• BBgmoro

        See all notifications

        Skip to content
        Moz logo Menu open Menu close
        • Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Pro Home
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Home
          • STAT
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Home
          • Compare SEO Products
          • Moz Data
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Link Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • MozBar
          • More Free SEO Tools
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Moz Academy
          • MozCon
          • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          • Small Business Solutions
          • The Moz Story
          • New Releases
        • Log in
        • Log out
        • Products
          • Moz Pro

            Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

          • Moz Local

            Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

          • STAT

            SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

          • Moz API

            Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

          • Compare SEO Products

            See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

          • Moz Data

            Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

          Turn SEO data into actionable content briefs

          Turn SEO data into actionable content briefs

          Learn more
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis

            Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

          • Keyword Explorer

            Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

          • Link Explorer

            Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

          • Competitive Research

            Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

          • MozBar

            See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

          • More Free SEO Tools

            Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

          Let your business shine with Listings AI

          Let your business shine with Listings AI

          Get found
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO

            The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

          • SEO Learning Center

            Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

          • On-Demand Webinars

            Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

          • How-To Guides

            Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

          • Moz Academy

            Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

          • MozCon

            Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

          Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
          Moz API

          Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

          Find your plan
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers

            Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

          • Small Business Solutions

            Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

          • Agency Solutions

            Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

          • Enterprise Solutions

            Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

          • The Moz Story

            Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

          • New Releases

            Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

          Surface actionable competitive intel
          New Feature

          Surface actionable competitive intel

          Learn More
        • Log in
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Dashboard
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Dashboard
          • Moz Academy
        • Avatar
          • Moz Home
          • Notifications
          • Account & Billing
          • Manage Users
          • Community Profile
          • My Q&A
          • My Videos
          • Log Out

        The Moz Q&A Forum

        • Forum
        • Questions
        • My Q&A
        • Users
        • Ask the Community

        Welcome to the Q&A Forum

        Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

        1. Home
        2. SEO Tactics
        3. Reporting & Analytics
        4. Will having a subdomain cause referral traffic from the domain name?

        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.

        Will having a subdomain cause referral traffic from the domain name?

        Reporting & Analytics
        3
        6
        5220
        Loading More Posts
        • Watching

          Notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread.

        • Not Watching

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread if category is not ignored.

        • Ignoring

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Do not show question in unread.

        • Oldest to Newest
        • Newest to Oldest
        • Most Votes
        Reply
        • Reply as question
        Locked
        This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
        • debi_zyx
          debi_zyx last edited by

          Hi!

          One of our clients has a site with the store on a subdomain: store.example.com.  When we've set up goals for order confirmation pages, we often see most of the sources attributed to example.com.  Is this because of the subdomain issue?

          How would we correct it so that we would see as the referring source for the goal the site that sent to the root domain originally, and not the site that sent to the subdomain?

          Thanks!

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Everett
            Everett @debi_zyx last edited by

            I can't speak for all analytics programs, but I can say that YES - with Google Analytics and Omniture, at least - clicks from the subdomain to the main domain will show up as referral traffic on a default installation.

            However, there are ways around this. For instance:
            http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55524

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • debi_zyx
              debi_zyx @dylantovey last edited by

              Hi Dylan,

              Thanks - that was very helpful.  I sent the link off to the site webmaster, so hopefully that will be taken care of.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • dylantovey
                dylantovey last edited by

                Hi,

                Purely on personal experience (don't know if it applies universally) I think you are correct.

                Our Australian site is site.com/order/ and has never had this problem. Our UK site is order.site.com and is the only site where we have noticed this occuring (i.e. sub-domain being treated as an entirely separate domain)

                Google also ahs some good resources on this:

                http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/concepts/gaConceptsDomains.html

                This also might be useful if you want to adjust the analytics code as opposed to the site structure

                http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/tracking/gaTrackingSite.html#domainSubDomains

                Dylan

                debi_zyx 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • debi_zyx
                  debi_zyx @dylantovey last edited by

                  Thanks, Dylan.  That's something to bear in mind if the client would be interested.  But back to the original question: is this because store.example.com is a different subdomain?  If it were example.com/store - would we be having this issue?

