Does someone really understand why Google Analytics and Cloud Flare do not show the same information about Page visitors and users?
I was reading about it but couldn't find a good and reliable answer about it.
Thanks,
CloudFlare tracks traffic instantaneously because any website visitor goes through CloudFlare first to load your page. Google Analytics starts working AFTER your page loads in a browser, if JavaScript is enabled, if staying on the page long enough to give JavaScript a chance to run and send a signal to Google Analytics.
I feel that CloudFlare support answered this question nicely here:
https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200171296-Why-do-my-CloudFlare-traffic-numbers-look-different-than-other-services-Google-Compete-
Related
I am partnering with an email newsletter to include some url links I'd like to advertise.
Can someone advise on how I might get "click" stats on these url links? The links neither redirect to my website/app, and are just links to, for example, a youtube video.
I've gone down the rabbit hole of Google's Campaign URL builder and Google tags, but am admittedly lost as a complete beginner regarding Google Analytics, tracking, etc, so any guidance would be greatly appreciated.
With Google Analytics, the only way you can track clicks within is if you leverage UTMs and drive traffic to a site or property that you own. I believe the UTMs might translate to YouTube account but, again, you have to own the video.
There are ways of leveraging Universal Analytics tags, in the form of pixels, that only measure when an email is opened (and the picture is essentially downloaded). But this doesn’t relate to clicks.
More than likely you will need to either use a dedicated email platform with built in analytics, or subscribe to an email analytics service. Google Analytics won’t really be of any value to you.
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.
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.
I have FTP access and am re-designing a website and I want to see historical traffic data from their Google Analytics, but they do not have a Google Analytics Account and can not get in touch with their last web person who set it up.
The tracking code has been in place for several years. There are a lot of articles about how to add Google Analytics code to a website but how do you setup a Google Analytics account with tracking code that is already there?
The best way is to ask person who set it up. But if it is impossible - here is the article, which help You - http://savvydealer.com/reclaim-your-google-analytics-account/
This is the only one way.
There are 2 options,
Ask for the Authoritative person to add you as an Admin, so you can easily get access. If this option may not possible then,
You can replace old tracking code with new tracking code.
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.