I have GA on every page on one domain (actually not me, but my company, whose programmer needs auditing). Just the default code (Classic version, ga.js), no special accommodations whatsoever that I've seen or know of. Bare minimal if any configuration past registering the service with the main site...
All the pages are either aspx or static HTML. It's common practice for this guy to embed pages on the site within other pages on the site in iframes, where both the parent (top-level) & child (embedded) pages contain the GA script.
I don't really know much at all about GA, have never worked with it, but I do suspect that might result in extra hits being counted by GA or something, that that may be messing with the metrics. But then I've read stuff about GA using first-party cookies so by default pages loaded in iframes won't be tracked/counted... I could really use some clarification on this, please.
Then our programmer frames pages from the main site in pages on other sites that we own, that are on different domains. So then there's this cross-domain business, with no segregation of sources, because they really don't care much. So what should be the outcome of that? The external sites' pages don't have the GA code.
However, we're rebuilding one of those other sites - actually I am, for the most part - and the programmer told me to just copy and paste the same exact GA script used on the main site into that one. So, it's a different domain. That wouldn't work as-is, would it? Wouldn't there have to be some sort of special configuration, setting of the domain, something?
I'd really appreciate if someone could tell me more about the scenarios described above. Thanks in advance.
In the Google Analytics developer menu, you can create a new 'profile' for this new site. The analytics will then be tracked for just that one site, not for all. In theory, it is possible to use one GA.js for all your sites, but it kind of kills the whole concept of Google Analytics, so it's not recommended.
Your really shouldn't be using iframes anymore IMO. There are reasons to use them like embedding code for tracking etc, I think, even GA uses iframes. But, generally Google doesn't like them because a lot of spammers use them to try and fool the Google Crawler.
Also, it get's very complicated to understand what is going on within GA.
To answer your question: Each iframe is like an independent webpage completely separated from the other webpage (for security reasons). So when Google or a web browser goes to your website it will do this:
Load your main html document.
Render that page.
See that you have an iframe.
Load that page in the iframe.
Render the iframe.
Now, if you don't have GA installed on the iframe page it will not track the page being loaded.
But if you do put GA in the iframe it will record when the iframe is loaded or the webpage is loaded.
But, remember that one of the main reasons of having GA is to see where your customers are coming from and why. If you have an iframe of another webpage, you really don't know if that is because a customer is:
A) visiting your website from the page directly.
OR
B) the customer is visiting that page through an iframe on another page.
It can get very complicated
You must generate a new tracker for each domain you are using. Otherwise what is to stop someone from just copying your GA code, and putting it on their webpage.
Related
I've identified a discrepancy between Google Ads clicks and Analytics sessions in Paid Search (about twice more clicks than sessions). So I contacted Google Ads support and after a long conversation, they send me an email saying that my website structure uses redirections and it's making it lose parameters, and that I had to contact a developer to solve that problem because they don't give assistance on it. What exactly they told me to tell the developer was that:
Loss of parameters by redirection
The website trendotrends.com is not holding navigation parameters
because of the structure in which it was developed.
To verify this redirection, simply replicate the following steps: I
accessed the link
https://trendotrends.com/products/running-shoes?variant=15320930779194
After full site loading, I added the & gclid = Tester123 parameter to
the URL (in the browser, so the final URL was
https://trendotrends.com/products/running-shoes?variant=15320930779194&gclid=Tester123)
and hit Enter 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 disappears (and
hence the assignment) This link was just an example, which can be
verified in several other products of the site.
They also said I can't use manual tagging (UTMs) instead of automatic tagging in Google Ads because those redirections are also going to spoil the UTMs.
I don't use any redirections in my website and I have also tested with UTMs and there's also a discrepancy in google analytics data for that.
But before I contact a developer and invest on this fix, I would like to know if anyone had experienced that? If Googles answer fits this problem? And even if is there a way to fix it without being an expert.
Thanks in advance.
The issue here isn't really that there's a redirect (301), but a state change. There is javascript on the page that essentially rewrites the URL before the GA code can parse it.
Are you able to change to a different theme and test if this happens with that theme?
Recently ran into some trouble with Google DFP that I'm hoping others have had.
We have a site that's served via SSL and it contains some Google DFP ad tags. Google DFP's debugging console shows no errors in the tags or our implementation of them. (i.e. the tags themselves are fine)
However, the ads are getting served via different methods. Some of the iframes get served as FriendlyFrames and some get served as SafeFrames. The SafeFrame ads appear correctly. The FriendlyFrame ads don't show up.
It appears that the FriendlyFrame ads are running afoul of some sort of browser security measure (likely because the pages are served via SSL).
I looked into this in the DFP docs but haven't found anything that explains how to solve the issue. There is a setForceSafeFrame method available that I've tried to use but it doesn't actually seem to do anything when I try to use it:
https://developers.google.com/doubleclick-gpt/reference#googletag.PassbackSlot_setForceSafeFrame
I've setup a test page demonstrating the issue here:
https://methnen.com/ad-test
There should be 5 separate ads on the page. If you get all of them refresh the page until you get at least one ad that doesn't show. The broken ads are being served as a FriendlyFrames.
Really hoping someone knows what the heck is going on.
FYI and possibly helpful for anyone else who might run into this at a later date:
Turns out the Ad Ops person hadn't set things up on their end to have enough inventory to fill all of the slots and there was nothing wrong with the tagging at all. The empty FriendlyFrames are apparently what DFP serves up when it decides it doesn't have anything to fill a given slot.
