Problems in Google Analytics are causing you to get bad data, misunderstand reports and draw wrong conclusions. Many of these are not your fault, they're due to settings, bugs and the configuration of Google Analytics. There are also some that are just easy to misunderstand and that I've seen trip up even experienced consultants.
Read on to learn what you need to look for.
Beware of sampling bugs
My team and I have recently seen some strange sampling issues/bugs in Google Analytics. We were looking at the landing page report with an advanced filter. All sessions were reported around 15k. Applying an advanced segment to the same report, all sessions were inflated by about 2.6x to 40k. See the image below:
We've seen this in other reports too, but we're still unsure why this is happening. We've reported it to Google and they think it is a bug. If anyone else knows why this is happening, I'd be interested in hearing why in the comments below. For now, all we can do is be aware that this can happen.
Don't trust funnel visualisation
Funnel visualisation is one of the reports that people love to use. It's great in theory, looks good and at first glance tells you lots of the things you want to know.
The problem is, it's often just wrong. My number one tip for the funnel visualisation report is this: don't use it. Seriously. For three reasons:
- Data inaccuracies - I'll cover these in a minute
- Lack of segmentation - looking at all of your data on aggregate isn't very useful
- Goal flow report - most of what you want from the funnel visualisation report can actually be done in the goal flow report (although this is heavily sampled)
I'm only going to cover two of the inaccuracies/assumptions here; for more details and for a comprehensive overview of funnel visualisation and goal flow I recommend reading this.
Backfilling funnel steps
The whole point in creating a funnel is to see exactly where people go, and how many people move through the funnel steps. Unfortunately, that's very hard to see in Google Analytics. The section below, taken from the support article, explains the problem:
"The Funnel Visualisation report backfills any skipped steps between the step at which the user entered the funnel and the step at which the user exited the funnel.
For example, let's say your funnel is defined as /step1 > /step2 > /step3 > goal, and a user navigates from /step2 to goal, skipping /step1 and /step3.
In the Funnel Visualisation report, you'd see an entrance to /step 2, a continuation to /step 3, and a continuation to goal."
The longer the funnel, the more unusable this becomes because you have no idea which pages users really visited and which Google Analytics is just backfilling. All the funnel really shows is the entrance and exit point.
Order of funnel steps
The order that the steps are taken in also isn't taken into consideration. This makes the entry and exit pages also unusable. To use Google's example:
"For example, let's say your funnel is defined as /step1 > /step2 > /step3.html > goal.html.
A user then had this session: /xyz > /step3 > /step2 > /abc.
The Funnel Visualisation report would show an entrance from /xyz to /step2, a continuation to /step3 and an exit from /step3 to /abc."
We actually know that the entrance page was /page3 not /page2 and that the exit page was /step2 not /step3.
While I can see some of the logic behind these decisions, I would be very reluctant to draw any conclusions from the data. For most funnel analysis needs, I like PadiTrack which is mostly free. For other problems with the funnel visualisation report I also recommend this article by LunaMetrics.
Some single page sessions are not bounces, but all bounces are single page sessions
Without a full understanding of bounce rate, using this metric can be misleading. Bounced sessions are a subset of single page sessions. The best way to understand what 'bounce' means is to forget about the term 'pageviews' and use 'engagement hits' instead. I highly recommend this article by Justin Cutroni explaining time calculations in Google Analytics.
An engagement hit can be any one of the following five hit types:
- Pageview hits
- Interactive event hits
- Ecommerce transaction hits
- Ecommerce transaction item hits
- Social plugin hits
A bounced session occurs when only one of the above hit types is sent to the server. If more than one is sent, it's not a bounce. For example:
- You land on page, and then immediately leave - this is a single page session and a bounce, as only the pageview hit was sent.
- You land on a page click a tweet button and leave - assuming you are using social hits, this is a single page visit but is not a bounce, as you sent a pageview hit plus a social hit.
- You land on a page, click a tab that sends an event and leave - this is a single page session, but not a bounce, as firing an event counts as a hit.
In most cases, it seems sensible that single page sessions where people tweet, play videos, click buttons and buy products shouldn't be treated as bounces, but it's still worth being aware of because it could be causing some pages to have deceivingly low bounce rates.
All referrals start new sessions in Universal Analytics
Universal Analytics starts a new session every time someone arrives on your site from a referral. This wasn't the case with Classic Analytics JavaScript (ga.js). In classic Google Analytics, as long as the time between referral 1 and referral 2 was less than 30 minutes and the referral wasn't overridden by campaign tracking like AdWords or manual tagging, the original referrer would get credit.