                  Thanks!

                  Everett 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • dylantovey
                    dylantovey last edited by

                    First touch tracking might assist in getting clearer analytics. We tested it in a similar situation and it did make things much clearer. Note that it isn't necessarily tracking the immediate referrer to the store or order page - but the first one.

                    Seomoz itself has a really good blog roundup on the process

                    http://www.seomoz.org/blog/first-touch-tracking-in-google-analytics

                    Cheers

                    Dylan

                    debi_zyx 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • 1 / 1
                    • First post
                      Last post

                    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.

                    • See all categories

                    Related Questions

                    • Davit1985

                      Does Search Console data include GMB traffic? Branded CTR is 37.8%- Good or Bad?

                      Hey all, Per Search Console our branded keyword CTR is 37.8%.  But when that keyword is searched our GMB listing shows up on top of the #1 result. For the same 90 day period GMB shows another 35% visits to our GMB (based on the number of impressions and visits to our GMB page) listing when the same keyword is searched. My question is this. Does Search console data include clicks that came from our GMB listing or not? My thinking is like this: If GMB traffic is not calculated in search console then it means that 72.8% of people looking for our brand will end up on our site on way or another 9organic #1 result plus GMB listing visits) We are also doing PPC for this very keyword that has gets almost 20% of the remaining traffic.  So after adding all up we are loosing about 8% of our branded traffic to people who are doing adwords. When you search our brand you normally see 2, 3 competitor's adwords ads. Does anyone know how this works exactly? And if you don't mind sharing your branded keyword CTR's,  so I can compare to ours please. I would love to compare to a site that actually has a GMB listing ranking for the same keyword Thanks in advance, Davit

                      Reporting & Analytics | | Davit1985
                      0
                    • lmoraes

                      Paid traffic or "Paid Search" is not showing in my Google Analytics

                      Hi, I have two campaigns running in Google Adwords or Google Ads now and I saw in Google Ads account that I had 5 clicks today (09/18/2018) but when I try to search for this clicks in my Google Analytics in ACQUISITION > All Traffic > Channels I don't find nothing about "Paid Search" or something like that. Bellow is a picture of my Google Analytics account to prove it. The accounts are linked and I can find the 2 campaigns in the Analytics. How can I interpret this picture? Where the paid traffic is showing? or not showing there? Thanks Leandro uvAtrsg

                      Reporting & Analytics | | lmoraes
                      0
                    • Taysir

                      Vanity URL vs domain URL

                      Hi guys, Our CEO is having an interview with a known broadcaster on radio. During the interview he will mention a specific URL www.example.com/marketingcampaign that we want track on Google Analytics, therefore behaving like a vanity URL redirecting to the actual URL www.example.com/resources/primary-keyword-2018. Would this work the same way a vanity URL in terms of tracking or not such as following guideline here ? I am asking because vanity URLs are supposed to be completely different domain name that gets purchased and in our case it is the same domain name just with a different URI. thanks guys!

                      Reporting & Analytics | | Taysir
                      0
                    • SharonEKG

                      Impressions clicks and traffic drop

                      Hello,
                      So something weird is going on, i run a few websites for clients, few different CMS. there has been a constant increase in traffic and ranking on one wordpress website and now the squarespace website is climbing up in rankings in the past few months. both has GTM installed for months, which has been optimized regularly.
                      for the wordpress website, in the past 2 weeks, starting June 4th, on google search console the clicks and impressions has started going down to the point that i lost 90% of clicks and impressions and traffic on analytics has started dropping a few days later, now at about 60% less traffic. for the Squarespace website, exactly the same thing, started June 7th and drop in clicks/impressions (though ranking increase) and then traffic drop. checked both GTM for recent changes incase of wrong code implement, no changes, no new major issues.
                      different hostings different CMS, no link between them.   i just cant put my finger what is going on. anyone got any idea what is going on?

