Is Your Google Analytics Data Accurate?

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1 Is Your Google Analytics Data Accurate? September 18, 2013 Presented By

2 Amin Shawki Analytics Manager Andy Gibson Digital Marketing Analyst

3 1. 1 Billion+ pageviews/year in sites analyzed and supported Digital marketing training programs a year 3. Google Tag Manager Specialists

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5 Table of Contents Develop Your Web Analytics Strategy Google Analytics Tracking Background Common Pitfalls with Tracking Auditing Tools and Recommended Approach

6 Let s begin with an exercise 1. What are your marketing objectives? 2. What are your online KPIs? Is your analytics solution be able to provide you with actionable metrics? 3. What are your long term plans for data? 4. Can you define the metrics you need for both short term and long term success?

7 The Basics Answer this question: Why does your website exist? These are good too: 1. What are my goals online? 2. How much data do I need?

9 How Google Analytics Tracks

10 How Google Analytics Tracks In Detail

11 Google Analytics Tracking Code 4 ways data is pushed into Google Analytics Pageviews Events E-Commerce (items and transactions) Social Other data that you can track Custom variables (pushed with the data from above calls)

12 Understanding Structure VIEW VIEW

13 Understanding Views (Profiles) A view represents a distinct view of data from a web property, and provides access to the reports for that property. For example, within a web property you might have: One view that has a view of all the data for One view that has a view of only AdWords traffic to One view that has a view of only traffic to a subdomain like

14 View Filters Filters allow you to limit and modify the traffic data that is included in a view. InfoTrust Property View by Region View by Language View by Directory Master View

15 Dimensions & Metrics Dimensions are ways of describing visits, visitors, pages, products, and events. Examples of dimensions include Visitor Type (whether new visitor or returning visitor), Source (the name of a referring website/search engine ), Page Title (the HTML title of a page on your site)

17 Incorrect Data - Just as Bad as No Data

18 Pitfall - Inconsistent Tagging Most common form of inaccurate data Tracking snippet not on every page of the site, including subdomains (leads to self-referrals, increase in visits, higher bounce rates etc.) Tracking snippet duplicated on some pages GA Virtual Pageviews used all over site when not needed Old, deprecated synchronous GA tag used

19 Pitfall - Inconsistent Tagging Subdomains By default, GA does not pass cookie data from one subdomain to another. You have to update your GA tracking code to include the _setdomainname variable. By updating this, GA will now pass cookies across the subdomains of your website. <script type="text/javascript"> var _gaq = _gaq []; _gaq.push(['_setaccount', 'UA ']); _gaq.push(['_setdomainname', 'infotrustllc.com']); _gaq.push(['_trackpageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createelement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = (' == document.location.protocol? ' : ' + 'stats.g.doubleclick.net/dc.js'; var s = document.getelementsbytagname('script')[0]; s.parentnode.insertbefore(ga, s); })(); </script>

20 Pitfall - Inconsistent Tagging Cross domain tracking

21 Pitfall - Inconsistent Tagging Cross domain tracking

22 Pitfall - Incorrect Account Set Up Incorrect URL for web property used Default page used incorrectly Time zone not set correctly E-Commerce setting not enabled Currency incorrectly set (E-Commerce sites)

23 Pitfall - Internal Traffic Filtering out internal traffic is extremely important to maintaining accurate data GA allows you to filter your traffic by excluding IP addresses. Note: This does not work for dynamic IP addresses that change. How To Exclude Internal Traffic with Dynamic IP Addresses (blog):

24 Pitfall - Source Tracking Campaign tagging was not used on external off-site marketing campaigns Visits from campaigns are not tracked properly High amount of direct traffic Campaign tagging used on-site for internal links Overwrites off-site external marketing campaigns Creates a new session as well

25 Campaign Traffic You can manually set the visitor source information for incoming visitors from a particular channel, such as , Bing, pretty much anything!

26 Google URL Builder for Campaigns test.com?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium= &utm_campaign=octobercouponpush

27 Cost Data Import The Google Analytics cost data upload feature allows you to take exported cost data from non-google paid campaigns and upload it to Google Analytics. The cost data is then joined with user-interaction data, enabling detailed ROI analysis for all of your paid campaigns.