There is one scenario when a referral won't trigger a new session in Universal Analytics - referral traffic from an ignored domain. When you set up a new Google Analytics property, your own domain is added to the exclusion list. This is only available if using analytics.js code on your site. Upgrading the admin interface to Universal Analytics isn't enough. Referral traffic from domains on this list do not start a new session. The advantage of the new back-end functionality is that you'll no longer see self referrals in your Google Analytics reports without having to make any code changes.
The disadvantage of this way of treating referrals is conversions/goals can be misattributed to sites like payment providers. Imagine the scenario below (this is a common set up for E-commerce sites).
A new session is started when moving from paymentdomain.com to yourwebsite.com, so sales would be attributed to referral traffic from paymentdomain instead of Google organic.
To stop this happening you need to add the domain of your payment provider to your referral exclusion list. This is easy to do in the admin section of your account. See instructions on how to do it here.
That's all folks. I hope you'll be able to make more informed decisions from your data after reading this. If anyone knows any more details on any of the items on the list I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts in the comments.
"My number one tip for the funnel visualisation report is this: don't use it. Seriously." Best part of the whole post! : )
then how do you recommend finding drop pattern and common elements from funnels?
would love to learn more
User Flow.
"To stop this happening you need to add the domain of your payment provider to your referral exclusion list."
~ You may have just fixed our cross-domain ecommerce tracking issue on a couple sites with outdated booking engines that don't cooperate with Universal Analytics. Thanks for the tip!
really! It answers a question I had as well.
I think its up-to you that how you are evaluating data and what is your mindset for particular metric and dimension.
I agree that GA shows data wrong often, This is an example of that
https://www.digitalchants.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Google-Analytics-Bug.jpg
But, After few days they use to resolve all issues, But in the case of Funnel tracking, Our belief is that its accurate but now i have to double check everything with our all clients.
Talking about bugs, I found 2 separate clients who were on the ga.js were suddenly having strange results for new visitors. In both cases organic was showing zero new visitors. When we moved to Universal that fixed it.
Great post Craig to be warned about the GA bugs. A firend of mine use to tell me: "all that glitters is not Google Analytics" :-)
Thanks!
Ruben everybody take GA as the holy ni le but it has errors like other softwares. Thanks for this típs Craig!
Hi Craig,
Thanks for the post. Like you said, for Funnel, the customer could go from step1 > step 2 skipping some steps in between. But I was wondering, how could he skip the steps if we made it mandatory to fill those steps then Funnel will definitely count it properly in analytics?
If you're referencing the "required" checkbox in the goal creation menu, it only applies to the first step of the funnel.
Great post Craig.
Another common pitfall is reporting on Ave. Session Duration as 'fact'. In calculating this metric Google excludes single page sessions (bouncers) and the last page viewed in sessions.
Craig, in your second paragraph under Referrals Start New Sessions, I assume in this part:
When you set up a new Google Analytics property, your own domain is added to the exclusion list. This is only available if using ga.js code on your site.
you actually mean it's only available if using analytics.js, not ga.js?
Nice collection of the foibles of the way GA collects & displays data.
Paul
Nice spot Paul. I've updated the post now. Thanks.
This is very helpful! A huge issue I have had to resolve dealt with the landing page report as well. We had several thousand hits landing on a (not set) page. It accounted for more than half of the hits to the site. We noticed these pages had a zero percent bounce rate and no one was converting. After further digging we discovered GA was picking up the dashboard. So be very wary of (not set) appearing in any report. In some cases it is alright but be sure you do a little digging. If it is too good to be true, it probably is.
I use advanced segments, like the one listed. So glad to know what to look for now!
That last tip was my favorite.
Well I did notice this thing with funnel visualization but its confirmed now :) Thanks for making things easier to me in Analytics
I did not know that Google Analytics could give us bad data. Thank you for this topic very interesting and instrucif!
"The problem is, it's just wrong Often My number one tip for the postponement is this funnel visualization. Seriously do not use it.". I often use it :(
I am going to look for more information to complement the knowledge that you have given us, it is very interesting thank you very much
cool information and good fro new one too.
This one is perhaps obvious to some, but I remember being stumped by it when I first started looking at analytics reports.
