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Category: Reporting & Analytics

Discuss the best ways to report on performance and communicate results to stakeholders.

  • kylesuss


    I tried searching for this elsewhere but am having a hard time finding a good answer. Is it possible to track the effect of required form fields on conversions in Google Analytics? In other words, how do I track whether or not more/less people fill out a form if I make "Last Name" a required field? Thanks 🙂

    | kylesuss
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  • GCSMasone


    I was under the impression that Bing powers yahoo search. However, I am recieving a large difference in ranking on some keywords in the two engines. Can anyone ask what or why this is happening? Thanks, Brandon

    | GCSMasone
    0
  • hnydnn


    Hi all, When you set up campaign tracking in Google Analytics you get something like this "?variable=value parameters" in the URL. If you place such a link on your site as an internal link, will it be considered as a different URL and will have its own link value? The question I have is, since Google knows it's a Google link and knows the original URL (by stripping the tags), does it pass link value to the original URL? If not, what can be done to pass link value? Thanks in advance. Henry

    | hnydnn
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  • TheIronYuppie


    We're constantly on the lookout for site speed, and Google's Webmaster tools are saying that we're really really slow (on the order of 5-15 seconds per page). But the site NEVER feels that slow, and lots of other tools say we're in the 3-5 second range. Further, we've implemented literally 100% of Google's suggestions, and all we have are ad units that now render using Googles Async ad loader, further reducing time to interactivity. Could Google be dinging us in search results for this? Here's an example page that they said loaded in 200+ seconds (!?!) http://hark.com/clips/kwkdqqtzsg-terran-nuclear-launch-detected Thanks!

    | TheIronYuppie
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  • LizIslCo


    We recently had a some changes to our site, adding new sub categories, moving products around, etc... We implemented the changes on Thursday of last week and had a normal day around 800+ visitors. The very next day our # of visitors dropped in half to around 400+ and has stayed that way all weekend. I thought it might be that some links may have changed but I checked all of the links and they are the same as before with the exception of new pages. I checked to make sure that the google analytics code was still in the code and it is. I read that it could be DNS propagation timing issue but it's been 3 days and nothing's changed. I'm fairly certain that we are not being penalized or pandalized by google as our referrals and organic search results have not changed only the amount of direct traffic. Anyone have any ideas on what to look at or what to do?

    | LizIslCo
    0
  • oznappies


    With the recent focus on Google to reduce rank of farms and low value sites, I am interested to get SEO view on if you think Google will start devaluing stale sites. I do find it a bit frustrating that in the top 5 for my main key phrase, there is one site that has NO content just an error and another blog that has not updated content in 2 years. How can blogs that do not blog be considered high enough value by Google to rank in the top 5? How can sites that just return 404 or 500 for ALL their pages be even considered a site let alone rank 2nd. I am interested so see others experiences and thoughts on 'user experience' clean ups by Google and why these types of sites get missed?

    | oznappies
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  • Gordian


    I was wondering if there is a way to track information about the individual order in google analytics. Currently I can see all of the organic traffic, rev, transactions, etc, but I would like to be able to know what those individual order numbers are, as well as be able to place test orders to see if organic tracking is correctly working. Does anyone know of a good blog walkthrough for this, or have any suggestions? Thanks (again individual organic order data not all data from a specific search engine or keyword).

    | Gordian
    0
  • KeriMorgret


    I've had an outside developer do a bunch of custom work in Google Analytics to get my site to integrate with Foxycart and accurately report sales in the ecommerce section. With a foxycart upgrade came more GA tweaking, and now my bounce rate is at 1-2%. I know this isn't right, and suspecting there is something triggering GA a second time, causing a second page load, or something. Could someone that loves code look at http://www.strikemodels.com/ and tell me if they can easily spot what's obliterating the accuracy of my bounce rate calculations? Or do I need to go back to my dev and up the can of GA worms to troubleshoot things? As you can tell by the code, I'm running the latest version of WP with a few plugins, Thesis 1.8, and on Apache.

    | KeriMorgret
    0
  • JFKMarketing


    Yesterday i've followed your webinar with regards to Ranking Factors 2011. As a PRO-member where can I find all the info? Thanks in advance, Stanley at Linkbuilding-Specialist.nl

    | JFKMarketing
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  • systemfarmer


    Hello! For my site http://systemfarmer.hu i have connected GA accout.
    But if I try to access traffic data, it just keeps loading. Any idea? Regards, Laszlo

    | systemfarmer
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  • seanmccauley


