My Quora Answers
Updated: 15 Sep 2015
I love using Quora and I normally answer questions related to Google Analytics / Adobe Analytics to my best knowledge and experience. Here are my answers to some of the questions posted by the users. This post will be updated frequently.
Q: If my conversion goal is for someone to buy my product, can I find out where the user came from?
A: Yes you can.
Firstly set up event tracking for that particular button. How to set up
Then set up an event goal for that button.
Then you can see how many people complete the goal conversion (in this case clicking the button) and where they come from (source/medium) report.
Q: How do I use Google Analytics to track a Facebook profile?
A: Nope you can’t. Google doesn’t allow you to track PII ( personal identifiable information)
Q: What are the best analytics tools for tracking events?
A: What is the data accuracy problem you have with Google Analytics? It’s pretty accurate.
Q: What analytics service can be used to track events that are defined using multiple variables?
A: You can use Custom Dimensions and Custom Metrics to track these. https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/custom-dims-mets
Q: What are some reasons that PPC conversions would be attributed to referrals in Google Analytics?
A: Have you checked if there is any redirect issues on your site?
For example, go to any of your page and attach GCLID parameter to test it.
www.example.com?gclid=1234
If you see gclid parameters removed once your page has loaded, that means your site has redirect problems and thus AdWords campaigns are not being recorded properly.
Q: Why is London the second highest location on our Google Analytics?
A: I am not sure about this ” We have been informed that IP address of large corporations are based in London and that no matter where you are in the country this will show up?” but I don’t think it is possible. You might want to check your AdWords targeting settings first. If you use to target by Country like UK then your ads will show up in London. Hope this helps.
Q: Will Google Analytics ever reverse their position on not providing search terms entered over the HTTPS protocol?
A: No they shouldn’t. Do you want the companies to know what kind of keywords you are using on search engines? That’s creepy.
Q: How can I set a dimension value in Google Analytics for users that have signed up for a free trial on my website in a custom dimension I created to track trial users?
A: When you say “track each individual user”, what do you really want to track? Be careful because Google Analytics doesn’t allow you to track PII (Personal Identifiable Information) so you cannot track users by their emails, names, addresses, telephone numbers etc.
What I would do though is to set a custom dimension value like this:
“custom dimension: user_trial_signedup
scope: user
value: yes”
Then, you can create a reporting View separately for all these people who have the value yes by filtering out “Custom Dimension user_trial_signedup value equals to yes” then you can see their behavior.
Q: Why does my Google Analytics host name filter exclude all traffic?
A: Because your site actual hostname might not really start with www.
You might want to open your site in Chrome, open developer console> type in document.location.hostnam
Q: How do I get a break-down of traffic by state/province in Google Analytics?
A: Audience reports > Geo location. It will give you country and city but I don’t think so for states. You can try and see.
Q: In Myanmar (or anywhere), are there any good ideas to promote Android app installations for people who do not use/have Google Play?
A: I have seen some developers working together with Mobile Phone shops to sell the apps in package. For example, you buy a Xiaomi phone and if you pay certain $, the mobile phone shop will install this app for you (with the certain % of commission goes into mobile shop of course)
Q: How can I get useful insights from Google Analytics regarding the performance of landing pages tied to revenue?
A: You can use Landing Page Reports from Google Analytics
Behavior > Content > Landing Pages to find out about these pages (how many sessions/visits came from these pages, how much time people spent etc). However, most useful metric you can find from this report is Bounce Rate.Bounce Rate essentially tells you how much your landing pages suck or not. High Bounce Rate means people lands on your landing page but did not click on anything (or) go to another page and just simply leaves. Imagine that. All effort you put into creating these pages, the user didn’t even bother to click once! And if you have page A and B, I would recommend to run A/B tests for both and see which one has lower bounce rate. This is a start, but your question is very vague so I am not sure what type of these landing pages these are for. If your landing pages are for creating leads, or newsletter signups, I will track these with Google Analytics goal tracking and measure the conversion rates too. Hope this helps.
Q: How to get unique visitors per page on Google Analytics?
A: You shouldn’t be using unique visitors metric for a page because it is not a hit metric (pageview is a hit metric)
More about it here: http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/hits-sessions-metrics-dimensions-web-analytics/
You should be using Unique Page views per page which can be found under Behavior> content > all pages report.