28 Pitfall - (not provided) Keywords Use this custom report: Shows top landing pages for (not provided) keywords Homepage typically means it is branded keyword

29 Pitfall (other) Shown in Reports This is a result of the daily database limit being hit in Google Analytics. For any single dimension, GA will only record up to 50,000 rows on a specific day. Any dimension with more than 50,000 rows on a single day will get recorded in the (other) dimension. One possible fix is to exclude unnecessary query parameters from your reports by stripping them from the URLs. Admin > View Settings > Exclude URL Query Parameters

30 Pitfall AdWords Not Integrated When you create a link between Google Analytics and AdWords, you allow four types of data to flow between the two. This means you can: Import Google Analytics goals and transactions into AdWords View Google Analytics site engagement data in AdWords Create remarketing lists in Analytics to use in AdWords for targeting specific audiences Automatically view your AdWords click and cost data alongside your Analytics site engagement data

31 Pitfall - AdWords Tagging Not tagging AdWords campaigns will show up in Google Analytics as Google Organic traffic Without specific AdWords tagging on campaigns, visits from AdWords will not show up in the Advertising report section of Google Analytics

32 Pitfall Sampling in Effect Happens by default within the GA interface whenever a data set contains more than 250K visits in a selected time period Used to speed up the GA interface, as it can require a good amount of time to query the database and then populate a table within GA. Just think of how many people use GA at one time and the amount of data being queried! Overview standard reports are pre-aggregated and thus sampling does not take affect, however as soon as you customize the data through filters, advanced segments or custom reports, sampling can occur. Note: Sampling occurs at the Web Property level, not View level.

33 Pitfall Sampling in Effect Sampling is a mathematically accurate way to estimate characteristics of a larger population. However, sampling is not 100% accurate! This indicates sampling has taken place A major benefit of Google Analytics Premium is access to unsampled data.

34 Pitfall Custom Variables Duplicating Slot Location The free version of GA allows you to have five custom variables (index: 1-5). _setcustomvar(index, name, value, opt_scope) If you have multiple custom variables on your site using the same index number, they will overwrite each other anytime they get pushed to GA. This will cause lost and/or confusing data. Google Analytics Premium allows you to have 50 custom variables.

35 Pitfall iframes and 3 rd Party Plugins Loading GA Multiple Times If there are iframes and 3 rd party plug ins or widgets on your site loading Google Analytics events, custom variables, or virtual pageviews, this can affect the Google Analytics architecture and set up you have on site If you implement iframes from your own server, Google Analytics may be deployed twice and therefore will double count

36 Pitfall - Robot Traffic Google blocks most of this traffic Those that it does not, search for criteria then exclude with filter 0 time on page 100% bounce 100% new 100% one browser, version, operating system 100% one country Unusual Network Domain and/or ISP Provider

37 Pitfall Using GA Advanced Segments, Date Range and Filters Incorrectly When looking at reports, be cognizant of what filters, advanced segments, and data ranges you are using. Many times we see clients trying to compare data that isn t apples to apples Ex: Comparing different dates ranges, using different advanced segments.

39 Google Analytics Debugger Download Now (Chrome only):

40 Google Tag Assistant Download Now (Chrome only):

41 Testing in Real -Time

42 Real-Time with Campaign Tagging 1. Using Real-Time reports for some high volume sites may be difficult because it is not easy to locate yourself 2. This is where campaign tagged URLs and real-time filtering comes in Example: To test infotrustllc.com; use infotrustllc.com?utm_source=test&utm_medium=test&utm_campaign=test Then filter your real-time reports to just this medium = test

43 Custom Alerts Custom alerts can be set up to track specific desired changes that may occur Influx in certain product transactions Sudden drop in traffic to certain content pages

44 Tag Inspector Tag Inspector is an InfoTrust product that will scan all the tags on your site in real-time and provide you with a report detailing all the tags and their location on your site. It can see inside JavaScript files and Tag Management Systems for more detailed analysis.

45 Tag Inspector Visit Tag Inspector:

46 Questions?

47 Does web analytics drive actionable recommendations in your organization? Where would you place yourself? Is sometimes good enough?

48 Want More? 1. Current promotion: Free 1 hour Google Analytics consultation and assessment with an InfoTrust Web Analyst - Contact Us. 2. Upcoming free webinars: Enterprise analytics series October 30 th 1:00pm EST Is your company data driven? Start Now. December 4 th 1:00pm EST Enterprise Analytics Architecture December 11 th 1:00pm EST Mastering Google Analytics Premium Features

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