Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How to track my actual traffic source using Google Analytics which are now showing as referral traffic?
-
Hi Mozzers, I went through many Q&As in the community this morning. I found a solution where I could just remove the referral site in analytics>admin>property>tracking info>referral exclusion list. So I removed paypal.com which was the main referral traffic. I thought the problem is solved.
Later today I got another order, now the referral traffic is from eway.com, now what? Yes I know I will add this to the exclusion list but there will be many more referral sites.
My main concern is I am not able to track the actual traffic source. How do I do that?
1. Do I need to use google url tracking for all my pages?
2. Do I need to add tracking code in each page of the site?
3. Is there a way to track the actual source of this traffic, now that the transaction is already made but reflects as referral traffic in Google Analytics? -
1. Adding this doesn't change the way a transaction is tracked, but instead makes it so that you can view the 'event' that fired under the event tracking in GA. If you look under here (Behavior > Events) can you see the successful event and the source/medium that drove it?
2. Have you also tried the previously mentioned segmentation under User Explorer? None of these fixes are going to change the way the data appears in the acquisition report (switching to PayPal Payments Pro usually does the trick, but is more expensive). All we're really looking to do here is find another way to attribute the conversions to their source.
I'd recommend revisiting my most recent reply on how to segment the users under User Explorer as this will likely give you the best insights.Let me know if you run into any issues there and I'll help you out.
-
Hi Trenton,
I will try the suggestions and fixes, will let you how it goes.
I did some research and tried these other fixes.
1. I have added a Event Tracking Code (EDT) to the buy buttons of Paypal and Eway. The EDT is added where the user clicks on the buy button and leaves our website from there. This is done to record the button click and send the report to Google analytics.
2. Enabled 'Auto Return' and Paypal PDT (Payment Data Transfer) which transfers the users GA reports.So, after applying this I got two transactions recently, but both are recorded under direct traffic in GA Aquisition report. Attaching a snapshot.
I am not clear where is the traffic coming from. Any thoughts. -
3 - In User Explorer, sort by transactions and you should be able to see users w/transactions. More specifically, if you create a segment (next to All Users) and create a new custom segment with:
- Conditions > Filter User > Include
- Transactions > per user > ≥ > 1
Then by looking through just this segment (select it on the top of the page) you will be able to see only users that have a transaction. You can then dive into these user's sessions by clicking their 'Client Id' and you can see the full path they took to conversion. This is assuming they didn't view any pages that did not have the GA code on them.
This combined with your other fixes should solve your issue and allow you to determine what drove the conversions!
Campaign timeouts - The issue here is that any new channel that drives traffic may not get the credit it deserves.
I would recommend to keep this at 6-12 months. You don't want credit going to a single channel because it drove the original session 24 months ago, because that was not the session that carried purchase intent.Good luck! Let us know if we can help any further on this!
Trenton
-
Hey Trenton,
Thanks for helping me out. I will try to give me as much coordination possible. Here's the information you asked for:
-My site is built on Magento platform.
-We use two payment gateways 1. paypal.com and 2. eway.com - I guess these are the 3rd party payment gateways you are refering to.2- So I am in the process of including the GA tracking code on every page of the site.
3- Yes I understand the previous customers cannot be tracked. I tried looking at the user explorer but doesn't show any revenue earned. Attaching a snapshot.
Also, for now, I have including both paypal.com and eway.com in the referral exclusion list. Plus as mentioned earlier in session settings I have made the campaign timeout zero -> Should I be cautious?
Let me know how should I proceed now.
-
Hi,
Thank you for the tip. Campaign timeout was set at 6 months, I have changed it to zero months now. So no cookies will be saved now, will this have any problems regarding tracking the user's original source page? For example, did he come from a social media platform, guest blog or a returning customer who already knows my brand?
-
Hey DebashishB,
I'd love to help you get this sorted out. I've dealt with PayPal & other 3rd party payment authorization platforms causing issues with correct attribution in GA before and I know that it can be a huge hassle.
