We are running a website(due to security reason cannot disclose the name until we find this solution) and we keep on getting referral link on our analytic account(see image) why would aliexpress and other sites would ask visitors to visit our website, is our application compromised so they are using our website? or this is Chinese being Chinese
This is clearly referrer spam and doesn't correspond to any traffic to your Web site. The spammers basically send fake pageviews directly to Google Analytics (using randomly chosen property IDs) and their aim is to trick you into following the referrer URLs. Some time ago I wrote an article that explains this in depth and that discusses different approaches to eliminate that referrer spam from Google Analytics:
http://veithen.github.io/2015/01/21/referrer-spam.html
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I can't find this answer in the official documentation.
I'm tracking google analytics data on mycustomerwebsite.com
But the website is also working and reachable in seofriendlydomain.com
Website is the same, so I include analytics.js data in both of them.
My customer asks, to know how much traffic comes from each domain,
not needing complete data but only few stuff like % of incoming visitors or number.
I found similar topics:
Google Analytics multiple domains one website
Why there is no answer ? is there no solution ?
Google Analytics tracks the following acquisition types (ways in which its users reached your site):
Referrals
Search
Direct link
A direct link means entering a site name directly into the browser URL. A search means doing a google search and clicking on one of the results. A referral means someone clicked on a hyperlink which got them to your site.
It is obvious that since google search is run by google, clicking on a link in the google search results can submit the information of what clicked to the google analytic servers.
What is obvious is the other two cases (direct link and referrals). It seems to me that since these requests don't go through google, that google would have to own some software on interim TCP/IP routers for this to work.
So, my question is, how does Google Analytics manage to track referrals and direct links at the software level?
So, my question is, how does Google Analytics manage to track
referrals and direct links at the software level?
If there is no referrer (accessible via http headers) it's a direct type-in. If there is a referrer and it's not from a list of known search engines or social networks it's a referrer.
Since the referrer is accessible both via javascript (via document referrer) and via the http headers there is really not mystery here and they do not need to intercept traffic - source attribution works simply by way of exclusion (i.e. if it's not campaign traffic as per campaign parameters in the url it's a referrer or a direct visit).
In fact Google has a very nice flowchart to show how source attribution works. Once you realize that the referrer is public information (except for those user agent that choose not to send a referrer in the http headers) it's easy to understand how this works.
I give each visitor who signs up to my Google Form an unique url to my landing page for them to share with their friends. The idea is the more they share and their friends visits the site through their given unique url, I'll move them up the waiting list for a product launch.
So for each visitor I gave them example.com/?ref=uniqueCode which is unique to each visitor. Currently I'm using Google App scripts to programatically generate individual url to each visitor who signs up my Google Form.
The goal is if I see traffic coming in from eg: example.com/?ref=a, and I know tag a belongs to John Doe, I'll move John Doe up the waiting list.
Tried googling for a solution but couldn't find any. All solution directs me to creating a particular campaign in Google Analytics with the URL building which really isn't the right solution for this purpose.
How do I set this up with Google Analytics and track the incoming traffic for each unique code of the ref tags of each user?
Going over your question I cannot see why URL builder does not fit your needs.
However, when it comes to immediate and accurate statistics of incoming referrals you may also use a server side script to track incoming visitors.
Also for lots of existing CMS there are plugins to track referrals. If you use a CMS please update your question.
So a problem has arisen on my site when I placed the google analytics script on each of the pages, as when I log into google analytics its gives me incorrect data.
I know this because only 4 people have been given access (from London) to the site and in google analytics under "New Users" we have people from USA, Thailand, and other countries. Any ideas as to why we are recieving incorrect data from google analytics?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I doubt the numbers are incorrect. Is the login page for the site exposed to the world? If so, I suspect the majority of the unknown visits are people who hit the login page but don't actually login.
You should also check the Hostnames report to verify the code is coming from the expected website. We've seen instances where a development shop copies GA code from one site to another and forgets to change the UA number.
How (im)precise is Google Analytics actually? I've been using Google Analytics for years now on a pretty well visited web site (800k+ visits per month).
Now I decided to log every page request in a database table, and I'm tracking the user-agent of the request. I have also eliminated bot requests (googlebot, bingbot and many more...)
What I found out is that I have almost more than double requests to a page than Google Analytics pageviews is willing to admit.
E.g. GA shows 137 pageviews to a specific URL, but I tracked even 255!
Google Analytics is VERY precise. It's not very accurate though. And that's the difference you're seeing since you're not looking into trends but instead at absolute numbers.
Start by reading this post by Avinash:
Reflections: Accuracy, Precision & Predictive Analytics
Bots are everywhere these days and a lot of times disguised as real user agents. You should come up with a testing to make sure client have both javascript and cookies enabled. In that case he'll be tracked by Google Analytics.
Besides that that some users might have adBlocks extensions that block Google Analytics. This is fairly uncommon but depending on the public can be more common. Tech savvy users have a higher chance to use a plugin that blocks GA, thus IT blogs might be hit by this harder than an average site.
The best way to test the real accuracy of Google Analytics ignoring user agents without javascript, cookies and that block GA tracking is to track the users on your site using GA as well. You can do that in Google Analytics using the LocalRemoteServerMode.
Add the following line at the end of your GATC (GA Tracking Code):
_gaq.push(['_setLocalGifPath', 'http://mysite.com/__utm.gif']);
_gaq.push(['_setLocalRemoteServerMode']);
Make sure to replace http://mysite.com/__utm.gif with a path on the same domain as your website and that respond a gif. Use a lightweight gif, like the one GA uses.
Then you can get the logs of access to this gif and see in their parameters the urls visited. You'll need to do some extra processing but you'll be using the same framework GA uses to collect data and thus will measure more efficiently GA precision.
More Info:
https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/gajs/methods/gaJSApiUrchin#_gat.GA_Tracker_._setLocalGifPath