Ext imp google analytics question

LCKatMPNLCKatMPN Registered Users Posts: 72 Big grins
edited May 27, 2010 in SmugMug Support
What is going on with GoogleAnalytics?
I went from numbers that made sense (and made sense with SmugMug) to numbers that are extremely ridiculous. If this is peculiar to the way my site is designed, I NEED TO KNOW THAT NOW. This is the third time I've been targeting something majorly wrong in stats and the past two times I was thanked by you guys for noticing things that needed to be addressed (only it took weeks to get that acknowledgment). If Mr. Markham is around, you know who I am, and that this truly might be worth taking a look at.

So, here goes:
My numbers this month were increasing in a healthy manner, in keeping with the healthy increase in content coverage I was posting. AGAIN -- I AM AN ONLINE NEWSPAPER, NOT A WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHER LOOKING FOR WORK.

Up through May 20, everything was pretty much understandable. A low of 67 visits, a high of 200 visits, and mostly every other day a health number above 100. Then, MAY 21. (Anything to do with Google Caffeine? Did it go live?) Visits show up to 1,510. Yes, 1,510. Today, May 22, the number is already over 300. That would be great, except for the fact that the number of pages per visit has dropped dramatically (dramatically, repeated for emphasis) as, too, the time on site, from minutes to seconds.

WHAT IS GOING ON???????????????

Meanwhile, the views on SmugMug have been holding steady, meaning that they are making sense day to day. No major and ridiculous spikes or anything from May 20 to May 21 or May 22.

PLEASE, ANDY, DOC, MARK, whomever, please help me this.

Thanks,
Linda
www.MyPaperNow.com
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Comments

  • AndyAndy Registered Users Posts: 50,016 Major grins
    edited May 22, 2010
    Hi Linda, GA is working. SmugMug doesn't have much to do with the number of visitors, or the length of time they stay... but I can tell you that your code is working as it should be. I'm not sure what more I can tell you, I'm sorry!

    If you want me to answer any specific questions, I'll try my best.

    Thanks,

    Andy
    Andy

    Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
  • AndyAndy Registered Users Posts: 50,016 Major grins
    edited May 23, 2010
    We're gonna check into this further, thanks for bringing it up.
    Andy

    Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
  • LCKatMPNLCKatMPN Registered Users Posts: 72 Big grins
    edited May 23, 2010
    One message said all is well, another said you are checking on it. I assume you are checking on it? You should seriously take a look at this:

    1. Visits counted by GoogleAnalytics, May 1-20: 2,551
    2. PageViews counted by Google: 57,646
    3. Boune Rate by Google: 35.79%
    4. Pages Per Visit by Google: 22.6
    5. Average Time on Site: 5:20
    6. Percent New Visitors: 64.52%

    THEN
    THIS FOR MAY 21:
    1. Visits: 1,510
    2. PageViews: 1,614
    3. Bounce Rate: 94.24%
    4. Pages Per Visit: 1.07
    5. Average Time On Site: 5 seconds
    6. Percent New Visits: 97.62%

    THEN
    THIS FOR MAY 22:
    1. Visits: 1,406
    2. PageViews: 1,502
    3. Bounce Rate: 94.17%
    4. Pages Per Visit: 1.07
    5. Average time on site: 3 seconds
    6. Percent New Visits: 98.22%

    Today is shaping up to be the same.

    So, PLEASE, some insight from someone. I do not have a site that warrants such a drastic change in numbers.

    Seriously, I need some insight here.

    If you need the coding to get into my GoogleAnalytics, I will share with Mark, Doc or whomevver, just like I did the last two times.

    Thanks,
    Linda
    www.MyPaperNow.com
  • bwgbwg Registered Users, Retired Mod Posts: 2,119 SmugMug Employee
    edited May 23, 2010
    we are looking into it. it may take a few days to gather some more information and flesh out what is going on. we will get it resolved.
    Pedal faster
  • LCKatMPNLCKatMPN Registered Users Posts: 72 Big grins
    edited May 23, 2010
    Again, I know Google was going live with Caffeine sometime this month, I believe.
    I'll wait to hear back, but please give me a periodic notification, even if it is just to say "working on it still."
    I'll check in, too.

    Thanks,
    Linda
  • AndyAndy Registered Users Posts: 50,016 Major grins
    edited May 23, 2010
    LCKatMPN wrote: »
    Again, I know Google was going live with Caffeine sometime this month, I believe.
    I'll wait to hear back, but please give me a periodic notification, even if it is just to say "working on it still."
    I'll check in, too.

    Thanks,
    Linda
    Linda, in your case, since you are using the old GA code snippet, there's nothing for us to check, at SmugMug. If anything's changed, it's on Google's end - I'm sorry I don't have a better answer for you right now, I really am.

