• majorAlexa

        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.

          Let your business shine with Listings AI
          Moz Local

          Let your business shine with Listings AI

          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.

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
          Moz Pro

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

          Learn more
        • 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

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
          Moz API

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

          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. Android Webview & Safari (in-app) without any referrer information in Google Analytics

        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.

        Android Webview & Safari (in-app) without any referrer information in Google Analytics

        Reporting & Analytics
        3
        11
        9049
        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.
        • SarahLK
          SarahLK last edited by

          I've got a client that gets a considerable amount of traffic that:

          1. Enters on an interior page (that we are running properly tagged ads for on various platforms)
          2. Bounces
          3. Has a browser of either Android Webview or Safari (in-app) which I believe indicates the website is being viewed within a mobile app
          4. Has no referrer data: (direct) / (none)

          We've tested several scenarios (Facebook app, Gmail app, etc.) and ruled them out. Anyone know what this might be?

          Thanks in advance!!

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • JonoAlderson
            JonoAlderson @SarahLK last edited by

            Oh, excellent work!

            Good to know for the future!

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • SarahLK
              SarahLK @JonoAlderson last edited by

              UPDATE: We were able to get tracking code on the Pandora ads and determined that it was the source of nearly all of those visits. So, it WAS Pandora all along.

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

                Ah, that's interesting!

                We don't get Pandora over here in the UK so it's been a while since I touched it. Does it still require/run in flash? That might go some way to explaining weird referrer data...

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • SarahLK
                  SarahLK @JonoAlderson last edited by

                  Hey! I haven't resolved the issue yet, but I'm working with the client to add some tracking to all of their Pandora ads. I'm thinking that might be the culprit. Turns out the are running several ad types so there are some that may not be tagged after all.

                  The implementation isn't the issue, because the only time we see this 11 issue is from this specific traffic source. Everything else behaves normally and typically aligns with metrics we get from other sources.

                  I will definitely keep you posted about updates. (And will probably throw a party when I finally get it resolved!)

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

                    Hey Sarah,

                    Just checking back to see if you're still struggling with this?

                    SarahLK 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • JonoAlderson
                      JonoAlderson last edited by

                      Hah!

                      Ah, now, that's particularly interesting. Got a link to the site handy? Might be worth exploring the implementation.

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • SarahLK
                        SarahLK @JonoAlderson last edited by

                        The more I learn about this, the less I know.

                        It appears that each individual session is actually being counted as 11 sessions. Unless, of course, 11 people from the same small town visited the website on the same day, viewed the same pages and entered the exact same typo into the coupon code box.

                        Everything my mystery traffic does appears to happen in multiples of 11. I'd love to think that it's just the Internet reminding me that Spinal Tap is awesome, but I suspect there may be more to it.

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • JonoAlderson
                          JonoAlderson @SarahLK last edited by

                          Yikes, definitely sounds like there's some exploring to be done!

                          I'm going to see if I can rope in some smart people to help, and get back to you.

                          SarahLK 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • SarahLK
                            SarahLK @JonoAlderson last edited by

                            Thank you so much for your response!

                            Yep. I've looked at it by screen resolution, device, location, ISP, demographics...just about everything. Every indication is that this is NOT bot traffic. The distribution percentages of the various attributes are all fairly similar to the "regular" traffic. The only exception is that my phantom traffic appears to be a little older. The traffic patterns also follow the regular traffic, and those patterns are usually influenced by offline advertising efforts.

                            This feels like some kind of rogue mobile ad campaign, but we have ruled out all mobile campaigns that we are knowingly running (Facebook, Instagram, Google Display on Pandora, etc.). We are also seeing bounce rates significantly higher than the rest of our mobile campaign traffic which would theoretically rule out the possibility that our tracking code is getting stripped out somehow on some of our campaigns. We have ruled out both promotional and transactional emails.

                            This is easily the most frustrating analytics mystery I've ever encountered!

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

                              Hey there,

                              My gut feeling is that this sounds like bot traffic.

                              Many generic systems represent themselves as safari-compatible agents, given that this is one of the main mobile web platforms.

                              I'd be interested in understanding how this traffic looks when you segment it by other attributes; specifically, screen resolution, colour depth and a few other of the 'system' variables in GA tend to give some good clues as to whether this is human or bot traffic. Have you explored these variables, and seen unusual patterns (such as everybody using the same browser, or the same screen resolution)?

