Google Analytics is a must if you own or manage a website.\u00a0 It can be used to measure who is coming to your website, where they are coming from, and then how they behave once on your website.
In many senses, it is a digital marketers dream. It allows you to track your marketing campaigns, learn from your successes, and then optimize your future campaigns.
However, Google Analytics is not perfect. It cannot track where your traffic comes from exactly, and sometimes it represents data in a way that is hard to understand or can be misleading.
To make sure you\u2019re getting the most out of your Google Analytics data, read on about our tips and fixes of Google Analytics' most common nuances and how to fix them!
Dark Traffic
The Problem
Dark traffic can be thought of as \u2018hidden traffic\u2019. It shows up in your Google Analytics as \u2018direct traffic\u2019, but it's actually a mix of email traffic, social traffic and organic traffic.
As much as 50% of your \u2018direct traffic\u2019 could actually be traffic from other sources.
This happens because analytics platforms, like Google Analytics, have a hard time tracking where every traffic source comes from.\u00a0 Any piece of traffic that they can not track 100% gets labeled simply as \u2018direct traffic\u2019.
The Fix
Setting up UTM tracking links will fix the problem, Google even provides their own free one.
Make sure you tag your links before they go live in your campaigns. Once that is set, your traffic be tracked correctly.
Hidden Social Traffic
The Problem
Probably the biggest nuance in Google Analytics is that it hides the majority of your Facebook and Instagram traffic.
This problem stems from the fact that the way Facebook (which also owns Instagram) and Google track visitors to your site are very different.
If you compare the number of clicks Facebook says you get on your adverts, compared to the number of referral hits you get from Facebook you will notice that they are different.
This happens because Facebook sends your users to an in-app browser.\u00a0 This prevents Google from accurately being able to track the visit.
The Fix
To solve the problem, use Facebook\u2019s Google URL builder, that will allow you to accurately track all your Facebook referral traffic.
Ghost Spam Traffic
The Problem
Ghost spam traffic is traffic that is recorded on your website that isn\u2019t actually a real person, but instead a robot that crawls your site looking for an email to send you spam.
You can identify Ghost Spam Traffic from three factors:
-
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- If the source of traffic is already on a list of ghost spam sources \t
- A non-valid site is listed as the host name \t
- Non-existent screen colours or resolution specs (e.g. 0x0, 790x0, 1x1)
The Fix
To stop ghost spam traffic, make sure Google\u2019s \u2018bot filtering\u2019 is turned on.
To do this, in Google Analytics click on the \u2018view settings\u2019 button and scroll down to \u2018bot filtering\u2019 and then select the setting, \u2018exclude traffic from known bots and spiders\u2019.
Last Touch Attribution Bias
The Problem
Last touch attribution is when Google gives the credit for a conversion to the last touch point before the conversion.
Social touchpoints often are not sales drivers.\u00a0 Organic and paid search, along with email, are.
Typically, a person following your social media channels will see a product of yours they like and click on it to check it out.\u00a0 They generally will not purchase the product there and then, but instead carry out a research phase of the buyers\u2019 journey, where they compare your product to that of alternatives on the market.\u00a0 If they do decide they want to purchase your product they will then do a Google search click on your search ad or organic listing and make the purchase.
The problem with this is that Google Analytics will attribute all of that conversion to the click on the search ad or organic listing although it was actually the social post that initiated the sale.
The Fix
Unfortunately, this error is not 100% fixable. Google Analytics does not let you track individual visitors to your site due to privacy concern.
The best way to deal with this is just to keep in mind the Last Touch Attribution Bias and know that there are many touch points before the last that a buyer takes before converting on the last.
Conclusion
Digital marketing has a massive advantage over traditional marketing due to the very fact that it is trackable. However, you should always keep in mind that analytics platforms are not perfect. Remember these four common Google analytics nuances when analyzing your website, and you\u2019ll be on your way to digital marketing success.
