How accurate is google analytics?
-
I have a new site that has just entered the SERPS so I'm tracking stats pretty carefully using google analytics. Yesterday according to my affiliate stats I had 10 unique visits with 2 sign ups for one of my products but google analytics only shows a total of 5 visitors yesterday on my site? ( A 20% conversion rate 2 out of 5 also seems ridiculously high). I'm guessing there were also a number of users that visited my site but didn't click through one of the affiliate links and just browsed the site so the visitor number could be higher? I'm not sure where this huge discrepancy comes from?
-
Hi Samuel,
in short, Google Analytics is accurate enough, and here are a few suggestions to address your discrepancy concerns:
1. The number of visitors you mention is not large enough to make conclusions about the accuracy of this or that tracking system.
2. Google Analytics might not track visitors if they don't have java script set or if they block Google Analytics. As a result, Google Analytics reports on a fewer number of visitors.
3. Your affiliate stats, on the contrary, might track not only java script but also robots that index your website. As a result, your affiliate stats reports on a larger number of visitors.
Happy ranking!
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
-
Any good Pay Per Click Networks other than Google and Bing ???
Hi Guys Can anyone recommend any good Pay Per Click Networks other than Google and Bing where you can target customers via keywords and in the same manner as Google ?? Google is becoming way to expensive for us and so we need help looking at other pay per per click networks Thank you for any help Gareth
Affiliate Marketing | | GAZ090 -
Why do my Google Analytics campaign URLs not show up in reports?
Hi guys, I'm puzzled because of my affiliate campaign URLs not showing up properly in my Google Analytics reports. I'll try to explain what I did and I hope some of you can provide advice on how to proceed from there on. What do I want to do?
Affiliate Marketing | | NHA_DistanceLearning
Actually, what I want to do is quite simple. I tagged a few URLs for Google Analytics to show up in my campaign reports. I used the URL builder to do so. Example: http://www.nhad.de?utm_source=affiliate&utm_medium=zanox&utm_content=banner&utm_campaign=105x139. Is that the entire URL?
Uhm, no. Because of the active de-duplication script on our website, I need to put some characters in front of it: **www.nhad.de/affiliate.aspx?NETWORK=ZANOX&NEXTURL=**http://www.nhad.de?utm_source=affiliate&utm_medium=zanox&utm_content=banner&utm_campaign=105x139. Yikes. Yes, I know. What do I see?
Basically, when I paste the above url and run it in (for example) Chrome, only this shows up in my browser: www.nhad.de/?utm_source=affiliate. In my Analytics reports, the campaign URL is not recognised, just the source in my traffic report. The medium is indicated with 'not set'. What am I doing wrong, and what can I do to make my campaigns appear in Analytics? Best, Bas0 -
Affiliate URLs Indexed in Google
We have an active in-house affiliate program which has a create-a-link function where affiliate, as in most affiliate programs, can build links back to our content to produce sales. The problem that I am seeing is that some of the affiliate URL versions are being indexed in Google rather than the original page. For instance.. http://www.ourdomain.com/page_start.aspx?affnum=F025212&Start_Page=RaceCar&referrer=createlink is outranking... http://www.ourdomain.com/racecar This presents 2 issues for us. First, this presents duplicate content issues obviously. Second, we pay our affiliates a portion of the sales so, in order to maximize profitability, we'd like the indexed pages to be the original version. What's the best way to handle this? I want to make sure that affiliates continue to get credit for links from their sites but search engine links should go to the original versions.
Affiliate Marketing | | ATIseo0 -
How to rank in google local listings with multiple entities?
I actually have a portal with multiple listings from different users. Every listing is a physical shop with a different address, but more than the half of them doesn't have a website. I was thinking on creating a local business for them and then add a link to my website in the section where google asks for your web address. Does anyone already made something similar? does google allows links to inner pages and from multiple domains? Do you have any other and better idea on how to show in local results if you're like an affiliate and not the direct owner of the shop? With google local listings crowding the serps it should be interesting to know how to fit in there.
Affiliate Marketing | | mememax0 -
In what ways would an affiliate site be okay with Google?
I know Google has slammed affiliate sites hard. But affiliate marketing can be a real business and had an idea for one, but I would like to know if ALL affiliate sites are looked at as evil in Google's eyes, or if it's just those with thin and duplicate content in the product descriptions. I know they want brands to come up ahead of affiliates of that brand, and that makes sense. If I sold Acme Widgets products, Acme Widgets itself should come up ahead of my site. But what if the site sold widgets in general, with the term widgets not a branded keyword? If all product descriptions are unique and well-written content, on a site that is high quality, would it still be downgraded by Google just because there are affilate links in it? I guess overall the question could be boiled down to, are affiliate sites hit because they have horrible content or because they have links to affiliate programs in them?
Affiliate Marketing | | bizzer0 -
Google Panda & Effects On Affiliate Sites
Quick Question, We all have heard that outbound links for affiliate marketing will be filtered via Panda however how does this work when using the Google Affiliate Network URL's? Has anyone found different signals with using Google vs. Another Network?
Affiliate Marketing | | Ben-HPB0 -
How Google Shopping Relevance Determined?
After looking at Google Shopping results, I was wondering how the "Relevance" is determined. It would obviously be hugely beneficial to be ranked as one of the top 5 most relevant products, since that is the default sorting criteria. Originally, I thought it was a combination of Price and Seller Rating. But after examining a few examples, that doesn't seem to be the case. When doing a search for "Radian XTSL" - a car seat that our website features - JustKidsStore.com appears at/near the bottom of the Google Shopping list, despite having a competitive price and ranking well for that term organically (8-13). http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=radian+xtsl&hl=en&safe=off&cid=15471698622239402479&os=sellers# Do you know what the ranking factors are? And if so, can you give a few pieces of advice for best practices? Thanks!
Affiliate Marketing | | BarrettAhern0 -
Passing Google Analytics Variables Through Javascript?
Alright so here's my situation and hopefully someone can help... I want to be able to pass Google Analytics variables onto my affiliate links so I have some better conversion tracking data (not PPC traffic so no easy dynamic keyword insertion variables). I want to do something like this: User searches "keyword" in Google > User lands on mysite.com > search data is assigned to global variables that I can use in my affiliate link redirect script. afflink.com/?id=123&keyword=[GA keyword variable] Anybody know how I would go about doing that? I've seen other Non-GA tracking scripts do this but I can't figure it out here and it's driving me crazy! Thanks,
Affiliate Marketing | | drewhammond
Drew EDIT: Just figured it out after a lot of guess and testing... I'm not sure if the way I'm doing it is the fastest, most optimized way but it works. Solution: I can pull the GA cookie and break it down to retrieve the keyword using PHP. For anyone searching for this in the future, here's how I did it: $gacookie = $_COOKIE['__utmz'];
$keyword = substr(strstr($gacookie, 'utmctr='),7); ?> Then I can use the $keyword variable wherever I need it. I haven't actually tested this on a live site yet but everything is working fine as of right now. If anyone has a better solution please feel free to answer.0