Before I specifically give you a solution, could you provide a little more information about your site? What platform is it built on? Do you use a 3rd party drop-in for shopping cart and payment? Any additional information you can provide would be wonderful! Linking to the site specifically would be great, but I understand if you would rather not.
2 - Yes, you will want to ensure that the GA tracking code is included on every page of your site to ensure proper attribution.
3 - As Alick300 mentioned, unfortunately you cannot retroactively manipulate the data. So transactions already completed will appear as referral; however, under Audience>User Explorer you may be able to segment your data in a way that you can isolate the user that these transactions are tied to and learn more about their progression throughout your site & their path to conversion.
I''ll follow up when you have had a chance to provide further information on this.
- Trenton
-
Hi Debashish,
It worth mentioning that the referral exclusion list does not work for traffic that is already cookied. So if a returning visitor had a referral source set before you added it to the list and then visits as direct, they will still have that referral source. Please check your session settings under Property -> Tracking Info -> Session Settings -> Campaign Timeout. If it's set to six months for example, it will take six months for all the self referrals to disappear.
Hope this helps.
Thanks
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
My WP website got attack by malware & now my website site:www.example.ca shows about 43000 indexed page in google.
Hi All My wordpress website got attack by malware last week. It affected my index page in google badly. my typical site:example.ca shows about 130 indexed pages on google. Now it shows about 43000 indexed pages. I had my server company tech support scan my site and clean the malware yesterday. But it still shows the same number of indexed page on google.
Technical SEO | | ChophelDoes anybody had ever experience such situation and how did you fixed it. Looking for help. Thanks FILE HIT LIST:
{YARA}Spam_PHP_WPVCD_ContentInjection : /home/example/public_html/wp-includes/wp-tmp.php
{YARA}Backdoor_PHP_WPVCD_Deployer : /home/example/public_html/wp-includes/wp-vcd.php
{YARA}Backdoor_PHP_WPVCD_Deployer : /home/example/public_html/wp-content/themes/oceanwp.zip
{YARA}webshell_webshell_cnseay02_1 : /home/example2/public_html/content.php
{YARA}eval_post : /home/example2/public_html/wp-includes/63292236.php
{YARA}webshell_webshell_cnseay02_1 : /home/example3/public_html/content.php
{YARA}eval_post : /home/example4/public_html/wp-admin/28855846.php
{HEX}php.generic.malware.442 : /home/example5/public_html/wp-22.php
{HEX}php.generic.cav7.421 : /home/example5/public_html/SEUN.php
{HEX}php.generic.malware.442 : /home/example5/public_html/Webhook.php0 -
Not all images indexed in Google
Hi all, Recently, got an unusual issue with images in Google index. We have more than 1,500 images in our sitemap, but according to Search Console only 273 of those are indexed. If I check Google image search directly, I find more images in index, but still not all of them. For example this post has 28 images and only 17 are indexed in Google image. This is happening to other posts as well. Checked all possible reasons (missing alt, image as background, file size, fetch and render in Search Console), but none of these are relevant in our case. So, everything looks fine, but not all images are in index. Any ideas on this issue? Your feedback is much appreciated, thanks
Technical SEO | | flo_seo1 -
Server Connection Error when using Google Speed Test Insight and GTMetrix
Hi Guys, Recently got into the issue when testing load speed of my website (https://solvid.co.uk). Occasionally, Google Speed Insights gives me a server connection error which states _"PageSpeed was unable to connect to the server. Ensure that you are using the correct protocol (_http vs https), the page loads in a browser, and is accessible on the public internet." Also, GTMetrix gives me an error as well, which states the following: "An error occurred fetching the page: HTTPS error: SSl connect attempt failed" All of my redirects seem to be set-up correctly as well as the SSL certificate. I've contacted my hosting provider (godaddy), they are saying that everything is fine with the server and the installation. Also, tried in different browsers in incognito mode, still gives me the same error. Until yesterday I haven't had such a problem. I've also attached the error screenshot links. I would really appreciate your help! Dmytro UxchPYR M52iPDf
Technical SEO | | solvid1 -
Canonical homepage link uses trailing slash while default homepage uses no trailing slash, will this be an issue?
