Google Analytics Numbers Are Weird
-
Hi,
I'm having a strange problem from past one month. My website gets about 10k pageviews a month with an average bounce rate of 50%. Lately, I observed a strange thing. The avg time on page of visitors from selected countries is less than 1 second and the bounce rate is zero!! How is this possible? This is happening from past one month and it would be really helpful if you guys could tell me what exactly is happening??
Ive attached a screenshot for better understanding.
website url : https://www.specbee.com/
-
Imagine you have a website and are using Google Analytics to track how many people visit it. Google Analytics does many cool things to give you insights into your website traffic, like showing you how many visitors you've had, where they came from, and what they did on your site.
But sometimes, the numbers can be a bit puzzling. Here are a few reasons why:
Real-Time vs. Standard Reporting: Google Analytics has a real-time reporting feature showing your site's events. This can be exciting to watch, but it may not always match up exactly with the standard reporting numbers, which show data over a more extended period. So, don't be surprised if the real-time numbers fluctuate a bit.
Data Sampling: When you have a lot of data (like millions of website visitors), Google Analytics might use "data sampling" to speed up the reporting process. This means it takes a sample of your data and makes estimates based on that sample. While this can be accurate most of the time, it's essential to know that it's not always 100% precise.
Bot Traffic: Not all the traffic to your website comes from real people. Bots and crawlers from search engines or other sources can also visit your site, and Google Analytics may count these visits, too. This can sometimes inflate your visitor numbers, making them seem higher than they are.
Filtering and Segmentation: Google Analytics allows you to filter and segment your data differently to get more specific insights. For example, you can look at traffic from a particular country or users using a specific device. Depending on how you set these filters, your numbers can vary.
Cookies and Privacy: Google Analytics uses cookies to track user behavior, but not everyone allows or has them enabled. This means that some visitors may not be fully counted in your analytics data, leading to discrepancies in the numbers.
In summary, Google Analytics is a powerful tool for understanding your website's performance, but it's essential to interpret the numbers with context. Factors like real-time reporting, data sampling, bot traffic, filtering, and cookie settings can all influence the numbers you see. These will help you make more informed decisions based on your analytics data.
-
Let us know what happens please.
-
Installation of the tracking code twice might be the problem. Because, we had the GA tracking code on the website, and also the Universal GA tag on GTM. I have taken down the tag on GTM, let us see what happens.
-
Often when the bounce rate is zero, it means your tracking code has been installed more than once. Check that. Also check to see if you're using both Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager on pages. If you are, make sure tag manager is tracking events and not pages which could lead to the same outcome (bounce rate = 0).
-
Hey Donna,
Nope, we do not use any call tracking service on the website. Is there any other explanation?
Thanks.
-
Agree that when the user has not viewed multiple pages, the avg time will be **zero ** and the bounce rate 100%. However, in my case, the bounce rate for the pages with almost 0 seconds time on page is **0.00%!!! (please see the attached image in the question). **So that means a user is going to another page before 1 second??? How do you explain this??
-
That's likely easy to explain: if the user doesn't do the second pageview or you don't fire another event through event tracking with Google Analytics they have no way of knowing how long the user has stayed on the page or if the user has stayed on the site for a bit viewing multiple pages. In that case, the time on page is 0 second and the bounce rate 100%. That is what you seem to be experiencing here.
-
Are you using a call tracking service? Sometimes they log events in your Google Analytics account, events with no associated page views.
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
-
Attribution of conversions to payment gateway in Google Analytics
Hi all, We have been having a problem for a while now where most transactions are attributed to referrals from our payment gateway Sagepay. The issue started a couple of months ago, when we finally upgraded our website to https:// for logged in users and transactions. Before, when we were using http://, transactions were attributed to the correct channel. Even weirder, we upgraded 4 websites and only 2 of them have the issue now, the other two continue to attribute transactions correctly. I added Sagepay to the referral exclusion list which made no difference. Over the weekend, we upgraded to the global site tag and it seems to have improved somewhat, but yesterday 50% of transactions were still attributed to referral/sagepay. I am also seeing an odd issue, where for half of the transactions, the revenue and transaction are attributed to one channel, but the products (quantity) are attributed to another. One of the channels is always referral/sagepay and the other is the channel that the transaction should be attributed to. Has anyone seen this issue before? I'd appreciate any tips that might help us fix this issue. Thanks in advance!
Reporting & Analytics | | ViviCa10 -
How to do Google Multivariate Testing via Google Tag Manager with Universal Analytic?
Hello All, How to do Google Multivariate Testing via Google Tag Manager with Universal Analytic? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | dsouzac0 -
Collecting post codes / zip codes in Google Analytics - Terms of Service
Hi Mozzers, Just reading up on Google Analytic's Terms of Service and wondering if collecting post codes / zip codes (from a website's 'Find my nearest...' tool) adhere's to the following: "You will not (and will not allow any third party to) use the Service to track, collect or upload any data that personally identifies an individual (such as a name, email address or billing information), or other data which can be reasonably linked to such information by Google." What do you think?
Reporting & Analytics | | A_Q0 -
Search and Replace filter on Google Analytics?
Hello! On our GA account for one of our clients, we'd like to add a search and replace filter to the Views section of the account. The URL is www.askergoworks.com (it redirects to askergoworks.com), and Google has flagged us to have redundant hostnames. This is why we'd like to add the filter. Would the regular expression be askergoworks.com|www.askergoworks.com ? Any help would be great - I'm not a regex expert, so I really don't how to go about this. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | AGILITY0 -
Google Analytics - Sessions vs Views?
In Google Analytics under Audience Overview I want to visit total visits during any given period of time but instead it shows me sessions. Am I missing something? How do I switch from sessions to page visits?
Reporting & Analytics | | gohawks77902 -
Why is Google Analytics showing index.php after every page URL?
Hi, My client's site has GA tracking code gathering correct data on the site, but the pages are listed in GA as having /index.php at the end of every URL, although this does not appear when you visit the site pages. Even if there is a redirect happening for site visitors, shouldn't GA be showing the pages as their redirect destination, i.e. the URL that visitors actually see? Could this discrepancy be adversely affecting my search performance? Example page: http://freshstarttax.com/innocent-spouse/ shows up in GA as http://freshstarttax.com/innocent-spouse/index.php thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | JMagary0 -
Google Analytics Report throws up Google as a referrer
Good morning from Wet & Windy 12 degrees C wetherby UK... Using Google analytics I've noticed in the traffic sources refferer subsection some traffic is categorized as originating from Google. Whats puzzling me is.... I know a huge amount of traddic stems from Google but as the below screenshot illustrates only 21 visitors come from Google: http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/google-refferal-sources-top-levelcopy.jpg And when i drill down some are coming from Google mobile 😞 http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/google-referral-sourcescopy.jpg Is traffic categorised as Google referrer down to Google hiding searches via ssl as explained here: http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/google-referral-sourcescopy.jpg Any insights welcome 🙂
Reporting & Analytics | | Nightwing0 -
How to combine several subdomain in google Analytics
Good afternoon. I have a question.
Reporting & Analytics | | meteorr
I have a main site site.com + many subdomains example1.site.com, example2.site.com, example3.site.com, example4.site.com .... I need to combine google Analytics reports into one. Information from: example2.site.com, example3.site.com
showed in example1.site.com Yk64j0