. I know I can install a separate Google analytics code into each of those but that's just too much work and the reporting would be tricky. I want to see all domains in a single report/dashboard. Whats' the best way to do this? I think I could use Google cross-domain tracking but I thought I'd ask here if any better alternatives around?
If you do not have Google Analytics 360, the best solution is to track them separately and create an external dashboard (e.g. data studio) that collects information from the various Properties and displays it in one place.
If you track everything in Google Analytics Standard within the same Property, with all those domains and depending on the volume of traffic, the risk of seeing sampled data in non-standard reports is almost insured.
Related
I see my staff has implemented Google Analytics in their app but I am pretty sure there is a significant amount of traffic that is coming from them testing the tool in production.
How can I make sure that they aren't adding to the analytics so we only see customer data? Is it setting or do i need to get them all to install a GA blocking extension in chrome? The latter sounds a little hacky.
Thanks
You need to add a filter to exclude the traffic from the staff members.
You could use their IP addresses to exclude them: Google Documentation
I just started at a company and the new web host hasn't been sharing data to google analytics so there is no info at all for the past 6 months in my analytics account. They just put in the tracking code last friday. Is there anyway to see data in google that is not there??
No, of course not. You cannot see something that isn't there. And you couldn't even recreate the data even if you had it from other sources, since Google does not allow to import historical data.
However you might have alternatives - your webserver should keep a logfile, and you can analyze this with programs like Awstats or similar (free or commercial) software packages. This is really old school (log file analysis was the way to go before cloud based javascript trackers became common) and the results will not quite match data collected via Google Analytics, but it should give you at least a broad idea what was going on on your site.
I'm working on the architecture for a project that includes a Android and iOS apps and a web interface with a subset of the mobile apps functionalities. The project is basically a e-commerce solution. In all three interfaces I'm using Google Analytics to track some information. However I'm having an internal discussion about the extent of the information I should send to GA. What should I store in GA and what should I store in my own server?
Let me give you some examples.
Session tracking is clearly something that belong to GA.
ProductDetailViews. Sounds like something that should go into GA, specially considering the enhanced e-commerce module.
Shared item. When a user shares some content over a social network, should I store that information on GA or in my own server? I'm inclined to GA but it becomes more ambiguos.
Do you see my point? Can someone share a general rule or recommendation on what should be saved in GA and what should be saved on the projects own server?
Thanks
For those examples I would generally send all the hits to Google Analytics. Here are a few reasons:
Preventing data silos. You want all of your data in one place and Google provides you with a database reachable via the API where you can keep all your data organised in one place. This is important when you are considering measuring performance, as you want to avoid duplication of conversions or traffic hits
Useage of Google Analytics advanced segments. With all your data in GA, you will be able to create advanced segments for analysis. But the real power is if you are using AdWords or retargeting, as you can send those Advanced Segments to AdWords, and target those users around the web with your custom data
Single point of reference for users All analytics are inaccurate, but you want to make sure they are inaccurate to the same degree. Using GA keeps all your data on the same playing field
Usability and Freedom of information Its easier to serve up your data to users within the GA interface as people are more likely to know how to navigate that than your database. You can also use the GA API to pull out any data you need to push into other visualisation tools.
User session merging With your data and userID tracking in GA, you may be able to track users as they arrive via mobile to desktop and back again, over multiple sessions.
What you need to avoid putting in to Google Analytics is personal info such as names, email address etc. There are against the TOS. But you can capture a unique userID, and match that outside of the tool later.
I'm using both on a site and getting very different numbers from each. Why is this?
The discrepancy is also mentioned in a Quora answer (Which is better, Facebook Insights or Google Analytics?)
Footnote: if you decide to use both, do not report them side-by-side,
and never expect them to match. Trying to explain the differences will
drive you mad.
Could someone explain?
This problem is quite common, and very hard to explain to clients why numbers do not reconcile amongst different analytics platforms.
Firstly, I believe that because there are remote connections to google or facebook some user sessions will get lost (What happens when they hit stop on the Browser page before the .js downloads for instance).
Secondly I believe ad blocking software may stop the file from being downloaded therefore the session is not captured.
Most hosting providers will have their own analytics platform with your hosting package. This is what I rely on as a true indicator for actual page views etc. These are usually generated directly from your web server logs so they are more accurate. Sadly I've never seen one of these packages have as many features as google or facebook.
There are tons of possible reasons. They might identify returning visitors in a different way or users might block scripts from a specific domain (e.g. *.facebook.com but not *.google.com). In general, ignore the discrepancy. Just pick one solution and use it. You'll always have visitors blocking all such scripts or just one or two specific trackers. The only (almost) 100% accurate way to do it, would be using local scripts, but even those could be blocked. You could as well look at open source solutions such as Piwik
Different web analytics products use diferent methods to track data on the site.
These differences between them is the reason why is hard do do a side-by-side comparison.
On the two links bellow you can find more info about that:
Why does Google Analytics report different values than some other web analytics solutions?
Using Google Analytics & Facebook Domain Insights to Track Social Actions on Your Website
In addition to the notes above, I also wanted to mention Google samples data when there are large volumes & dimensions. This may be a contributing factor.
Facebook reports on clicks and Analytics reports on pageviews.
The amount of pageviews might be less than the amount of clicks for a number of reasons:
There are filters on your Analytics that are blocking the pageviews from being recorded
The user left the page before the Analytics code could be recorded
Or the ads being clicked by bots and the Analytics isnt recording them
This seems to be a big problem with Facebook ads. I run a number of campaigns with facebook and I only see 30-50% of the reported traffic actually make it to the site. I cant believe this is due to only the first two reasons.
I have gone into more details on my blog http://www.bradtollefsen.com/facebook-ads-adding/
I have a web app that I deployed in AppHarbor with Google Analytics. Development is still ongoing and I test it very often live to checkout for example stuffs I did with the CSS, etc.
Everything is working fine but I'd like to know how many times I am accessing the website apart from the rest of the visitors who visits it. When checking the reports in Google Analytics it only shows me the ISPs of the visitors. I'll need something more drilled down like an IP address, but this seems to go against Google Analytic's policy and I do not know if this is even possible still.
Like right now I have 72 visits. But I have been testing so a lot of those could just be me. Would be good to know the actual visitor count.
I know this is probably a little late but you can set a filter to ingore your own traffic from reports. Here is how you do it.
In addition for adding a deprecated variable and using filters, you can build the code so that it only prints the tracking code if e.g. an identifier cookie is not found. Other common option is a URL parameter.
You can then set this cookie for your browser and be excluded from traffic.