How to interpret referrers from Google News in Google Analytics - google-analytics

Not specifically a programming question, unfortunately, but I am trying to develop some custom reports using the Google Analytics Core Reporting API (v3) and I'm stuck on how to interpret these referrers (in ga:referralPath or document.referrer) from Google News sites:
/nwshp
/news/rtc
/news/url
/
/news/story
/news/i
... and so on. These are all coming from Google News sites (.com .whatever) obviously, but I'd like to categorize them with more granularity if possible, e.g., Google News front page, etc.
Many thanks in advance (and feel free to point me to a better place to ask, if such a place exists).

According to Chris Boutet, these represent Google News Home page (/nwshp) and Google News Realtime Coverage (/rtc). That's the answer I was looking for. Hope that helps.

Related

Can I get list of people searched for a topic or a tag in Google?

I want to get the list of users (logged in email IDs) who searched for a tag or a phrase or a word in Google.
For ex: I should get the list of users who googled for "Avengers:End Game".
Is Google providing any services of this kind or any third party tools available.
I know google trends is providing statistical data regarding google search tags but it is only a number of searches happened.
Thanks in advance.. :)
If those users are arriving on your website, you can use Google Search Console to see what queries users found your website with.

Can I customize look of Google News RSS feed on my website?

I have a doubt regarding the use of Google News RSS Feed. Google News help states this:
Why Google might block an RSS feed In some cases, Google News might
block a feed. That could happen if you are:
Using Google News feeds for profit or to increase traffic to your site
Reformatting news results so they look like your own content
Changing, editing, or creating works based on content from Google News
I am looking to clarify these points:
Can't I customize the look of the feed? I want to have a separate page for news related to content on my website. Will then I violate the second rule if I customize the look of it? For example, I'll display a slideshow on the top along with a listing in the bottom much like FeedWind or Feedgrabber widgets.
I am surely not violating the third one. But everyone displays Google News on their website to sustain traffic right? Isn't the first rule broken by everyone who uses Google news RSS feed on their website?
Can't I customize the look of the feed?
Create an app or script to grab the feed, parse it, decorate it the way you like. Now, you have successfully customized the look.
I want to have a separate page for news related to content on my website. Will then I violate the 2nd rule if I customize the look of it?
A bit critical question. Let me provide you a simple answer: mention at certain corner that it was from google news feed. When google shows you ads, it puts a little AdChoice at a cozy corner by clicking on which you can confirm that that was an ad from google - follow their strategy, give them proper credit.
I am surely not violating the third one. But everyone displays google news on their website to sustain traffic right? Isn't the first rule broken by everyone who uses Google news rss feed on their website?
When you are providing value to others, then people like to act blind and pretend that what they see is not a promotion. For example, free medical camps are not actually done for helping others if they cannot promote them to get prospective patients (clients/customers) or cannot get free media promotion (again free flow of lot of customers) - forget those doctors who are lonely or have no responsibility or for whatever reason serving for free.

Conversion coming from Youtube ads

I'm trying to find a way to track "paid traffic" from Youtube, ie. people who click on one of our ads, got redirected to one of our videos, then clicked on a link in the comment section. At the moment everybody coming from Youtube appears under the Youtube channel in our analytics.
Yet, inside Youtube Analytics, I can see that 90% of people watching specific videos come from paid traffic.
I tried to see if I could get any possible information from the youtube APIs but it looks like nothing is useful, event to determine how could be the split between paid/unpaid traffic.
Also, impossible to find a split by video.. except in GA. Therefore, no possible link?!
1/ Is it possible to link paid traffic internal to Youtube and part of the "youtube" channel traffic in GA? data-wise or just mathematically?
2/ Is there a way to hadve an idea or approximate the convertion rate?
PS: I know this should not be seen a pure conversion channel*
To answer your questions:
1. Is it possible to link paid traffic internal to YouTube and part of the "YouTube" channel traffic in Google Analytics? data-wise or just mathematically?
As far as I know, yes it is possible. In fact, there's no better way to analyze your new brand channel layout than integrating it with Google Analytics. Reasons as given:
The main difference between YouTube analytics and Google Analytics is that the former provides data about the videos, while the latter provide data about the visitors of the channel’s pages.
To use this feature, please refer to the steps given in How to integrate your YouTube One brand channel with Google Analytics
2. Is there a way to have an idea or approximate the conversion rate?
I tried looking for documentation on conversion rate but it seems that this doesn't exist as also mentioned in Conversion rate between YouTube views and track sales
And, as suggested in Google AdWords Help, in tracking viewer conversions for video ads,
Since video advertising doesn’t always drive immediate conversions, we recommend that you look at view-through conversion data, which shows the number of online conversions that happened within 30 days after a viewer saw, but did not click, your video ad.
I hope that helps.

Google Analytics says the source of most of my visitors is social-buttons.com. How are these visitors finding my site?

I'm not a really advanced Analytics user, so I've been trying to Google this, but haven't come up with a great answer. My analytics says 95% of my site visits to my blog today have come from site38.social-buttons.com and yesterday it was another subdomain of the same site. I visited social-buttons.com, but am unfamiliar with it, and have never deliberately put that code into my Wordpress site. I do have some plug-ins installed, which are "Subscribe / Connect / Follow Widget", which displays my social media links, and also "Really simple Facebook Twitter share buttons", which puts the like links on my posts.
My questions are, how are people finding my site through social-buttons.com? And are these quality hits?
Thanks, I appreciate any info!
This kind of visits are called Ghost Referrer Spam since they never reach your site. They use a GA weakness to make a fake visit and get a record in your data.
They do it to get traffic, people get curious to see who is visiting them and click on the link.
This specific Referrer Spam is nasty because it make multiple visits at the same time, is related to the number of the subdomain so if it says site38... it hits with 38 visits, I've also have many of these, here is a screenshot I took:
In my case is a different simple-share-buttons.com but is the same thing.
The easiest way to stop it is by making a filter for each spammer in your GA. Check this article to find more detailed information http://www.ohow.co/block-social-buttons-simple-share-buttons-referral/
As an alternative, you can make a more general filter to take care once and for all of all the Spammers by making a list of Valid Hostnames, this is more advanced and you have to be more careful. You can find more information about this solution here https://stackoverflow.com/a/28354319/3197362
It's actually referral spam. Take a look at this https://www.mooresoftwareservices.com/Web-Commerce/social-buttons-com-referrer-spam
So unfortunately they are not good quality hits.

Best way to set up Google Analytics for domain, subdomain and subdirectories

I have a website with following domain and folder structure:
Main Website: www.ry.com
Subdomain1: mobile.ry.com
Subdomain2: speed.ry.com
Directory1: www.ry.com/mobile
Directory2: www.ry.com/blog
I have just started setting up Google Analytics for this and I am totally confused as to what are the best practices that should be followed? Should I consider them as individual properties or just 1 property. Should I be setting up a different GA code for each one of these?
Ideally, I would like to track all of it at one place but at the same time, using some filters be able to see the traffic on any one of the subdomains/subdirectories.
I started reading up about Universal Analytics but got totally confused and some of the posts were outdated as GA and UA seems to have changed significantly in the recent times.
Please advise me about how to set this up or point me to any good blogs or urls that are a rich resource.
This is one of the most complete answers I've found for this question.
http://moz.com/blog/cross-domain-subdomain-tracking-in-google-analytics

Resources