15 answers about Google Analytics – web analytics video

Google Analytics is a crucial part of SEO. If you don’t have tracking in place, you have no idea what’s working or not. Most importantly, you have no way of showing your client how your work helped them increase sales, or other goals for their website.

After working with Google Analytics for a while, you will have questions that goes beyond the basics. The best way to get answers is of course to Google it…but there are a few places you should keep an eye on to get answers before you have questions. One of those places is the Google Analytics YouTube channel.

One of the latest videos, with web analytics ninjas Avinash Kaushik and Nick Mihailovski, is a must-watch for any Google Analytics fan. It’s only 30 minutes, and well worth it, so make yourself a cup of coffee and get comfortable – these guys are fun to watch, and you might even get answers to questions you didn’t know you had.

Questions answered in the video

• “We have developed a mobile website and implemented Google Analytics Tracking Code for mobile website. Issue is that in Google Analytics our mobile website is showing as self-referral. Firebug also shows value of UTMR is is our own mobile website. Any help from the community is very helpful for us.”
• “Our 2-3 high traffic websites shows (not provided) as top keyword (~30% of overall traffic) in organic report. We are unable to find the keyword, is there any possibility to find these keywords or any future plans to show these keywords”
• “Why does Google Analytics sample reports in a profile that contains, say, only paid traffic with 80k page views and 50k visitors? The master profile does contain much more, but the report is generated using just 7k visits.”
• “Is it possible to report when the same user completes two events in the same session or within a few days. Day 1: Views video. Day 2: Submit user form. Would visitor level custom variables with a short cookie time-out work?”
• “In the Social reports, which websites does Google Analytics view as social media? Is there a list? For example, are blogs on Blogger and WordPress regarded as social media?”
• “Can you clarify what happens when a Google Analytics account has more than 10M server calls/month? Are calls discarded at analysis time once the cap is reached? Is the cap lifted or increased if a Google Analytics account is linked to an active AdWords account?”
• “When I’m on a page on my site and click a link that goes to another page on my site which opens up in a new window, does that path show up in the Navigation Summary report in Google Analytics or does it count as an entrance?”
• “If a user arrives at a page where they can convert to more than one goal, how is that reflected in each goal funnel? Is there a way to segment the true lost users from a funnel from lost users who converted to a different goal?”
• “We use lot of cross-selling of different products which are eventually being sold on different websites and aren’t able to attribute conversions to their real source. Is their a way to track all main domains with accurate attribution to one another?”
• “Are you looking at referring domain only for identifying traffic in new social reports? Can ‘social’ links be tagged with utm_medium=social in order to also track clicks coming from native Facebook, Twitter mobile apps?”
• “I have created an advanced segment including landing page containing abc.com/product1/ and on applying this segment to the content drill-down report I can see pages outside of /product1/ directory. What does this mean – does this mean there’s a script problem or illogical application?”
• “I’ve been struggling to understand the difference between visitors and unique visitors. How can unique visitors be higher then visitors in my custom report? Could you elaborate on how each metric is calculated?”
• “When will the mobile SDKs for Google Analytics support non-interactive event tracking?”
• “What’s the difference between Product Revenue and Revenue in Google Analytics?”
• “What are some tactics that an analytics consultant can use to help their clients find the economic value of a goal on the website (other than looking at an offline alternative)?”

For the related blog post by the analytics ninjas, see Web Analytics TV #25 – The Silver Anniversary Show (on the official blog for Google Analytics tips, tricks and news).