Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Why does Google Analytics think PPC traffic is organic?
-
I have a bastard of a problem... Google Analytics is incorrectly tracking PPC traffic as SEO which is screwing up all my reporting .
I don't care for rankings, I care for actual SEO traffic and I can't be sure that what i am seeing is correct which is driving me nuts.
Any ideas?
-
Ralph, If you're using a call tracking Software doing Dynamic Number insertion like Mongoose Metrics does, The visit will appear in many cases to Analytics to be Organic or Direct. Since tools like that use a URL Extension to Know when to insert the tracking number, you can add a Custom Channel Grouping and Define the following rule:
Landing Page URL -- Contains -- mm_replace=true (that rule is specific to Mongoose Metrics, but most will have some common phrase in the URL extension that you can use)
-
Hey Ralph,
I know this was posted a while ago but I'm running into the same issue. Our PPC urls are showing up as "organic" landing pages and screwing up organic traffic and conversion data. Did you ever hear back from Google on this?
Thanks!
-
Google analytics will place Ppc traffic in the "direct traffic" bucket if you do not tag your ppc campaigns correctly. Google Adwords is easy, just enable auto tagging. In AdCenter, you need to make sure that you use utm codes in all of your keyword destination urls...otherwise google analytics will just place this traffic in the direct traffic category.
There was a good blog post about this last month. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/why-google-analytics-tagging-matters-whiteboard-friday
-
Thanks Damion... I have got Google looking at it now so fingers crossed they can find the fault.
-
I fully sympathise, and I fully identify with your assessment of it as a bastard of a problem!
Just to be square on the baseline stuff, is your Analytics correctly linked to your Adwords account? Incorrect linking can cause all manner of weirdness. It's pretty easy to link accounts these days but it didn't used to be, so if the adwords and/or analytics accounts for this site are more than a couple of years old that could be causing a problem.
Secondly, is Adwords auto-tagging set up correctly? It could be that Adwords isn't passing on the correct URL handling parameters, and so in the absence of appended campaign data Analytics is interpreting it all as a referral from Google, and therefore as organic traffic.
-
When I have "organic only" segmenting on i.e. non paid search traffic, it is showing that the top organic keywords are keywords that i have no top 30 rankings in organic, yet my ppc ad is number one.
Biggest traffic driver - cheap flights - no rankings for this domain, but the sister domain is on page 2
Second biggest - cheap hotels - pos 15-16 -
What makes you think it's adding your PPC traffic to your organic report? When you are in Analytics and click on Traffic Sources, do you see "google (organic)" as one of the sources? Are you saying google is adding PPC visits to that row in the traffic sources table?
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
-
Whatstuffwherebot user agent messing up Google Analytics
Starting yesterday, Aug 26, 2020, I noticed a new bot crawling our site with user agent whatstuffwherebot. Google Analytics is counting these hits as human traffic, completely throwing off my numbers - yesterday, Analytics reported nearly triple my typical number of visitors. As of now, Search Console only shows data through Aug 25 so I don't know if Search Console is also affected. Is anybody else seeing something similar? Does anybody know what the whatstuffwherebot bot is? I don't get any results when I search on Google or Bing. For what it's worth, the traffic is coming from Columbus, OH, running over Amazon AWS via 278 different IP addresses so far. Also, WordFence (my WordPress security plugin) correctly identifies these hits as bot traffic.
Reporting & Analytics | | ahirai0 -
Is there a way to filter all computers on a specific IPv6 network in Google Analytics?
Is there a quick way of filtering the IP addresses for all the computers on a network that's using IPv6? I want to filter out visits to our websites from the devices on our office network, but each computer (and phone and tablet) seems to have a different address. It _looks _like they all start the same way, though. One computer is xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:aaaa:aaaa:aaaa:aaaa, another is xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:bbbb:bbbb:bbbb:bbbb, my phone is xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:cccc:cccc:cccc:cccc, etc. Does this mean that xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx is the address for our network as a whole, and I can just set up a Google Analytics filter for "IP addresses starting with..."? Or would doing that also filter out hits from, like, every visitor within a 20 mile radius of our office? If I need to simply put in the individual addresses for each and every device, I will. I'm just hoping it doesn't come to that. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | BrianAlpert780 -
We have a client that wants to apply UTM URL tagging to track local organic traffic in Google Analytics. Is there any benefit in doing this?