Try to force render all ads in SafeFrame
googletag.pubads().setForceSafeFrame(true);
More about it here https://developers.google.com/doubleclick-gpt/reference#googletag.PassbackSlot_setForceSafeFrame
One month ago on web site, www.cashflowtallinn.ee I noticed an issue related to Google Analytics, which is representing as large amount (over 80% of our traffic) viewed by Google as (not set).
This is causing different issues, such as:
If we want to see what pages users mostly visit, biggest percentage is (not set)
If we want to see default languages, biggest percentage is (not set)
If we want to see traffic sources, mostly it's viewed as Direct traffic, but this is not true, since most of our traffic is Social networks.
I tried to resolve issue:
Installed Google Tag Assistant, but it reports all is good.
Examined <head> section and found out that web site has several <title> instances, could this cause issues?
Found this from Google Support https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2820717?hl=en
Fount this, but couldn't find solution http://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2015/06/25/11-places-google-analytics-not-set/
Any ideas how to handle this (and issues like this one) ?
There is always a possibility to turn of all plugins and switch back to default theme (since it's WordPress web site), but I would like to test this on live site, and make it work live, so switching off plugins and changing theme is actually not a good idea.
All best,
I noticed your GA code is outside of head tag.
I'd consider fixing the location GA code (inside head tag)
you have 2 same GA codes installed (bad practice)
Images attached.enter image description here
Hypothetical Situation: I have a small obscure website called "miniatureBoltsInCarburetors.com" which provides content about the miniature bolts which hold a carburetor together as well as some general related automotive information. My site also has a single page which allows someone to find the missing bolt in their carburetor, and while no one will access this page directly from my website, one billion other popular automotive sites have embedded this single page in their website using an iframe, yet not included a link back to my site.
I recognize that this question is related to SEO which is considered off topic, however, all of the many SEO related forums discuss the marketing steps one could take, and not the programming steps or strategies, and hope others will allow this question to be answered here.
I wish my site "miniatureBoltsInCarburetors.com" to be ranked high for general automotive searches. What could I do to allow the 3rd party sites which include an iframe back to my site to improve my ranking? Could using JavaScript in the iframe to create a link on the parent page provide any value? What about when my server renders the page, use PHP to get the referring URL from $_SERVER, and include it in the content?
I am providing a solution here. Not sure if this is what you want though.
In your page which is used by other websites in iframe you can put below Javascript. This javascript checks if the webpage is opened inside an iframe or directly in browser.
So using this check when you see it is opened in an iframe. On click on something navigate to your website.
// This works in all browsers
function inIframe () {
try {
return window.self !== window.top;
} catch () {
return true;
}
}
Also for your reference you can check the below URL.
How to prevent my site page to be loaded via 3rd party site frame of iFrame
Hope it helps.
Iframes are seen seperate pages by Google. Your approach may end up being penalized due to being sourced from untrusted site. According to Google Webmaster Support
Frames can cause problems for search engines because they don't
correspond to the conceptual model of the web. Google tries to
associate framed content with the page containing the frames, but we
don't guarantee that we will.
One of the best approaches to rank higher for a specific keyword is, make multiple related sites. In your case a 3-4 paged site about carburetors, bolts, other things your primary site contain would do it. These mini sites will be more intense about the subject due to less page count. Of course they should contain unique articles on each page. Then link from mini websites to primary websites and you can see the dramatic change.
In fact, the thing you are trying to do was a tactic to rank competitors down worked occasionally a few years ago. Now, it is still a risk.
I see. You don't want to mess up the page for your own site, but you want to do something with all the uncredited embeddings.
The solution is fairly simple:
Create a copy of the page.
Switch your site to use the copy.
Amend the version that countless other sites are embedding, so that there is a small link back to you. Or, add an iframe blocker script that will load your site.
If the page is active (ie user interacts with it to find the missing bolt) you could include a sales message with the response encouraging the user to visit your site.
I think that your goal is getting your link onto these other sites long enough to get indexed by Google before it is noticed by the people doing the embedding, so it's a bit of a balancing act.
I see conflicting advice about how Google indexes iframes. You should use a PageRank checker to see if the existing iframe page url has PageRank, and compare it to the page that you embed it on.
I dont Think you need to worry ,.
Google bot does seem to crawl through Iframes ,but the Web-Page Containing that Iframe is not Credited for that Content .. In other Words,, Page-Ranking of that particular Web-Page do not Change due to Contents from Iframe .
is IFrame crawled by Google?
Do robots crawl iframes?
Is it possible to track if someone links to data on my site? Specifically if my data is used in a site dynamically generated by a developer program? I would like to know if someone is blatantly passing off my site's data as their own. There are obviously ways around directly linking to content, such as content manipulation or even manual manipulation. But if someone where to link(or directly add word for word or manipulate) my content into their website, is there a way to track it?
Can I avoid someone being able to scrape my website at all, or is everything just up for grabs?
the best answer and the easy one is called GOOGLE - WEBMASTER TOOLS!
HERE
actually doing that is very hard and you would need to crawl the web to discover those links that address to your pages... dynamic content as well is linked so it would be find by google as well.
this tool will allow you to see outer links that address to your site.. and you can check them.
for extra - you can monitor requests and traffic to your site and find ip's that are using the same page over and over again. that can tell u that an outer page is dynamically loading content from your web page.
EDIT:
here is a good article in this subject: link - scroll down and you can see the use of google
webmaster tool with some other progrmas and method.
here is a good start guide to the google webmaster: link
ENJOY!