    Although a little obsessive I can't be the only one checking rankings on a daily basis. Indeed if such a practice was not widespread then software such as linktracker wouldnt exist. It's a shame that Seomoz has the functionality to check rank, however chooses to only do so once per week. Therefore we pay for tools such as link tracker in addition to Seomoz. Here starts a petition for daily updates!!! 😉

    | seanmccauley
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  • mudbugmedia


    I used on a handful of pages recently and noticed that they're still popping up in the Google search index. I'd like to keep these from appearing, so I figured I needed a directive statement with stronger semantic meaning. From what I understand, is what I'm looking for. Using this will keep Google from not only crawling the page, but indexing the page, as well. I decided to see what the official robotstxt.org website said about it, so I checked (link here): the NOFOLLOW directive only applies to links on this page. It's entirely likely that a robot might find the same links on some other page without a NOFOLLOW (perhaps on some other site), and so still arrives at your undesired page. So, is their explanation saying that the page itself will be indexed, but the content / links on it won't be followed / indexed? Let me hear your thoughts, mozzers.

    | mudbugmedia
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  • Seaward-Group


    When you add an intelligence custom alert does it look at the history and backdate issues? I've added a few custom alerts, even basic ones like my homepage gets 5 views, create an alert. I either need to wait a day or something is going wrong. Cheers.

    | Seaward-Group
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  • ChristineCadena


    Let me preface this by first saying I am NOT using the Google Adsense Search feature.    The question I am asking is pertaining to the standard search box that comes already coded in most .php blogs. In the Google Analytics, is there a way to tell how many people are searching using the search box?   I've looked through the navigation and pathway options in analytics and I don't seem to see anything that definitively points to the number of people using the search box but, perhaps, I am overlooking it. Any insight?

    | ChristineCadena
    0
  • jmueller


    Is there a way to display all images that google has indexed on a domain / subdomain? I'm basically looking for something like a site:-command for google image search.

    | jmueller
    0
  • InformMedia


    For past 2 weeks, several of our sites have strange increase in direct traffic in Google Analytics. we also have another tracking code, and in this account we don't have any big changes, so this is very strange what is happening. We didn't changed any codes, and none of the changes were done to application. Any ideas why this is happening? z7ME9.jpg

    | InformMedia
    0
  • Francisco_Meza


    I have this eBook in PDF and I don't know how to track it: http://www.shipoverseas.com/PDFs/how-to-buy-a-car-in-usa-and-ship-it-overseas.pdf I ultimately want to do like SeoMoz in their Ranking Reports: Export to PDF Anybody have a quick idea on how to do this?

    | Francisco_Meza
    0
  • DanBoyle76


    I have a very strange problem. When I run SEOmoz diagnostics on my site, it reveals urls that I never created. It seems to combine two slugs into a new url. For example, I have created the pages http://www.naplesrealestatestars.com/abaco-bay-condos-naples/ and http://www.naplesrealestatestars.com/beachwalk-naples-florida/ and now the url http://www.naplesrealestatestars.com/abaco-bay-condos-naples/beachwalk-naples-florida/ exists in addition to the two I created. There are over 100 of these phantom urls and they all show a 404 error when clicked on or crawled by SEOmoz. Any body know how to correct this?

    | DanBoyle76
    0
  • seanmccauley


    Example: Let's say I sell whiteboard markers (I don't) and I have a chance to get a link from one of these pages: Assume all anchor text is the same -A PA 70 page about a completely unrelated topic (not a directory, or a spammy site, let's say it's a friend's blog for example) -A PA 30 page about office supplies, that maybe mentions whiteboard markers once. -A PA 18 page that is ALL ABOUT whiteboard markers - they live and breathe whiteboard markers and their entire blog is about them. If, hypothetically, you had a choice of only one of the three which will give the biggest boost in rankings? Is it all about DA/PA or would a fairly low authority but HIGHLY RELEVANT link be better?