Q: Could it be possible to only have a 6% bounce rate across 700 sessions, or are my Google Analytics set up wrong?
A: Typically it happens when you have same GA code being placed twice on the page. Mostly low bounce rates have something to do with wrong code set up.
Q: 98 users, 135 sessions, 166 page views, 00:01:10 avg session length, and 29% returning users. Are these good numbers for a website that hasn’t launched yet?
A: Please, please never measure a success of a website/apps just by hits or numbers alone. You need to have context of how you interpret these numbers.
What is the nature of your website? What is the sole purpose of existence of your website?
What is the action that you want users to do on your site and do they do it? Are you measuring it?
These two questions will help trying to put context into your numbers. There are many other questions that you can think of as well.
Q: Are the Google Analytics IQ and AdWords exams really free?
A: GAIQ is free now
Q: Can you track an individual behavior over many site visits in Google Analytics?
A: Absolutely. If you have GA code on your website and Ecommerce implemented, it can show how many days/ sessions the user take before he purchases. More details here: http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/excellent-analytics-tip6-measure-days-visits-to-purchase/
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1037249?hl=en
Q: I have a client that’s getting referrals from their own .com domain in Google Analytics. Why is this happening?
A: This is because you haven’t implemented cross-domain tracking. Read more here: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1034342?hl=en
Q: Is there any tool that merges/combines/consolida
A: You can use Google Spreadsheet add on to combine data from different GA views into one Google sheet.
Q: We have a problem where the number of hits in Google analytics is much less than the number of hits we get on our website?
A: I have a question for you, how are you measuring hits on your website?
Q: Is there any way of deleting specific data from Google analytics?
A: You cannot delete historic data but you can apply exclude query parameters in View settings for these emails.
Q: How can I track my e-mail campaign goals and conversions on Google Analytics?
A: You can use utm parameters for every link inside your email that is going back to your site. Then you can create goals inside your GA account. Pull out source/medium/campaign reports (under Acquisition reports) and search your email campaigns parameters to look for conversion data.
Q: Which method is best for tracking internal campaigns with Google Analytics?
A: Try enhanced Ecommerce tracking. They now enable you to track internal marketing campaigns such as banners. You can track how many times the banner is being displayed (impressions) and click through.
Q: I’m searching for books or blogs that will help me learn data-driven design. Is “Web Analytics 2.0” still a relevant book or should I look elsewhere?
A: It is still relevant one and pretty darn good one even in these days.
Q: Spam bots are destroying my analytics data. How do I fix this?
A: Try GA bot filtering. If it doesn’t work you can try source referral exclusion filters.
Q: How do I track a Goal conversion in Google Analytics for filling in contact forms when the URL stays the same?
A: You can set up a virtual page view for your form submit button. And also see if you can do the same once “thank you” appears.
Q: In Google Analytics, do visits coming from my Instagram profile, where I have a link to my website, get registered under “direct” or “social”?
A: Hi,
Currently GA doesn’t put Instagram as social channel so unless you created your own social channel to include Instagram, it will be categorised under “Referral”.
Q: When does Google Anaytics record UTM parameters for a session?
A: I think GA only passes the campaign parameters info on first page loaded.
Q: Is there a way to aggregate Source / Medium data using different Caps in Google Analytics?
A: You should use lowercase filters to filter out
- Campaign source
- Campaign medium
- Campaign name
- Campaign term/content if you have any.
Q: What is the biggest advantage of Google Analytics?
A: It’s free. You won’t get charged by the number of hits unless you exceed 10 mil hits per month which is a rare case for SMBs. Once GA code is on your site you will have handy 200+ reports to do basic analysis. And you can do customized tracking based on your requirements (all still free except you have to pay your developer :))
Q: Is there a faster way to put in Google Analytics referral spam filters?
A: You can use exclude host name filters if they all share the same host name.
Q: I’m trying to remove referrals from 3D secure/verified by Visa type services in Google Analytics. They’re stopping us identifying which channel is actually converting. The referral exclusion list in GA admin doesn’t work. What’s the best way to do this?