                      Reporting & Analytics | | SharonEKG
                      0
                    • Kevin_P

                      Why is Indeed.com traffic appearing as organic in Google Analytics?

                      A large number of sessions in my client's Google Analytics account appear to come from medium: organic and source:Indeed. Since I'm focused on SEO for this project, I'd prefer that Indeed be treated as referral traffic. Any ideas for fixing this issue? Also, and I'm sure the answer is no, is there a way to fix the past data in Google Analytics that has already reported Indeed as an organic medium?

                      Reporting & Analytics | | Kevin_P
                      0
                    • KathleenDC

                      Fixing Bounce Rate between Domain and Subdomain

                      Currently, the way our site is set up, our clients generally visit our homepage and then login through a separate page that is a subdomain, or they can read our blog/support articles that are also on separate subdomains. From my understanding, this can be counted as a bounce, and I know this sorta of site structure isn't ideal, but with our current dev resources and dependencies, fixing this isn't going to happen overnight. Regardless, what would be the easiest way to implement this fix witihn the Google Analytics code? EX: If someone visits our site at X.com, and then wants to login at portal.X.com, I don't want to count that as a bounce. Any insight is appreciated! Thanks

                      Reporting & Analytics | | KathleenDC
                      0
                    • jayoliverwright

                      Google Analytics reporting traffic for 404 pages

                      Hi guys, Unique issue with google analytics reporting for one of our sites. GA is reporting sessions for 404 pages (landing pages, organic traffic) e.g. for this page: http://www.milkandlove.com.au/breastfeeding-dresses/index.php the page is currently a 404 page but GA (see screenshot) is reporting organic traffic (to the landing page). Does anyone know any reasons why this is happening? Cheers. http://www.milkandlove.com.au/breastfeeding-dresses/index.php GK0zDzj.jpg

                      Reporting & Analytics | | jayoliverwright
                      2
                    • Resultify

                      Google Analytics for multiple languages on multiple domains

                      Hi folks A quick question in regards to setting up Google Analytics for a website with multiple languages on multiple domains. The domains that needs to be tracked are: www.example.com -> English www.example.se -> Swedish www.example.dk -> Danish To my best knowledge this can be acheived in Google Analytids using 3 different setups: Different accounts Different properties Profiles What would you guys consider the best approach?
                      Pros and cons? Have a great day Fredrik

                      Reporting & Analytics | | Resultify
                      0

                    Get started with Moz Pro!

                    Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                    Start my free trial
                    Products
                    • Moz Pro
                    • Moz Local
                    • Moz API
                    • Moz Data
                    • STAT
                    • Product Updates
                    Moz Solutions
                    • SMB Solutions
                    • Agency Solutions
                    • Enterprise Solutions
                    • Digital Marketers
                    Free SEO Tools
                    • Domain Authority Checker
                    • Link Explorer
                    • Keyword Explorer
                    • Competitive Research
                    • Brand Authority Checker
                    • Local Citation Checker
                    • MozBar Extension
                    • MozCast
                    Resources
                    • Blog
                    • SEO Learning Center
                    • Help Hub
                    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                    • How-to Guides
                    • Moz Academy
                    • API Docs
                    About Moz
                    • About
                    • Team
                    • Careers
                    • Contact
                    Why Moz
                    • Case Studies
                    • Testimonials
                    Get Involved
                    • Become an Affiliate
                    • MozCon
                    • Webinars
                    • Practical Marketer Series
                    • MozPod
                    Connect with us

                    Contact the Help team

                    Join our newsletter
                    Moz logo
                    © 2021 - 2026 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                    • Accessibility
                    • Terms of Use
                    • Privacy

                    Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.