    What bigwebguy is looking at is something different.
    Andy

    Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
  • bwgbwg Registered Users, Retired Mod Posts: 2,119 SmugMug Employee
    edited May 23, 2010
    Andy wrote: »
    Linda, in your case, since you are using the old GA code snippet, there's nothing for us to check, at SmugMug. If anything's changed, it's on Google's end - I'm sorry I don't have a better answer for you right now, I really am.

    What bigwebguy is looking at is something different.

    Might be unrelated, might not be. Linda, would you please switch to the new integrated google analytics instead of using the snippet in your customization. I'd like to see if anything changes after you do that.

    instructions here:
    http://dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=1390975&postcount=1

    thanks.
    Pedal faster
  • LCKatMPNLCKatMPN Registered Users Posts: 72 Big grins
    edited May 23, 2010
    Just got back on site and i will try this now.
    If you are there, please answer my questions as I go through this, and thank you very much for your help.

    Linda
  • LCKatMPNLCKatMPN Registered Users Posts: 72 Big grins
    edited May 23, 2010
    I believe I accomplished what you asked, bigwebguy, and thank you so much for bringing my attention to this.

    I copy and pasted my UA-XXXXXXX-X coding into the control settings for the "integrated setting" and removed the "snippet" from my advanced settings.

    This is what I removed:

    <script src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript">
    </script>
    <script type="text/javascript">
    _uacct = "UA-3091072-1";
    urchinTracker();
    </script>


    Just want to make sure I did the right thing.

    Thank you so very much for this. What should I be looking for?

    Thanks,
    Linda
  • LCKatMPNLCKatMPN Registered Users Posts: 72 Big grins
    edited May 23, 2010
    Just one more quick note: The numbers for today, before I made the change, were just as ridiculously off as the two prior days. Essentially I've got more than 1,500 unique viewers looking at one page for a couple seconds with a plus-90 percent bounce rate and essentially every visitor is brand new. If you see my site, you know this is not likely in the least! Again, much appreciated. Andy, if you're there, what do you think? Could this be it? We'll see!

    Thanks,
    Linda
    www.MyPaperNow.com
  • timnosenzotimnosenzo Registered Users Posts: 405 Major grins
    edited May 23, 2010
    I also noticed a huge increase in traffic on both of my sites Friday and Saturday. FWIW, one of my sites has GA installed through the new deal, and the other one has it in the advanced customization thing. Strange. ne_nau.gif
    connecticut wedding photographer
  • LCKatMPNLCKatMPN Registered Users Posts: 72 Big grins
    edited May 24, 2010
    timnosenzo wrote: »
    I also noticed a huge increase in traffic on both of my sites Friday and Saturday. FWIW, one of my sites has GA installed through the new deal, and the other one has it in the advanced customization thing. Strange. ne_nau.gif

    Traffic isn't a bad thing but increased numbers that correspond to incredibly high bounce rates and incredibly low page views and horrendous time on site (seconds, not minutes) is a truly bad thing. Looks like this might not just be my problem or yours. I trust the people at Smug will get to the bottom of this -- quickly. Thanks for sharing.

    Linda
  • LCKatMPNLCKatMPN Registered Users Posts: 72 Big grins
    edited May 24, 2010
    bigwebguy wrote: »
    Might be unrelated, might not be. Linda, would you please switch to the new integrated google analytics instead of using the snippet in your customization. I'd like to see if anything changes after you do that.]

    I did what you asked (switched to integrated analytics and took out snippet) and no, there appears to be no changes. In fact, if it is even possible, things are worse. Time on site is now "0" as in ZERO seconds. There's one page for every one visit. the bounce and newbies percentages are essentially 100 percent. PLEASE, SOMEONE HELP ME.

    Thanks,
    Linda
  • AndyAndy Registered Users Posts: 50,016 Major grins
    edited May 24, 2010
    LCKatMPN wrote: »
    PLEASE, SOMEONE HELP ME.

    Thanks,
    Linda

    Linda, we are helping. Bigwebguy is neck-deep in GA. Stay tuned please.
    Andy

    Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
  • LCKatMPNLCKatMPN Registered Users Posts: 72 Big grins
    edited May 24, 2010
    Andy wrote: »
    Linda, we are helping. Bigwebguy is neck-deep in GA. Stay tuned please.

    Thank you.
    Very much.
  • MishkaMishka Registered Users Posts: 236 Major grins
    edited May 24, 2010
    I am having the EXACT same problem and was just about to email the help desk! Just on May 21st my stats went haywire. I'm getting ridiculous numbers of "direct hits": 2,000+ a day that are only staying on for .05 of second.

    Something is going wrong...maybe something to do with smugmug implementing the code for GA? I did just move my tracking code to the new smumgug field and took out the code on my advanced customization field today. I was hoping that would solve the problem, but I'm still seeing ridiculous numbers.