Hello, 1st off, let me explain my client in this case uses BigCommerce, and I don't have access to the backend like most other situations. So I have to rely on BG to handle certain issues. I'm curious if there is much of a difference using domain.com/ as the canonical url while BG currently is redirecting our domain to domain.com. I've been using domain.com/ consistently for the last 6 months, and since we switches stores on Friday, this issue has popped up and has me a bit worried that we'll loose somehow via link juice or overall indexing since this could confuse crawlers. Now some say that the domain url is fine using / or not, as per - https://cloudz.click/community/q/trailing-slash-and-rel-canonical But I also wanted to see what you all felt about this. What says you?
Technical SEO | | Deacyde0 -
Why is Google's cache preview showing different version of webpage (i.e. not displaying content)
My URL is: http://www.fslocal.comRecently, we discovered Google's cached snapshots of our business listings look different from what's displayed to users. The main issue? Our content isn't displayed in cached results (although while the content isn't visible on the front-end of cached pages, the text can be found when you view the page source of that cached result).These listings are structured so everything is coded and contained within 1 page (e.g. http://www.fslocal.com/toronto/auto-vault-canada/). But even though the URL stays the same, we've created separate "pages" of content (e.g. "About," "Additional Info," "Contact," etc.) for each listing, and only 1 "page" of content will ever be displayed to the user at a time. This is controlled by JavaScript and using display:none in CSS. Why do our cached results look different? Why would our content not show up in Google's cache preview, even though the text can be found in the page source? Does it have to do with the way we're using display:none? Are there negative SEO effects with regards to how we're using it (i.e. we're employing it strictly for aesthetics, but is it possible Google thinks we're trying to hide text)? Google's Technical Guidelines recommends against using "fancy features such as JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML, or Flash." If we were to separate those business listing "pages" into actual separate URLs (e.g. http://www.fslocal.com/toronto/auto-vault-canada/contact/ would be the "Contact" page), and employ static HTML code instead of complicated JavaScript, would that solve the problem? Any insight would be greatly appreciated.Thanks!
Technical SEO | | fslocal0 -
Why am I not showing up in the SERP's or Google Local?
I have been trying to optimise the following site for both Google SERP's and Google Local - Pixel Primate The URL has been around for around 3 years now but they just updated the website and launched it in December 2012. I did the on-page optimisation early in January 2013 and Google seems to have indexed the changes, for the home page at least. One major keyword I am targeting for the home page is 'Web Design Leicester'. I understand that the DA is fairly low (24) so this is something I need to improve. However, I've experienced positive results fairly quickly from just on-page optimisation for other sites I have worked on. The site just doesn't seem to be ranking at all for any keywords. Maybe the industry type is just extremely competitve but I find it very strange to not be visible anywhere in the SERPs. The site does not seem to have any penalties as it ranks for 'Pixel Primate' and all pages appear when doing a site: search. Also what's strange is that I set up the Google Local listing years ago but it doesn't appear anywhere in the local listing, not even when I search for it manually. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | CWseo0 -
How do I get out of google bomb?
Hi all, I have a website named bijouxroom.com; and I was in the 7th page for the search term takı in google; and 2nd page for online takı. Now, I see that in one day my results seem to be on the 13th and 10th page in google respectively. I made too much anchor text for takı and online takı. What shall I do to gain my positions back? Thanks in advance. Regards,
Technical SEO | | ozererim0 -
De-indexed from Google
Hi Search Experts! We are just launching a new site for a client with a completely new URL. The client can not provide any access details for their existing site. Any ideas how can we get the existing site de-indexed from Google? Thanks guys!
Technical SEO | | rikmon0