Mobile redirect causing traffic drop? Can I move analytics code to capture them as visitors before redirecting them?
-
Yesterday I implemented a mobile redirect as I don't have a mobile version of my site. As a result I've seen a drop in traffic which makes sense as my redirect script is at the top of the page. If I were to move the redirect script below the analytics code would that allow me to still track mobile users? Would this affect my bounce rate though?
-
Yes, the "drop" in traffic (or drop in reported traffic) is because the analytics code doesn't have time to kick in before the redirect script takes over.
If you were to move the refresh script to the bottom of the code and the analytics to the top, the likelihood of reversing this goes up. We had a similar problem with a client site in that they had a very heavy piece of conversion optimisation software running at the top of the code and our tracking code at the bottom. Users clicking from search to the home page usually knew where they wanted to go quite quickly, and would click away before our tracking code had loaded. Client was desperate to know why our SEO traffic had gone through the floor. It had not. We had them reverse the analytics and CRO codes and our traffic "came back".
JS is executed in the order it's included in the code, so moving it should work. Should being the key word - I am not 100% on this.
I am not sure how to place a delay with JS so hopefully someone else can chime in on that one. Meta refreshes allow a short time delay - does anyone know what the correct way to do this for solely mobile traffic would be? Acknowledging that meta refreshes are not recommended for SEO, but they are a popular way of defining a short delay in redirecting a user.
-
The mobile site is not operated by me unfortunately.
-
Why you not add the analytics code to the mobile site too? The actual market of mobile phones runs JS without problems.
-
Uh, hard to say as you need to do it in the script you're including ;-). Can you send me the URL of the JS (or via PM, whatever you prefer)?
-
Thanks for your reply. How would I add a delay to this code?
-
Hi Sam,
If you're doing the redirect with a JavaScript solution then the answer would be yes. Put you would need a delay of 1-2 seconds to make sure the GA tracking code is initialized.
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
-
Drop in indexation but increase in organic traffic
We've had a puzzling drop in indexed pages on our ecommerce website. My crawl returns just over 25k items. Until 19/6 we had about 23-24k indexed. Then we experienced a sudden drop from 19/6 to 26/6: from 23,400 to 18,999, losing 4.4k pages from one week to the next. At the same time, our organic traffic has not decreased, it actually increased, however, it's only been a couple of weeks so that may be coincidence. A few things that have happened during the past few weeks: 31/5: we implemented pagination on category pages to avoid issues with duplicate content - could it be that this led to a decrease in indexed pages 3 weeks later? However, I can only find about 1.5k pages in my crawl that are page 2+ 18-19/6: we had some website outages over the weekend; as a B2B business, we don't get much traffic over the weekend, so I can't see an impact to traffic. However, the following week, indexation dropped by another 250 (then stayed the same this past week), so I don't think this was a factor. 21/6: we retired another website and migrated it to our main website. However, all pages were redirected to existing pages so no new pages were created for the migration. This doesn't really explain a decrease in indexation, but may account for some of the increase in organic traffic; however not all as the retired website hardly got any organic traffic. So, should we be worried? As our website is quite large, it would probably be quite difficult to pin point exactly which pages dropped off the index, but a loss of 19% of pages is quite significant. Then again, it doesn't appear to have negatively impacted organic traffic... Have you got any suggestions for what I should be looking at to find out what happened? Should I be worried at this point? I will definitely continue to have an eye on how our organic traffic (and indexation) develops but I am not sure if there is anything I can do at this point. I'd appreciate your advice on this, to make sure I am not missing something blindingly obvious. Thanks! RmWaNib JJm4tC3
Reporting & Analytics | | ViviCa10 -
Analytics Data Messed Up
I have a website that gives very unatural data in Analytics. First for some reason my paid search traffic and organic traffic seems to be pretty much the same. If I pause my adwords ads my organic traffic go down if I start them it goes up. Anyone else had this problem before?
Reporting & Analytics | | AngelosS0 -
UA Codes on Multiple Sites
Someone came in and set up Google Analytics code on one of our clients' sites before we got there and it is showing data from an outside website that the code is also on. Does anyone know the best way to find out what that other site is so we can remove this code from both sites? Thanks as always MOZ friends!
Reporting & Analytics | | ReunionMarketing0 -
Google Analytics - Average Position
Hi Just trying to get some clarity on Google Analytics Average Positions in "Aquistions/Search Engine Optimisation". For a very competitive keyword Google Analytics is saying i am on average position of 6. Is this Page 6? I am assuming position six would be 1.6?
Reporting & Analytics | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
Google's Not Provided - What can I see and what can't I?
Hi Guys, I've been looking into my company's analytics's data recently to establish where most of our traffic is coming from. More so, I want to get an indication of the percentage of organic traffic that is coming from branded and none branded terms. Not provided takes up 80% of my organic traffic and the vast majority of keywords that are provided all mention the brand name. Does analytics's provide you with all of your branded traffic but just block others that it doesn't want you to see? Or is it just coincidence that the majority of the terms I can see are all branded? I am just trying to establish how strong our brand is and how much traffic the brand name brings against none brand terms. All help is appreciated! Thank you!
Reporting & Analytics | | Sandicliffe1 -
GATC New code structure?
Hi Guys, One of my clients has this code showing up, and it is receiving data! Is this normal? First time I ever see such a code! Thanks for clarifying!
Reporting & Analytics | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Registration tracking with Google Analytics
Hi everyone, I want to track user registrations with Google Analytics for a customer's website. The thing is after registration visitors are not directed to a specific page, so I can't set it as a goal. I thought of tracking submit button with event tracking, but that data would not be true as a visitor may click it more than once, and there's the login with facebook and twitter thing. Before convincig customer to create a registration confirmation page, I want to make sure there's no other way as they don't want to make any changes to the current website. Any ideas?
Reporting & Analytics | | ugurcanuzer0 -
How can I track search engine optimization data in Google analytics?
My website is linked to a Google Analytics web property. But, I am not able to track search engine optimization data in Google Analytics. So, How can I get it done?
Reporting & Analytics | | CommercePundit0