    | seanmccauley
    1
  • inmonova


    Hi everyone! I know this is is not the standard SEO question, but I hope you can help me with your knowledge. I set some goals in GA for the thankyou page that appears when a client requests more information on a property for sale. Problem is I have been testing them and the goals don´t get registered. I don´t know what am I doing wrong and I would really appreciate if you could help me through some light on this. I have attached an image of the option for the goal in GA. Can anybody help me? Paroa.png

    | inmonova
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  • PerchDigital


    I have a site that uses the contact 7 plugin for its contact form sitewide in a sidebar and on a contact us page. I've set up a goal in analytics and tracked using the "on_sent_ok" hook but the number of goals GA is creating is far outweighing the number of times the form is actually completed. I figured my initial mistake was to use the contact-us page as the page tracker variable for the goal but wondered if it was counting all form completions AND anyone who went to the contact page. So I amended it to a contact-us/thank-you page that no site visitor could navigate to, and since I have no goals completed, even though we're getting enquiries through the form. Am I being dumb here and missing something quite simple?

    | PerchDigital
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  • inhouseninja


    Hi there, We have some keywords that are ranked so far apart on the search engines its puzzling. For example we have keywords ranked at say 10, 9, 7 etc  on Google, not in top 50 on Bing or Yahoo.  Stuff like that. Surely the algorithms can’t be that far apart?  Is this indeed normal?  Does anyone have the same issues? Thanks

    | inhouseninja
    0
  • RikkiD22


    As the question says really. Is there a tool that will export all the links on a page and anchor text related to those links into Excel? Thanks.

    | RikkiD22
    0
  • insitegoogle


    Is their a built-in or easy way to track the amount of times an exit link is clicked on a page and show that with other links of the page. For instance: I had a page with several external ad links on it and I want to track how many each got and rank them in google analytics

    | insitegoogle
    0
  • peterdbaron


    Hi, I'm stumped by this one and am hoping I can get some advice/guidance.  I've seen this pop up in my stats where the www.mydomain.com/page is appearing as 222.mydomain.com/page. I have no clue what's going on... This google return displays the same page 2 ways (see first image). And when I click on the 222. link I get a prompt (see 2nd image). Any idea what's going on? Thanks! Peter ipHKt.png o0ZeB.png

    | peterdbaron
    0
  • TPSUK


    When tracking Google Shopping using the URL builder is it possible to pull through the Keyword used or will analytic do this automatically?

    | TPSUK
    1
  • jdeb


    As you can see from the screenshots, 100% of the visitors in the checkout proceed from step 2 (Delivery Date Selected) to step 3 (Enter Delivery Details) - this sample is a month, but this applies going all the way back. Can you tell me if some RegEx is missing from the goal set up? Thanks fEXtD

    | jdeb
    1
  • StalkerB


    I can't believe I've never done this before, so I'm going to assume that I previously must have figured it out via excel, but I'm hoping there's an easier way. So I want to compare the referring sites between April and May and see which have sent (specifically) less traffic. The problem with doing a comparison in GA is that it only sorts by the highest traffic for May, when actually I want to see the largest negative change (by number, not percentage) between April and May. Is there a way to do this via the dashboard or am I just going to have to play about in excel for 10 minutes?

    | StalkerB
    0
  • eTundra


    It only took me a year and a half to get the code Will Critchlow laid out in a blog post last year put on my website. Now I've finally got it but I need more instruction on how to create the custom report I need in GA! Will said he was going to expand on how to set up the custom reports but I'm not sure he ever did. So, can anyone either direct me to Will's follow-up post about setting up custom reports for first click attribution or tell me how to do it? Thanks!

    | eTundra
    0
  • inhouseninja


    3 things : 1. Does Google factor in overall site traffic in rankings?  So for 2 sites, all other things being pretty much equal, the one with higher traffic will be listed higher? 2. Does this logically imply that sites with lower traffic overall face an uphill struggle to be ranked highly??? 3. As an extension to this, would it be true to say that by increasing site traffic, say with Google Adwords or other online or offiline or whatever advertising, that might help get higher SEO rankings??? Thanks so much for your responses.  This forum is great!

    | inhouseninja
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  • DallasBonsai


    Of course Google analytics is good. I tried getclicky.com. Are there any other analytics programs that are better that are also affordable? What do you use?

    | DallasBonsai
    0
  • leonenobleseate


    Can someone tell me the significance of the following items under my Competitive Domain Analysis?  Total Links / Ext. Followed Links/ Linking Root Domains/ Followed Linking Root Domains and Linking C-Blocks?  Also, what is the absolute best way to determine how many backlinks I have to my site?

    | leonenobleseate
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  • carloscontinua


    I need to get a list of the external links. I don't find that report, where do I get it?

    | carloscontinua
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  • A_Q


    Hello, Does anybody know how I can segment visits who entered my site via subdomain? For example: I want to know people who entered via subdomain.example.com/***** and not include people who entered via www.example.com Thanks in advance!