    I'm hoping there's a solution here...
    Mary
    Pittsburgh Wedding Photographer
    Pittsburgh Wedding Photography Blog
  • rsquaredrsquared Registered Users Posts: 306 Major grins
    edited May 25, 2010
    My stats are all funny too... But looking at it a little closer, it looks like the problem is that GA thinks each pageview is from a different visitor even when it isn't.

    Here's the deal: I haven't done much with my site in a long time, and I'm slowly working on getting it back up and running. In the mean time, I average 2-3 visitors a day. On the 21st, GA shows 100 visitors (quite the record for me) but with the same 1 page per visit and no time on the site that others are seeing. When I drilled down though, it looks like it was really just 2 visitors. E.g. when I looked a browser stats, 67 of those visitors had firefox and 33 had chrome. Screen colors shows 67 at 16-bit and 33 at 32-bit. 67 visitors from one ISP and 33 from another, etc.

    The next two days I only had a total of 11 hits, but still one pageview per visitor. Today I'm back up to 50, but again drilling into the stats shows 44 of those came from one browser, 3 from another, and 3 from a third; 44 visitors had the same bit depth; 47 had flash; 44 had java; 47 on Windows; 44 from one ISP; I think you get the point....

    Not sure whether this is on the SmugMug side, or GA, but the timing of it right after SM adds a GA related feature makes it seem rather funny to be on GA's side, and I can't seem to find any reference to people outside of SmugMug screaming about this.... ne_nau.gif
    Rob Rogers -- R Squared Photography (Nikon D90)
  • bwgbwg Registered Users, Retired Mod Posts: 2,119 SmugMug Employee
    edited May 25, 2010
    i believe we just fixed the GA reporting. Things should be back to normal in the next few days. Thanks for your patience.
    Pedal faster
  • bwgbwg Registered Users, Retired Mod Posts: 2,119 SmugMug Employee
    edited May 25, 2010
    bigwebguy wrote: »
    i believe we just fixed the GA reporting. Things should be back to normal in the next few days. Thanks for your patience.
    I should mention that new visits will probably be higher than normal for the next few days as the cookies get reset. pages/visit, avg. time on site and bounce rate should be back to normal pretty quickly.
    Pedal faster
  • MishkaMishka Registered Users Posts: 236 Major grins
    edited May 25, 2010
    bigwebguy wrote: »
    I should mention that new visits will probably be higher than normal for the next few days as the cookies get reset. pages/visit, avg. time on site and bounce rate should be back to normal pretty quickly.

    Thanks! Glad to hear you found a solution!
    Mary
    Pittsburgh Wedding Photographer
    Pittsburgh Wedding Photography Blog
  • LCKatMPNLCKatMPN Registered Users Posts: 72 Big grins
    edited May 25, 2010
    Well, then, that was quick(er) than issues such as this in the past! I trust that your trust in me in spotting things such as this is well-warranted and I appreciate the attention you paid in keeping me informed of the progress.

    I would like to know, here on in private email, what the issue was. You mention "cookies" so that must be a part of it.

    Also, please answer:

    1.) Will the numbers be re-adjusted? In other words, the numbers that were dramatically off, will they be re-set so that I won't be showing (over time, i.e., year-to-date, such a dramatic drop in pages per view and time on site and dramatic increases in bounce rates? (Again, while the "increase" in visitors is nice, not so much when the stats show they were on site for virtually a second. This averaged in with more healthy numbers shows a marked decrease in site engagement.)

    2.) What can be done on my end to avoid this in the future? Anything?


    Thanks again,
    Linda
    www.MyPaperNow.com
  • bwgbwg Registered Users, Retired Mod Posts: 2,119 SmugMug Employee
    edited May 25, 2010
    The issue only affected non subdomained custom domains (customdomain.com, but not photos.customdomain.com). We were trying to track the same domain for the smugmug google tracker and user google tracker. The trackers kept overwriting the same cookie, effectively creating new sessions (visits) each page view.

    there is no way to fix the past days of incorrect tracking. i'm sorry for that. You can always exclude those days from your reporting.

    this was a bug in our implementation of the tracker, nothing you did.

    thanks for your patience.

    Lee
    Pedal faster
  • LCKatMPNLCKatMPN Registered Users Posts: 72 Big grins
    edited May 26, 2010
    bigwebguy wrote: »
    The issue only affected non subdomained custom domains (customdomain.com, but not photos.customdomain.com). We were trying to track the same domain for the smugmug google tracker and user google tracker. The trackers kept overwriting the same cookie, effectively creating new sessions (visits) each page view.

    there is no way to fix the past days of incorrect tracking. i'm sorry for that. You can always exclude those days from your reporting.

    this was a bug in our implementation of the tracker, nothing you did.

    thanks for your patience.

