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.
Google Analytics Organic Search Keywords Suddenly Displaying FulL Urls
-
In my Google Analytics, the top keywords for Organic Search are suddenyl displaying full URLs. For example, now the third and fourth keywords are http://www.domain.com/highly-specific-URL.
These have all started recently around the same day, July 12th. I've checked back, and we've made no internal changes to the site around that time that could affect this.
Any thoughts on this?
Thanks!
P.S. It might be related to rich snippets, but I cannot tell at this point.
-
We are seeing this too! The homepage URL has become a top term among the usual top terms. For multiple clients, all beginning around July 14th.
Checked - devices, regions, OS, browser, landing page, visitor type, etc. Everything is different, so no one cause. Again, three different clients have gone from less than 5 URL visits a day to 50 -80 a day.
-
Hi Josh! Did you see Robert's response to your screencap? He raises some very good questions in it. Please let us know, thanks.
-
Matt,
First thing, is you said this started on 7/12. Was there anything done with GA code placement then or prior (say within the previous month)? And, do you have a bounce rate that is at or near zero?
Second, Can you give me any of the KW terms that are showing for you (don't need other data on that).
Next, can you take visitor flow for a week, and then juxtapose it against what you are showing re KW terms and urls to see if you have any "ahaa" moment.
From experience I can tell you that if you have GA code in more than once it will affect things but I do not recall ever seeing this type of occurrence. You are obviously in the right area on GA so you should see KWs with amounts to the right. (I am assuming your GA code is in the head tag).
Also, other than GA, are you running any other type of analytics program?
Now, if you take where you are and select secondary dimension, then select traffic sources and then landing page.
Does this change your urls on the left to keywords and the next item to the right being the url?I am going to send an email to a person who only does high end analysis and is G certified in GA. With all the redaction there is really no info, but I will ask him generally if he has seen that occur before. Let me know on the above as I do not know when he will respond this close to the weekend.
Let me know. Thanks
-
Hi Robert,
I'm attaching a redacted screenshot of the GA view I'm using.
Please let me know if you see anything!
Best,
Matt
-
Josh,
I use GA a lot and have not experienced that. If you can either put an image (use something where you can show everything like awesome screenshot) here or if it is better, PM me, I will look at it to see what is happening. If I don't have an answer, I will shoot an email to an expert (whose only works is GA and other analytics) with the screen shot.Thanks
-
Hi Robert,
I'm going to Traffic Sources - Search - Organic. The primary dimension is Keyword. There is no secondary dimension. Underneath Keyword column, URLs are appearing as top keywords. There are keywords mixed in, but they occur later.
Please let me know.
Thanks.
-
Josh,
Under Traffic Sources - Search - Organic, You are saying your primary dimension is Keyword, and under that first column, there are urls as opposed to keywords?
It is not under a secondary dimension, correct?Just clarifying before going further.
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 -
Would updating Meta Titles affect Google analytics tracking?
Hi All, I need a little bit of help. We need to optimize our blog's articles Meta titles for SEO which all exceed 100 characters. I was told that if we change the titles, google analytics would split the tracking pages and count the data as 2 pages (old title and new title). Has any of you have this experience before and if so, is there a way to avoid google analytics counting this as two pages? Thanks in advance! Viviana http://analyteguru.com/ http://analyteguru.com/ http://analyteguru.com/
Reporting & Analytics | | mchoi0 -
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 -
% Change - Google analytics - how to calculate?
Hi All,
Reporting & Analytics | | JohnPalmer
I have two dates with two different numbers I want to calculate the "% Change" like google analytics, The numbers of June 2015 - 127,931 sessions
The numbers of June 2014 - 90914 sessions please tell me what is the %Change. Best. J0 -
Migrated website but Google Analytics still displays old URL's and none new?!
I migrated a website from a .aspx to a .php and hence had to 301 all the old urls to the new php ones. It's been months after and I'm not seeing any of the php pages showing results but I'm still getting results from the old .aspx pages. Has any one had any experience with this issue or knows what to do? Many thanks,
Reporting & Analytics | | CoGri0 -
How to identify rising keywords in analytics?
Hi Guys I just spotted in the Google Analytics > Traffic Sources > Search Engine Optimisation > Queries section a keyword that on the 27th Feb went from generating 35 impressions per day to 2000 impressions per day. This was down to people searching for a newly launched product. Does anyone know how I can identify any increases like this easily? I only came across this by accident, and I am 1 month behind the times. It would have been ideal to pick this up closer to the time so I could capitalise and write some great content on the topic. Thanks Paul
Reporting & Analytics | | TheUniqueSEO0 -
How do I manually add transactions to Google Analytics
We are seeing Google Analytic's drop transaction on our site so therefore all the figures are skewed. Is there a way I can manually add transactions to GA to cover the missing one?
Reporting & Analytics | | Towelsrus0 -
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