    | A_Q
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  • DallasBonsai


    I couldn't find this question answered anywhere in Q&A, so I apologize if it's a duplicate of another post. I heard, about a year ago on either Web Pro World, or Warrior Forum that Google uses your visitor data in your Google Analytic account to rank your site. Someone said that when they took out the Google code, their site went from the third to the first page within 48 hours. That was then verified over the next couple of weeks by others. Their thought was that regardless of the optimized page and incoming link, if the site wasn't getting visitors, then it would be penalized. Since Google has the data, they would be able to use it. I then started using another, paid, solution - getclicky.com. While I like clicky, there is some info Google has that clicky doesn't, everyone integrates with Google analytics - like SEOmoz, and I'm paying a monthly fee. Now that I'm a part of a community of experts, what do you think? Have you noticed Google ranking you based on your analytics data? Has anyone experienced this, or heard about it before? Because I'd like to go back to using Google analytics. Thanks!

    | DallasBonsai
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  • airnwater


    We use Google Analytics on our ecommerce site and we recently made several changes to an important page.  Due to logistical reasons, we couldn't perform a Google web optimizer test but tracked the page's numbers in analytics from before/after the changes were made. After a week, we noticed that the bounce rate on the page went up by about 10% but the dollar index also doubled.  We're trying to figure out how this could happen, since it seems kind of odd. Any feedback would be appreciated.

    | airnwater
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  • RyanKent


    I have repeatedly tried to use Open Site Explorer on a site. I always get the same response: No Data Available for this URL The site is 4 months old. It is listed by Alexa in 1.3 million page category. The site ranks well on numerous key terms for the industry it covers. OSE offers 4 reasons for not having data: 1. Recency of page creation. In the explanation offered 45-60 days is the longest estimate it should take. The site has been live close to 120 days. 2. Deep down in the web. The tool doesn't even have any data for the site's home page. 3. Blocked pages. The site is listed in Google and these pages are not blocked. 4. No links. There are plenty of links. Site url is www.terapvp.com What can I do to fix this issue and get data?

    | RyanKent
    0
  • erikwigman


    Dear SEOmoz, Thanks for all the stuff in this pro account. I tweak my websites everyday and do a lot of linkbuilding. But I noticed the statistics don't change weekly. I've been using SEOmoz tools now for maybe two months and there has been one update in stats since. Am I too impatient or is it a monthly crawl? ^^ Thanks again! PS: Mostly talking about the opensiteexplorer.org statistics

    | erikwigman
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  • Hakkasan


    Hello, I was wondering if there is a good tool or method to pull the new Google Analytics Site Speed data into excel and use this document to track site speeds on a weekly basis for multiple clients? Any good articles or how-to's would be awesome!

    | Hakkasan
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  • jenny05


    I have a 3rd party booking engine that is causing my own domain to show up as a top referreral in google analytics.  The vendor is on my very last nerve 🙂  So they're not helping. Would anyone be interested in helping a newbie out with a frustrating problem? Code: Reservations Page - function SubmitReservationForm() {. . . .
                ResLink = "http://www.bookingengine.com/res/vn4/checka.aspx?month=" + Month + "&day=" + Day + "&year=" + Year + "&nights=" + Nights + "&rooms=" + Rooms + "&adults=" + Adults + "&children=" + Children + "&B1=Check+Availability&hotelid=xxxx"
                pageTracker._link(ResLink);
                return true;
            } On Every page: Any thoughts would be appreciated!  I believe the problem  is             pageTracker._link(ResLink); but I'm clueless on fixing it.

    | jenny05
    1
  • diyawards


    Social media about Facebook and Twitter, which one is most friendly for google Ranking or Increase your website vs opponents?

    | diyawards
    0
  • joshfialkoff-77863


    I am developing a video strategy for a pediatric dentist office. I am trying to develop a set of topics based on which existing videos perform best. What are the characteristics I should be evaluating (besides basics like views and comments)?

