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 weâre 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 as referring domain
-
Hi all,
a colleague asked a question, which I could not answer (never even noticed this "problem")

When we are logged into our GA account and go the referring domains section, we find Google. I always thought that these visitors came via Google Image Search, but not all of them do.
Most of them come via "/imgres", but some come via "/" (always thought that "/" was the homepage?), "/url" and "//"
Maybe I am just stupid, but honestly I could not explain what these strings mean... or how these visitors landed on our site...
Can you help me???
-
Considering that (not provided) comprises 75% of my search queries, do you really think that Google will be transparent with this?
-
Hi Mike,
before I posted my question I searched on Google concerning this topic and read your quote.
It helps, but I would like to know the exact Google "source" these referrals come from...
/imgres = Google Image Search
/ = ?
// = ?
/url = ?
but thanks for your effort

-
This is from Google:
Not all referrals from Google.com domains come through organic search or AdWords ad listings. Referrals may come from a variety of sources, including Google Groups posts, base.google.com listings, or static pages on related Google sites. Such visits are tagged as [referral] instead of [organic] or [cpc].
cited: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1011811?hl=en
I hope that helps!
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 -
Google Search Console not loading some resources
When I check an URL with Search Console it cannot load some page resources, even from other domains (like: ssl.google-analytics.com, www.facebook.com and www.google-analytics.com).
Reporting & Analytics | | TottiataHUN
Have any of you experienced this issue?
Steps to reproduce: open Google Search Console check an URL click "View crawled page" link select "More info" tab click "Page resources" {?}/{?} couldn't be loaded When I check the listed resources, all of them can be loaded from a web browser.
So I do not understand why Google cannot load them.
And there is no additional info why the resources could not be loaded.
Any ideas? google-search-console-other-error-1.png google-search-console-other-error-2.png0 -
% 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 -
Referral Traffic from Google
Hello, I have a question about my company's new website. I've worked in SEO and studied Google Analytics results for a few years now but have never really come across something like this. I started in this position in January of this year and when I started breaking down the traffic sources in Google Analytics, I noticed most of the traffic was coming from Google.com as a referral source. I had never seen Google.com as a referral source before so I looked into options for what it could be. It was not a paid ad and our organic traffic was coming through in Analytics, Before I could get any further, our new website was launched (we switched CRM's to WordPress) and the referral traffic from google went from 2,966 in January of 2015 to 22 in February 2015. for more comparison, in February of 2014, the referral traffic from Google was 2,496. I expected a drop when we switched CRM's but we correctly re-directed all pages and created a new sitemap and our organic traffic is up since the switch (not enough to cover drop in referral). I thought at first this had to do with our Google sellers account being de-activated when we made the switch, but I quickly fixed this over a month ago and no change. I'm wondering if anyone has ever seen Google.com come through as a referral source in Google Analytics and if they we're able to figure out what it actually was. This would be a great help! Thank you, Alex
Reporting & Analytics | | RASEO1 -
Links On Expired Domains
Does anybody know if a link on an expired domain affects your SEO? I'm just asking because the SEO agency we used before used to create websites and then link to our company - very spammy. We have since ditched this agecny, however they wanted an extortionate amount to remove these links. Therefore, we decided to wait until these domains expired and then the links wouldn't exist. However, I am now completing a link audit and some of these sites are still appearing in the results (obtained from Link Research Tools) but I cannot access the links because the domains have expired. Can anyone help?
Reporting & Analytics | | AAttias0 -
Google Analytics Showing Inflated Product Revenue
Hi- For the month of Feb on two of our sites we are seeing inflated product revenues. I have not seen this before and I am not having any luck searching for answers. Here is the issue: Product B sells for $159.95 For the month of Feb we sold 3 thus revenue should be ~$479.85 GA is showing Product B's revenue at $3,360.00 I read online that sometimes folks will bookmark the receipt page and that can cause this and we would need to put a catch in place for this but I am guessing this is not the case as it is happening on two sites. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Reporting & Analytics | | K2_Sports0 -
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 -
500 errors and impact on google rankings
Since the launch of our newly designed website about 6 months ago, we are experiencing a high number of 500 server errors (>2000). Attempts to resolve these errors have been unsuccessful to date. We have just started to notice a consistent and sustained drop in rankings despite our hard sought efforts to correct. Two questions... can very high levels of 500 errors adversely effect our google rankings? And, if this is the case, what type of specialist (what are they called) has expertise to investigate and fix this issue. I should also mention that the sitemap also goes down on a regular basis, which some have stated is due to the size of the site (>500 pages). Don't know if they're part of the same problem? Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | ahw0