    Lee

    Thank you for getting back to me on this. I wish it were that easy to remove the few days (or more) of tracking, but it is what it is.

    I haven't checked the analytics yet, but I'd like to know this:

    I switched to the "google tracker" and took out the snippet code from my advanced customization. Will my numbers moving forward still be comparing apples to apples and oranges to organes? In other words, does the "google tracker" collect/report the same numbers as if I were back with the code snippet in advanced customization? Or do I need to switch back?

    I also would recommend that some care be taken the next time something is launched (as I'm sure you do already). But maybe a quick note here would help. The last time I spotted something amiss with GoogleAnalytics, which turned out to be something amiss, it was when NiceNames was introduced. That time it took a bit longer to convince people something was odd, so I am very heartened to have not had to wait so long this time. And for that, thank you. I trust when I look at the figures later today or tomorrow all will be back to normal. I'll let you know if I have an issue.

    But, please, answer my question above. That would help, too!


    Thanks again,
    Linda
    www.MyPaperNow.com

    Thanks,
    Linda
  • bwgbwg Registered Users, Retired Mod Posts: 2,119 SmugMug Employee
    edited May 26, 2010
    LCKatMPN wrote: »
    Thank you for getting back to me on this. I wish it were that easy to remove the few days (or more) of tracking, but it is what it is.

    I haven't checked the analytics yet, but I'd like to know this:

    I switched to the "google tracker" and took out the snippet code from my advanced customization. Will my numbers moving forward still be comparing apples to apples and oranges to organes? In other words, does the "google tracker" collect/report the same numbers as if I were back with the code snippet in advanced customization? Or do I need to switch back?

    entering your code in the control panel tracks the same way as adding the snippet in your footer. it allows us to optimize the tracking to make pages load faster, make sure everyone is on the latest and greatest version of the google tracking code and to more accurately track pageviews.
    Pedal faster
  • LCKatMPNLCKatMPN Registered Users Posts: 72 Big grins
    edited May 26, 2010
    bigwebguy wrote: »
    entering your code in the control panel tracks the same way as adding the snippet in your footer. it allows us to optimize the tracking to make pages load faster, make sure everyone is on the latest and greatest version of the google tracking code and to more accurately track pageviews.

    Thank you for your quick response.
    Using the control panel is a great idea in terms of ensuring things run smoothly over time and in step with updated versions of the Google tracking code. That there was a glitch, oh well. It was fixed in a matter of days and not weeks and I'm sure lessons were learned from it. Thanks again for your work on this, and for letting us in the loop on what had happened. It adds to that feeling that we're in this journey together and that over time the trust we develop is a good thing for addressing issues in a timely manner.


    Thanks again,
    Linda
  • snapssnaps Registered Users Posts: 5 Beginner grinner
    edited May 27, 2010
    GA-Web Property ID?
    Please, what is the new "Google Analytics-Web Property ID" that now shows up on our Settings tab under the control panel? I just loaded GA a few weeks ago and still learning the ropes... But I haven't noticed this on SM before. Do I need to put some code here?
  • denisegoldbergdenisegoldberg Administrators Posts: 14,404 moderator
    edited May 27, 2010
    snaps wrote: »
    Please, what is the new "Google Analytics-Web Property ID" that now shows up on our Settings tab under the control panel?
    See http://releasenotes.blogs.smugmug.com/2010/05/20/google-analytics-new-upload-button-and-bug-fixes/.

    --- Denise
    https://www.denisegoldberg.com ... https://denise.smugmug.com

    Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
  • snapssnaps Registered Users Posts: 5 Beginner grinner
    edited May 27, 2010
    denisegoldberg wrote: »
    See http://releasenotes.blogs.smugmug.com/2010/05/20/google-analytics-new-upload-button-and-bug-fixes/.

    --- Denise

    Thanks Denise! I missed that one.... :) Monique
  • AndyAndy Registered Users Posts: 50,016 Major grins
    edited May 27, 2010
    snaps wrote: »
    Please, what is the new "Google Analytics-Web Property ID" that now shows up on our Settings tab under the control panel? I just loaded GA a few weeks ago and still learning the ropes... But I haven't noticed this on SM before. Do I need to put some code here?

    Also nicely described right here in our awesome help pages http://www.smugmug.com/help/control-panel

    thumb.gif
    Andy

    Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
  • snapssnaps Registered Users Posts: 5 Beginner grinner
    edited May 27, 2010
    Thank you Andy. Do you know if anyone currently using GA has lost any stats when they removed the traditional script from the head tag and replaced it with the new UA-ID under the settings tab? Curious, mostly.

    This entire forum is brilliant, btw... so much information. Thanks again for your help.

    Monique
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