Analytics

Google Analytics can be the key tool to understanding how to improve your SEO and strategy. Here’s some analytics tips & guidance specifically about getting the most from this great tool.

How To Identify & Block Spam Referral & BotTraffic In Google Analytics

All of us that use Google Analytics are to one extent or another blighted by bot and spam referral traffic. For those of us which rely heavily on data for business and marketing decisions its a real nuisance.

Whats the problem with bot traffic & spam referrals in Google Analytics?

  • It can seriously reduce reported conversion rate
  • It can negatively impact reported bounce rate
  • It can over-inflate reported traffic volumes

In short it makes analytics data unreliable. It’s particularly frustrating when comparing data for periods of time as inevitably the comparisons can’t be trusted if you suspect data in 1 period is tainted.

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Bing Organic Traffic Drop – Showing As Bing.com Referral in Analytics

Update: This now seems to be a non issue as Bing, or Analytics, i’m not sure which, have made a change resulting in Analytics once again correctly identifying all Bing organic traffic as bing / organic from the 19th August.

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You’re probably here as like many webmasters and marketers you have noticed that recently there has been an apparent and significant drop in your Bing organic traffic showing in Google Analytics reports. The good news is that actually your site hasn’t had some kind of Bing ranking penalty, rather something is afoot that is making some of your bing / organic traffic actually register as bing.com / referral in your Analytics.

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How to track email sales and traffic with Google Analytics

Email marketing for many businesses is a significant driver of traffic and revenue and there are some excellent email marketing campaign tools out there such as MailChimp and Campaign Monitor which offer the ability to create and send effective emails. The problem with these tools is the reporting options that they offer, although impressive, is limited to email interaction data such as open rates, clickthrough rates, bounces and so on. Conversion, sales and revenue data isnt readily available however except in limited instances e.g. I believe MailChimp has a module that will work with Drupal sites to measure sales. Our good old friend Google Analytics enables you to track email sales and traffic.

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How to track affiliate traffic & sales in Google Analytics

You’ve got Google Analytics setup perfectly to accurately track almost all traffic sources and sales but you’re really frustrated that you cant track your affiliate traffic and sales and it messes your whole stats up, aaargh! Well dont dismay theres a relatively ‘easy’ way to get this sorted so that all your affiliate links get traffic and sales credit in analytics.

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