I have an issue that's happened since we replaced the UA code with GTM and now run everything through tag manager.
Everything was working fine with analytics using plain UA. We could see ecommerce, user journeys etc all in one sessions however last October we changed to GTM. Initially we left the UA ecommerce code in place as our Devs did not have the capacity at the time to replace that.
That cause an issue where everything after a certain page become a new session. I tried setting the tracker name in GTM to blank, which I've been told fixes the solution, but still 90% of those who gave (It's a charity) would start a new session one a process giving page. Note: There are about 10% who appear not to be affected.
We then thought it might be because the GTM code and the UA code wouldn't accept each other as the same session, so we recently removed the UA ecommerce code and replaced it with GTM.
This broke the ecommerce altogether and I only managed to fix that yesterday. We also had some virtual page views for checkout journey which were also only fixed yesterday but were working fine on UA until we implemented GTM.
The issue seems to be that at the last virtual page on the form people are having their session ended. Then there's this processing page and then the thankyou page with the ecommerce code on.
I have looked through the user journeys prior to us having GTM and I cannot see any pages in that journey which I can't see currently (by this I mean I don't think there are any other pages that I should be making sure have GTM code on and thus breaking the journey in two) but even if there were, sure since GA sessions last 30 mins, it shouldn't necessarily matter if there were a phantom page.
Should I be setting the Tracker ID to blank again? I'm at a loss as I've been fixing all these problems since October and my brain has melted.
Edit: After a bit more research it looks like secure trading might be the issue. Does anyone know how to overide secure trading making a new referrer and keeping the sessions the same?
Related
Looking more for some fresh ideas to help me troubleshoot the below problem than solving any coding issues (which may come next).
Creating a similar site to an existing one that uses all previous GA tech (analytics.js, _gaq.push, Google_Service_AnalyticsReporting_ReportRequest(), etc) and provides all the easy data needed for my simple GA reports (i.e. page views by date and location).
However, not quite ready to bite off the whole enchilada (GTAGMgr, GA4, and such) so created dual Properties (UA and GA) as many forums have recommended when making the transition.
Setup the website same as the active [UA] site but using the gtag.js (per the Property Tracking Code snippet provided in ADMIN) vs the analytics.js code. Created View(s), new Service Account for the "user", an API Map Key for the Google Map Charts, and any other pieces I could find.
Have the GTAG.JS setup on each page and added any special page tracking via gtag('event', 'page view', {...}) but letting the default page view still occur as well.
Page view hits are coming through as expected EXCEPT the page views locations (City, State, Country, Region) are not being populated. All that comes thru is the "not set" for any location. Ironically, the old analytics.js code was still active initially and location data was being populated.
Would think if gtag.js is collecting standard page view info for the configured Property, that location data would be there as well. Am sure it is but possibly the older getReport calls need tweaking. No doubt I probably have a something not quite right but if REALTIME data shows usage, page views, etc. AND my GA Report calls are working, would think location data would be there too.
Any brainstorming ideas would be appreciated.
Thank you,
LarryG
ANSWER ... the EZ Button ... my code and calls were correct using old and [semi] new way. The majority of the problems were McAfee VPN kicking in. It is set to turn on with reboot and I do not always remember to turn it off. The first obvious clue was the realtime location for my actions were not where they were supposed to be. Also, appears Google API PHP Client has some issues with PHP7.4FastCGI.
So if you took the time to read ... check your VPN settings if you are getting an abnormal amount of NOT SETS in your GA data.
Begs the question ... with the increase in companies providing VPN services out of the box, that renders some of the tracking a moot point.
LarryG
I'm asking if anyone is having the same problem as I currently am and if they can help. Currently, for the past 5 days or so, The Google Analytics E-commerce section has not been recoding any payments or revenue when in the back end we know it is happening.
This started when the client added Facebook pixel to the website but was reassured that their IT team did not touch any of the tracking codes for the rest of the website.
Below is the graph of when E-commerce stopped tracking.
I have double-checked the entire flow and double-check the tracking codes to the entire website. But this still hasn't shown what the problem could be.
Any help would be appreciated and has this ever happened to any of you guys as well? This has only happened once about 2 years ago (same client) when E-Commcerce tracking just stopped without a reason and came back about a month after.