A: Hi
The referral exclusion list works but just not retroactively which means it only fixes new user sources.
You can try changing the date range after you enabled referral exclusion and then check if you still see these.
Q: Is there a way in Google Analytics for me to move a property from one account to another within the same GA account?
A: Hi,
Tough problem you have.
Let me give you a little background on how Google Analytics Account structure works from my knowledge.
Once you sign up at Google Analytics, you can open an Account- basically an Account which you can create multiple properties (up to 50) under it.
The idea why there are multiple properties under Account not multiple Accounts is because of the below structure.
[Photo from Google Support: Hierarchy of accounts, users, properties, and views]
You can consider an Account as your top level in hierarchy. You need to have an Account to access Google Analytics. Please don’t confuse it with Gmail account or Google account you sign in. Because you can use one Gmail account to sign into Google Analytics and inside Google Analytics, you can have multiple Accounts with multiple Properties.
And then there is Property. Property is where there is a UA-ID attached to it. For example, if you have an Account, you can have Property A and Property B with different UA-IDs under it. This is because many people have different websites but they want to put under one Account.
Let’s say I am writing multiple blogs and my account structure will be below.
Account Name- My blogs
Property 1- My WordPress Blog
Property 2- My Medium Blog
Property 3- My Blogspot Blog
You get the idea.
And you can have Properties tracking Apps too. So this is why an Account can have Multiple Properties so that a user don’t have to jump from Account to Account when they want to see their reports and everything sitting under a single Account neatly.
The tricky thing about your problem is that you cannot move Properties across Accounts for Google Analytics. Once you have created an Account/Property, you can either edit (like Name/Settings) or delete them. And once you delete them, your historical data is gone.
What I would recommend for you to do is as following to clean up your GA structure:
Just create one more Account called Account- 4 (or) Main Account. And from now on, just use this Account.
Account 4 (Main Account)
Property 1- domain1.com
Property 2- domain2.com
Property 3- domain3.com
Property 4- domain4.com
And remove the old GA codes under your domain1, domain2, domain3 and domain 4 and use only these Properties UA-IDs. Then you have proper GA Account Structure and you can always look back historic data if you want to by browsing Account 1,2,3 data.
For more information, please read this article: Hierarchy of accounts, users, properties, and views
Q: How do I fix googleads-doubleclick.net referrals traffic?
A: You need to link your AdWords account to your Google Analytics account.
Q: How do I calculate the unique visitors in Google Analytics?
A: Yes users is the correct metric you should be using for.
Why there is new user and returning user metrics
GA sets a cookie in a browser if a person visits your website for a first time. That cookie will stay in his/her browser for more than 2 years and more as long as the cache/cookies is not cleared. Then when a user comes back to site GA will check whether there is such cookie existed, if it does it will regard the user as returning user otherwise will set a new cookie and regard as new user.
Q: What does “to use this feature visit event-track.com” in Google Analytics mean?
A: That’s spam. Not feature. Don’t go to that site.
Q: What is the best program/tool instead of Google Analytics for the site?
A: Why don’t you like GA? what do you want to track from your site?
Q: How do I filter Google Analytics to merge the same pages that use different parameters?
A: You can use a feature called exclude query parameters. I googled it for you here: https://www.google.com.sg/search?q=exclude+query+parameters+google+analytics&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&client=safari
Q: How do I segment AdSense earning by the aquiring Google search keyword in Google analytics? Stupidly ‘keyword’ is not visible in ‘aquisition’
A: You cannot get organic search keywords data in GA. It is to protect users privacy.
Q: What is the difference between Google Analytics Premium and IBM Coremetrics?
A:
I’m not sure about IBM tool as I haven’t used before.
Google Analytics Premium, on the other hand, I have used it and still using so I know a bit.
GA premium exists because of below reasons:
- Hits limit: you can only use GA standard free versus as long as you don’t exceed limits which is 10mil hits per month. If you exceed you will need to purchase GA premium.
- Unsampled data: here is detailed article about this: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1042498?hl=en
- And you get technical support from Google reseller, training, audit and implementation if you purchase GAP. So if you are big business that relies on GA data, it’s absolutely worth it.
Follow me at Quora here: http://www.quora.com/Zin-Ko-Hlaing