If you have the analytics code snippet appearing in multiple places on the page, it will trigger more than once and cause your bounce rates to plummet. It's now the first thing I look for when bounce rates are suspiciously low.
Wow That's nice
But Mr. Craig Bradford i have 1 issues about How to compare Check out step-1 and Checkout Step-2 hourly conversion in Google Analytic..? because i have compare the How many people pass the checkout step-1, checkout step-2, checkout step-3, of only hourly, so can you suggest me any ideas, suggestions or how to make custom report about it,?
I hope your reply will be affirmative,,,Thank you,,
Thanks for your information. I like GA for getting funnel data and also the visualization.
awesome post!!!!!!!!!!!! very helpful and must read article.
Great post. We've been having issues with our funnels, but maybe the real solution is to throw them out.
Something we've been discussing. Here's the scenario. A visitor types in the URL to a site then somehow knows the URL to another page and types that in. So maybe the home page and then the contact page. Will that count as one visit? And will GA track it as if they had clicked on the Contact page link? And subsequently count it as following the funnel sequence? Thanks for the help.
Great question Bryan. That would count as one direct session with 2 pageviews. It would look exactly the same as clicking links from GA's point of view.
Google Analytics is the industry standard and every website owner should have an account. That being said, it's not perfect. I recommend looking at data from different sources, including Moz.
I'm in strong agreement of this. Some entities use hybrid methodologies (page tagging/logs) in hopes of leveraging the advantage and limits the disadvantages. Definitely more resource intensive, so not widely use.
Hi Craig,
GA samples data randomly as you may find on https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2637192?hl=en-GB, words are
"GA goes back to the raw session data to process and compute aggregate data on-the-fly."
Whereas, for precise results GA should use advance sampling techniques like Systematic sampling, Stratified sampling, Cluster sampling, etc. A simple list of sampling techniques can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_(statistics)
Great post. These days I have been researching more on GA, and this is one good post I have read. Thank You for sharing the information.
Thnx for this great post Craig! Very enlightening.
Can you say a bit more about Paditrack... in particular, you find it more accurate than GA? Have you tried other software to track funnels, like Mixpanel or Kissmetrics? I'm mostly curious to hear why you like PT and what features in particular encouraged you to recommend them.
Hi, I recommended PadiTrack because it integrates with Google Analytics. The others you mention are completely different platforms.
Great Post Craig, I must say that Google Analytics is not a perfect tool it's more a trending tool so you cannot expect it to be 100% accurate. I also once wrote a post on related topics and highlighted some issues in more detail here https://www.searchenginelead.com/blog/stop-believing-data-you-see-in-your-google-analytics-here-is-why/ Do give me your feedback on this. :-)
A quick comment is that Google used to instruct people to put the GA code right before the closing body tag.
Keri, Yes Google Used to instruct but now the recommended place is before </head>
It's also written here: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/100808...
"Paste your snippet (unaltered, in it’s entirety) into every web page you want to track. Paste it immediately before the closing
</head>tag."Also If you are placing your code before </body> then you are missing those visitors who quickly click through the links on your webpage before Analytics code executes.
Great post. Now I know a whole lot more about Google Analytics and not to trust everything I see.
Good points Craig. I believe there is nothing 100% perfect made by human being. But difference showed by you is really huge. I check for couple of projects and its from 0.2% to 1.0%. (I think this is accepted, especially when we are using free tool.) :-)
This is a MUST READ article on GA. Thank you so much for your effort in this!
The only purpose of using google analytics is to track analytic data of the website? or it will also helps in SERP Rankings?
Does Google drops your SERP ranking if you are not using google analytics?
Please share your views on this
Nagendra,
There is no any partiality in Google that "If you will not use my tool then i will disappear your rankings from my SERP"
Google analytics is the tool by which you can measure your business performance and evaluate its data to make your future marketing strategy and to improve your business online.!!
There might not be a penalty but if Google makes something for my business (analytics or Google+) I add it as quick as I can. You never know it might give you a bump and at the least you know its not going to hurt.
Sounds good that you are very curious about Google tools.
But its not like that if you use any of google tool then you will get bump in your organic result. Its not like that. All tools can give you some measurement according their niche.
For getting result you must have to do genuine marketing over the internet.
Well, the use of those tools will help your site be better and get you higher serps - i.e., GA and GWMT have helped a lot of people make their sites better and therefore more findable.
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Three locations!? Fantastic, thanks for sharing.