    | joshfialkoff-77863
    0
  • BenRush


    Hi All, Question around the site: query you can execute on Google for example. Now I know it has lots of inaccuracies, but I like to keep a high level sight of it over time. I was using it to also try and get a high level view of how many product pages were indexed vs. the total number of pages. What is interesting is when I do a site: query for say www.newark.com I get ~748,000 results returned. When I do a query for www.newark.com "/dp/" I get ~845,000 results returned. Either I am doing something stupid or these numbers are completely backwards? Any thoughts? Thanks, Ben

    | BenRush
    0
  • increation


    Hi, I am going to publish a press release on a number of different websites. First and foremost, I want to build anchor links back to website for specific keywords. Secondly I want to measure clickthrus from each site using parameter tracking in GA. I want to know if I put in a url with ?utm_source=xxx, will this have any impact upon my linkbuilding efforts? i.e. will search engines attribute the keyword to the long url with tracking or the url without tracking. I understand that everything from the ? mark is ignored. However, i just want to double check before I publish release. Thanks for your help. Mik

    | increation
    0
  • ErinTM


    Hey, How do shortened links show up in GA? So if I tweet about something and use bitly, does twitter get the referral? I am thinking not. I have never seen bitly show up as a referrer, but we gets lots of clicks from those links. Hmmmm. Anyone? E

    | ErinTM
    0
  • kwoolf


    A relatively high ranking site disappeared from the linking root domains of a client site, and the site dropped significantly in domain rank, authority, and trust. Oddly enough, traffic is almost double the previous week, and search results for keywords remain strong. I checked OSE and the linking domain is not listed. There are also several other linking root domains that have never shown in the domain analysis, but we'll leave those for a later topic. I visited the linking root domain that disappeared from the analysis and found everything to be in order. The site is a major local forum with a relatively high domain authority. All links are still there, and there hasn't been any change to the site as far as links are treated according to the owner. The only thing that has changed since the last site analysis is an event campaign ran with unpaid ads posted throughout the forum. The site being analyzed is a catering company that is cooperating with the forum owner and local bar to host a local celebratory event. Of course I'll wait for the next indexing to see if things change, but what could be going on here? This is more of an SEOmoz question, as we're talking over 10 point deduction in domain authority, although search results are still strong.

    | kwoolf
    0
  • seozachz


    We built a landing page with a wufoo form.  Inside the wufoo form is a link going to another page on our website.  We are wondering if clicking on that link will result in a bounce since it is in an iframe. We are using google analytics.

    | seozachz
    0
  • SteveOllington


    Please forgive my stupidity if there is something obvious here which I have missed (I keep assuming that must be the case), but any advice on this would be much appreciated. We've just acquired a new client. Despite having a site for plenty of time now they did not previously have analytics with their last company (I know, a crime!). They've been with us for about a month now and we've managed to get them some great rankings already. To be fair, the rankings weren't bad before us either. Anyway. They have multiple position one rankings for well searched terms both locally and nationally. One would assume therefore that a lot of their traffic would come from Google right? Not according to their analytics. In fact, very little of it does... instead, 70% of their average 3,000 visits per month comes from just one referring site. A framed version of their site which is through reachlocal, which itself doesn't rank for any of their terms. I don't get it... The URL of the site is: www.namgrass.co.uk (ignore there being a .com too, that's a portal as they cover other countries). The referring site causing me all this confusion is: http://namgrass.rtrk.co.uk/ (see source code at the bottom for the reachlocal thing). Now I know reach local certainly isn't sending them all that traffic, so why does GA say it is... and what is this reachlocal thing anyway?? I mean, I know what reachlocal is, but what gives here with regards to it? Any ideas, please??

    | SteveOllington
    0
  • Investis_Digital


    I need some help from anyone that has deal with this issue before.. We are currently running BigCommerce for the shopping cart on chinamist.com. We have enabled e-commerce tracking through Google Analytics and the revenue tracks perfectly. The only issue is that the referring sources are not tracking directly to the revenue being displayed - for the source, all analytics shows is (none). The assumption is that the tracking issue is a result of having a domain and subdomain.. but 'domain and subdomain' was selected when setting up the sites' advanced analytics script. Does anyone have any tips? We've run into a dead end here.. One final note, we're running an Adwords campaign which is showing conversions through the Adwords side of reporting. After integrating the Adwords and Analytics accounts, the analaytics account is still not showing revenue/conversions from Adwords as a source. Appreciate the feedback.

    | Investis_Digital
    0
  • Gyi


    Recently, there has been a lot of great information on SEOmoz about using Google Apps, Docs, etc. However, I suffer from Google paranoia (the fear that Google can see what's going on in my Google products). Is this fear unreasonable? Should I be concerned about using Google Apps, docs, analytics, etc. for SEO data (including keyword position tracking, back link analysis, etc)?

    | Gyi
    0

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