Setting up Goals in Google Analytics for a Single Page Application - google-analytics

While setting up goals in single page application in google analytics through gtm there was a problem with achieving 'pageview' goals from CPC source, although when I was looking at the current page in real-time I saw page is active, so the goal should be achieved but it doesn't.
Is anybody faced with such behavior of google analytics?

Probably when the URL of your single-page changes it loses the gclic parameter but the referral is always google, so your session is interrupted and a new one starts from the organic channel to which the rest of the pages viewed are associated.
Try to read this article:
https://www.simoahava.com/gtm-tips/fix-rogue-referral-problem-single-page-sites/

Related

Sessions from Google Ads are not tracking by Google Analytics

I started to notice that my Google Ads clicks wasnt 100% counting by google analytics (For exemple, during a certain period I had 300 clicks and only 100 sessions were counted as Paid Search on analytics). So I contacted Google Ads Support, they investigated and came to me with this:
Actually, your site is losing the attribution of Google Ads because of an automatic redirection of the structure in which it was developed.
When we have Google Ads linked with Google Analytics, they are talked through a parameter called GCLID. To verify this loss, follow the path I made (in several products, here is an example):
1- I accessed the link https://mywebsite.com/products/running-shoes?variant=15320930779194
2- After full site loading, I added the & gclid = Tester123 parameter to the URL (in the browser, so the final URL was https://mywebsite.com/products/running-shoes?variant=15320930779194&gclid=Tester123) and hit Enter
3- To understand if there is a redirect, the normal behavior would be for the URL to remain the same (with & gclid = Tester123 at the end), but in this case, the parameter some (and hence the assignment)
So, the campaign actually appeared (not set) in Analytics, and could be assigned to any of the other channels (Direct, Organic, ...) For this to be resolved, the site structure must stop causing this automatic redirection in the final URL of each product. With this, the results will be effectively assigned to Google Ads.
They also said that if even if I want to use manual tracking (UTMs) I would still have that problem, since the redirections would keep spoiling it.
As I use Shopify as my website platform, I checked with them and I have no redirections that are causing this problem, at least not created by me nor that their support know.
So I am lost over all this. I dont know where to start solving this problem. Google doesnt tell me what kind of redirections may cause this, I dont use any kind of redirections, and Shopify cant tell me if their code causes this problem (what I dont believe, because other shopify websites would also been suffering from this).
So can anyone give me any direction about this? What redirections may be causing this lost of data?
Thanks for your time!
One thing to note, Google Ads might have a different way of counting, there is the possibility of multiple clicks per session.
That said, you can try Google Tag Assistant, start your recording, click on one of your ads, follow that through and see the parameters being passed.
Unfortunately, it is hard to debug with limited information. The more details you can provide the better.
Check where your GA code is placed in the page code. If GA script is at the bottom of page or there are some heavy scripts above GA tracker, losses of bounced sessions can be large. I.e. user enters the page and immediately closes it. GA script doesn't have time to download.
Why user closes the page immediately?
Сlick by mistake
Slow site
And check that all your landing pages are OK and have 200 server response.

Trying to figure out why Google Analyics report more users than our own stack

Comparison is between the Google Analytics script and a "chat widget" loaded in a iframe on the onload event. The iframe is not loaded if the useragentlooks like a crawler. The code in the iframe creates a websocket connection and then a user is upserted in our backend.
I'm looking at one website where we currently get around 2/3 of new users reported by Google Analytics as users in our backend.
With the new Google Analytics UI, it's not clear to me how much crawlers are actually filtered or not (e.g. is Google Analytics always filtering Google Crawler?). That could explain a lot.
Our "tracking id" is saved in localstorage which is a bit more persistent than a cookie, but I can't see it making a big difference.
The extra loading time and the websocket connection can probably explain a bit (old browsers that don't support TLS 1.2, baldy configured proxies, etc) can explain some of it, but 1/3 seems big.
Any insights in Google Analytics metrics or other ideas are welcome.
Bot traffic in Google Analytics is not filtered by default. You can enable it in View Settings.
Also it's possible to pass User Agent strings into Google Analytics as a custom dimension and then create filter to exclude sessions based on User Agents that you know to be bots.
https://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2015/04/01/eliminating-bot-traffic-from-google-analytics-once-and-for-all/
The second reason of difference may be that GA tracker fires when page starts to load, but "chat widget" when window is loaded. Some bounced sessions (and users) are counted by GA, but not counted by "chat widget".

How does Google Analytics filters duplicate site entrances

We are implementing a native analytics system and want to apply the same tracking principles Google Analytics uses. We've figured everything out but one thing:
Every time I refresh a page with an url that has utm-parameters attached to it, Google Analytics somehow figures out that it's not actually a visit but the same page that gets refreshed and shows only one visit in its dashboard from that particular source.
Is anybody aware how GA specifically does that so I can replicate it in our system?
I know that I can use
performance.navigation.type
in my JS script, but it doesn't give me desired results.
Any help would be much appreciated.
Attribution in GA happens on the Google servers, so JavaScript will be of limited use. Basically since a reload means that the user has the same client id and no change in the channel (source, medium and campaign are the same as in the previous visit) the existing session will be continued (a change of campaign/source information would trigger a new Google Analytics session).
Google has a very nice chart that explains how campaign information and traffic source information is processed.

Google Analytics Campaign Tracking Issues

A client of mine is having some issues with regards to tracking campaigns in Google Analytics that I was hoping one of you can advise me on.
They have recently sent out an email with the Google Analytics campaign information in the links back to the site from a button in the email (link created with the URL builder).
As well as the Google Analytics information they also send their own parameter for tracking using a bespoke system of theirs. In the end the url that visitors would go to after clicking the button in the email was something along these lines:
http://www.domain.com/pagename/?bespokecampaign=lead_gen/email/email_btn/boxcampaign&utm_source=email_pure&utm_medium=email&utm_term=email_btn&utm_campaign=boxcampaign
Looking at Acquisitions in the Google Analytics report I can see in the past this page has been viewed and has the correct Source/Medium set as email_pure/email.
However, there was a lead gen form that was filled out on the site after landing on this particular page that sends an event action that the form was filled out. When trying to view the campaign information for these events I do not see any information regarding the Source / Medium for that event being the correct information from the URL.
The Salesforce model in place to receive these leads took the referrer URL correctly, containing the Google Analytics parameters, but there was no record in Analytics to suggest one of the form events had the Source/Medium of email_pure/email.
Does anyone have any ideas on what could be causing this and potential fixes?

Does Google Analytics tracks referrals when site is down

I am using Google Analytics to track visitors to the site. Now I have started a PPC campaign and I had a problem with the site which was down for a few hours, from 9am to 12am. So I wonder if Google Analytics can count the clicks from the PPC campaign even the application on the site is down.
There are two opinions on it, so I am a bit confused. One says GA track the visit but cannot track deeper than the visit, also Google Web Master Tools can say this information. The opposite idea says if application is down, so does the ga.js therefore GA cannot count any data.
Also, can Google Web Master tools tell me if the application is down or not. I found some services to let me know if the server is down but in this case I need to track if the app is down.
I would love to hear any comments on this question.
Thanks in advance.
User's browser can only send data to Google Analytics if the page is loaded, so if the site is down, nothing can be sent.
As for a uptime monitoring service, quick googling gives http://mashable.com/2010/04/09/free-uptime-monitoring/. I believe that Google Web Master tools provide website alerts but they don't have an option to send notifications.
After doing some more research on the topic I have found and tried what Google said in this link
Now I can place a cookie to visitor and can match PPC cound with visitor count.

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