One of our clients requested that we apply UTM URL tagging to better track organic traffic in Google Analytics. We found this to be an odd request because we are most familiar with UTM tracking for special campaigns (referral tracking, PPC, email tracking, etc). Is there any benefit of applying UTM tags to urls to analyze local organic traffic in Google Analytics? Are there any resources out there about this? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | RosemaryB0 -
How does Google Maps/G+ traffic show up in Analytics?
Hi Moz Community, I've been trying to figure out how traffic from Google Maps (and G+) shows up in Google Analytics and am struggling to find a good answer online. If someone finds a business through Google Maps and then clicks on the website in the Maps listing, does that show up as a referral from Google Maps? Our site shows virtually zero traffic from Google Maps even though we have a number of listing. Two related questions: if someone clicks through to a G+ page from a Maps result and then visits our website from the G+ page, does that show up in Analytics as a referral from G+? Is traffic from Google Maps or G+ ALSO counted as organic traffic? (Would it be possible to accidentally double-count a visit as both organic and a referral from Maps/G+? Thanks everybody!
Reporting & Analytics | | JohnGroves0 -
Setting up Google Analytics for Subsites
I currently have one main .com site and am planning on launching geo-location subsites .co.uk, .com.au, .ru, etc... Traffic will flow between both sites and some of the content on the subsites will be duplicate and therefore include a canonical tag to the main site. I want to set up GA to capture who is going to the subsites and vice versa and correctly capture crossover traffic. Any advice on implementing advanced analytics directly (or links to sources that will direct me the right direction for this project)
Reporting & Analytics | | theLotter0 -
How to remove unwanted dynamic parameters from a URL in Google Analytics
Hi, Would really appreciate some help with this. I have been experimenting with RegEx to achieve this but as I’ve never used it before am currently failing miserably. We have conversion pages i need to set goals for that are formatted as below: https://www.domain.co.uk//Application_Form/(S(ewhbqp5cki0mppuzukunkqno))/enterCardDetails.aspx I need to remove the (s(xxx)) section from the URL as rather than one pages i currently have thousands of unique URL's. What’s catching me out is that as it’s not a URL parameter I can’t discount and as half way through can’t just do head matches etc to /entercarddetails Help would be much appreciated. Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | Sarbs0 -
Comparing % Change, Google Analytics
Hey Mozzers, Is there a simple way to compare the "% Change" in traffic when comparing two separate time periods in a single Google Analytics report? When comparing data from two separate time periods, an exported CSV doesn't include the % Change (booo!), and there's no option to sort by % Change within the GA report, essentially forcing you to scroll through all the results to pinpoint the major movers and shakers. I'm not averse to using spreadsheets to sort this data, but I'm thinking that I'd likely need a macro to make this work, something like this. However, none of the macros on that page are working (possibly because they were designed for a previous version of Analytics). All suggestions are appreciated. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | dangaul0 -
Has Anyone Else Noticed A Jump In Google Analytics Traffic Since Session Parameters Were Changed?
Ever since Google Analytics changed their session parameters August 12th I have seen a 20% jump in organic traffic & bounce rates along with a decline in pages/visit and conversion rate. To be clear, I don't put a whole heck of a lot of stock in these metrics as stand-alone indications of how my site is performing. I'm just trying to get to the bottom of this blip. I noticed some other people mentioned a similar phenomenon in other SEO forums and blog comments, but nobody seems to be talking about this here at SEOMoz (unless I just haven't looked in the right place). I'm not saying the change I noticed has anything to do with the session update, I'm just wondering if anyone else has experienced something similar so that I can either cross it off the list of possible causes or explore further.
Reporting & Analytics | | eTundra0