                              Even if there's variation in these areas, it's worth looking at the patterns over time - there are a lot of systems which, for example, monitor site performance, and as part of this legitimately emulate a variety of browsers... However, they tend to do so consistently, e.g,. at the same time of day.

                              I'd definitely do some digging to see if you can see patterns which suggest that this isn't real traffic, and then, either way, work out what the next steps are.

                              I presume that you've enabled the setting in your GA profile to exclude common bots/agents?

                              SarahLK 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

                              • ahirai

                                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 | | ahirai
                                0
                              • Johnroger

                                Strange landing page in Google Analytics

                                Hello MOZ Community, The website in question is https://x-y.com/ When i looked at the landing pages report in GA , x-y.com is appended at the end of every URL like this. https://x-y.com/x-y.com When i open the above URL in GA interface, it shows page not found. This is obvious as there is no such URL.
                                The metrics like sessions, Users, Bounce rate all look good. In the property settings, The default URL is written like this http:// cell-gate.com (Please note that s is missing in property settings). But how is traffic tracked correctly How do i solve this problem. What settings should we change to make the landing pages report look ok Thanks

                                Reporting & Analytics | | Johnroger
                                0
                              • mztobias

                                No-indexed pages are still showing up as landing pages in Google Analytics

                                Hello, My website is a local job board. I de-indexed all of the job listing pages on my site (anything that starts with http://www.localwisejobs.com/job/). When I search site:localwisejobs.com/job/, nothing shows up. So I think that means the pages are not being indexed. When I look in Google Analytics at Acquisition > Search Engine Optimization > Landing Pages, none of the job listing pages show up. But when I look at Acquisition > Channels > Organic and then click Landing Page as the primary dimension, the /job pages show up in there. Why am I seeing this discrepency in Organic Landing pages? And why would the /job pages be showing up as landing pages even though they aren't indexed?

                                Reporting & Analytics | | mztobias
                                0
                              • RASEO

                                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 | | RASEO
                                1
                              • DaveGuyMan

                                Is it possible to use Google Tag Manager to pass a user’s text input into a form field to Google analytics?

                                Hey Everyone, I finally figured out how to use auto event tracking with Google Tag Manager, but didn't get the data I wanted. I want to see what users are typing into the search field on my site (the URL structure of my site isn't set up properly to use GA's built-in site search tracking). So, I set up the form submit event tracking in Google Tag Manager and used the following as my event tracking parameters: Category: Search Action: Search Value When I test and look in Google Analytics I just see: "search" and "search value." I wanted to see the text that I searched on my site. Not just the Action and Category of the event.... Is what I'm trying to do even possible? Do I need to set up a different event tracking parameter? Thanks everyone!

                                Reporting & Analytics | | DaveGuyMan
                                0
                              • essentialworld

                                On google analytics what is Mozilla Compatible Agent under browser and OS?

                                On my Google Analytics (I know this is not SEOMOZ) I have a lot of visits from mozilla compatible agent with 100% bounce rate. Does anybody know what this is?

                                Reporting & Analytics | | essentialworld
                                0
                              • Darden

                                Google Analytics and DNS change

                                Our new alumni application is going be tested at domain uva.imodules.com .  We are going to collect traffic data with a Google analytics account number UA-884652-XX. So going to uva.imodules.com/myPage.html would send its data to Google Analytics with that account number.     Then when it is ready for production we are going to just change the domain name of the application and switch the DNS over to dardencommunity.darden.virginia.edu .  So going to dardencommunity.darden.virginia.edu /myPage.html would send its data to  Google Analtics with that SAME account number.  Aside from having the testing domain data in the same profile are there any other issues/problems we may run into?

                                Reporting & Analytics | | Darden
                                0
                              • vijayvasu

                                Google Analytics Admin account not allowing us to add other users?

                                Our Google Analytics Administrator account is not giving us access to the User Manager, and because of that we are unable to add users; have you ever ran in to a problem such as this, if so what was your solution. Thanks a Billion impressions, Vijay E2qE9.jpg

                                Reporting & Analytics | | vijayvasu
                                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 - 2025 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.