Is the tracking hardcoded on the site or are you using Tag Manager?
My guess is the pixel broke some code, I don't know if the GA hardcoded or the dataLayer.
Do a test transaction, on the confirmation page do the following: Right Click on the site > Inspect > Console
Check if you get error, could you paste them here?
Also if you're using GTM, can you type 'dataLayer' on the confirmation page. It should return something.
This is just to understand the problem. I need more info to give you a solution.
I am experiencing a rather odd problem with my GA setup. Long story short, everything was working smoothly up until few days ago when an external developer implemented a bunch if changes to my blog and since then only a small fraction of the sessions is being recorded.
Setup is done via GTM and the Universal Analytics Tag, firing on all
pages
The Blog is tracked as separate view within the main website property
and is a subdomain
The only filter in use is inclusion of a hostname rule with a pattern
blog.blacklane.com, which was working just fine till now
GA Tag is firing properly in preview mode on all pages on GTM, yet no
active sessions can be seen in real time view
For some reason this is not the case with Safari and some Chrome
versions, and there I can see my active session in real time view
almost immediately
We tried adding the GA snippet manually into the of every page
and problem was instantly resolved, data was running smoothly, so we definitely ruled out a filtering issue
Only the Blog View seems affected by this issue, it's business as
usual for our main domain
All other tags firing through GTM seem to be working without any
issues, including our internal tracking
Last GTM change we did was over 15 days ago
We've been going back and forth with the developer for some time now, him claiming that there is nothing he can do as the problem is with out GTM, however, I find the coincidence weird that the blog subdomain, which he was optimizing for page performance end of last week is the only one affected and the tracking glitch happened exactly around that time.
From what I can tell, the tag is firing fine but for some reason GA is not receiving the data in the majority of cases.
Any support on the topic would be highly appreciated!
So I've been working on a website for a while. GA account has been up for a couple months but I waited for the website to be finished before putting up the actual JS tag.
In the meantime, the website is being HTTP password restricted (basic authentication) so it isn't even accessible unless you know the user/pwd combination.
To my surprise, I realized today that GA has logged several hundred views to the root of my website. Paths are mostly things like:
/
/?from=http://social-widget.xyz/
/?from=http://www.traffic2cash.xyz/
Bounce% and exit% both at 100% for all of them.
I realize this looks like referral spam, and there are ways to prevent it. Came across this upon googling:
http://botcrawl.com/block-social-widget-xyz-referral-spam-in-google-analytics/
My question is: how can GA log anything anyway when no tag is up and the website isn't even accessible?
Thank you very much in advance
Because it's spam. They hit Google Analytics directly with random GA codes and don't even go through your website.
GA can't tell if these are real hits (from website visits) or fake hits (from spam bots who hit GA directly calling the same ode as they would if on the website). Though arguably they should do more about this.
Massively annoying - particularly when first starting out as this can be a heavy proportion of your "traffic".
It's easy to set up a filter rule is to catch a lot of this by filtering on hostname. As they are randomly hitting GA and don't even know what website they are hitting GA for, they don't usually set this correctly. Real traffic should only come from yourwebsitedomain.com so add a filter for that.
STRONG piece of advice: abandon the default UA-########-1 tracking code of your new website -- simply do not use it!
Create a second and third property on the Admin screen, then use the tracking code for the third property. You will immediately see a lot less spam. No filters or segments necessary!
If you want the whole sad story about spam visits in GA, I have been maintaining the Definitive Guide article for over a year now:
http://help.analyticsedge.com/spam-filter/definitive-guide-to-removing-google-analytics-spam/
I recently signed up for a google analytics account in anticipation of a new site I'm putting together. The site has not been published, and the tracking script has not been put in the code yet.
Somehow after logging back in to grab the tracking code, it's showing I've already had 275 views in the past month. How is this possible???
These are very likely ghost referrals sent by spammers targeting random GA property IDs (which explains why you see them even before your Web site is live). Since you are setting up a new site, probably the easiest way to get rid of them is to create a new Web property so that you get an ID not ending with -1. The reason is that this type of spam is only targeted at the first property in an account.
If you want to get more information about how referrer spam works and alternative solutions to eliminate it, here is an article I wrote some time ago:
http://veithen.github.io/2015/01/21/referrer-spam.html