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Google analytics contradicting results

by WhamSoft
6 replies
Hi,

I just wondered if anybody else has encountered this issue:-

When viewing google analytics data if you view Content> Top content you get your results - page views, unique visits e.t.c for each page location index.html, member.html, download.html...

But if I view Content> By Page Title

I get differents results for the same pages.

index.html = 100 unique pages views

[By Page Title]Index = 500 unique page views

Can anyone explain this ?

I think it may have something to do with referrals to the site so the index.html page would be changed to index.html?xasamail@%someplace
#analytics #contradicting #google #results
  • Profile picture of the author Bewley
    This has been puzzling me as well. The best I can do is post the 'best' answer from the GA forum, sort of makes sense though.

    Source: Top content vs content by title - Google Analytics Help

    "They essentially show the same information, but the difference in values comes about as most sites have:

    (i) more than one url per page
    (ii) page titles shared by more than one page.

    For example, lets say you have a products page. There might be a number of valid urls for this page e.g.

    www.yoursite.com/products/
    www.yoursite.com/products.php
    www.yoursite.com/products.php?hl=en

    All these are the same page, with the same page title (e.g. My Companies Products). The Top Content report would show the visits broken down by url, e.g.

    /products/ 1,024
    /products.php 25
    /products.php?hl=en 17

    But Content by Title would show them aggregated by the common Page Title, e.g.

    My Company's Products 1,066

    This effect is can be exaggerated if you use a CMS or common template as often these systems will have a default page title setting if you don't enter a specific one for that page. For example, let's say you have a specific product page within your product subdirectory for widget X:

    www.yoursite.com/products/widgetx.php

    For whatever reason you don't enter a page title for this, but your CMS/Template automatically assigns one (the default being the product section page title, My Company's Products). So you now have two different pages with the same page title. Again these will show separately in Top Content, but be aggregated in Content by Title    ."
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    • Profile picture of the author WhamSoft
      Thanks Bewley,

      I done some digging and found the cause of my odd results, it was to do with aweber refering to the pages but with tracking extentions and so index.html is now index.html%+tracking-stuff and this is not included in the Top Content results.
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      • Profile picture of the author Bewley
        Originally Posted by WhamSoft View Post

        Thanks Bewley,

        I done some digging and found the cause of my odd results, it was to do with aweber refering to the pages but with tracking extentions and so index.html is now index.html%+tracking-stuff and this is not included in the Top Content results.
        That makes sense, glad you got it sorted.

        I am tracking a prospective clients site and my problem was a lot easier to solve. Direct traffic was coming from the root domain '/' and index.html. Add the two together and it matches the top content figure!

        I am going to have to be a bit quicker off the mark if I am going pass the GA IQ exam!

        Adrian
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  • Profile picture of the author TheRichJerksNet
    Google stats will always be wrong anyways as they do not have direct access to your server logs .. if you can avoid using them I would. They also slow down the loading of your site and you have only 4 - 10 seconds to impress that visitor.

    If all they see is "loading Google analytics" for 30 seconds trust me they are not waiting around for your site to load.

    James
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    • Profile picture of the author Bewley
      Originally Posted by TheRichJerksNet View Post

      Google stats will always be wrong anyways as they do not have direct access to your server logs .. if you can avoid using them I would. They also slow down the loading of your site and you have only 4 - 10 seconds to impress that visitor.

      If all they see is "loading Google analytics" for 30 seconds trust me they are not waiting around for your site to load.

      James
      James, I think it is wrong to exclude one over the other. GA has it flaws, non-access to log files being the major one, and cleared cookies and blocked JavaScript amongst other things,

      One the other hand, log files were meant to be accessible only by sys admins and tech engineers. Log files record everything including search and scraper bots, with a few exceptions. There are many inherent inconsistencies on how log files record data, making it very difficult to monitor trends and campaigns.

      Your average IMer would be driven scatty trying to make sense of them! I doubt whether they would have neither the time or the inclination to try and interpret them.

      The data presented by the two are never going to match up. That does not make GA useless.

      It is best used to observe trends, goals, campaigns and reports in ways that businesses can easily understand.

      There is sometimes a problem with latency, but this is often down to putting the code into the <head> rather than the <body>. And a junk-laden page does not help! This will be somewhat addressed with release of GA's new asynchronous tracking code.

      A good pro SEOer should really use GA and a good log analyser in tandem.

      Adrian
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    • Profile picture of the author Bewley
      Originally Posted by TheRichJerksNet View Post

      Google stats will always be wrong anyways as they do not have direct access to your server logs .. if you can avoid using them I would. They also slow down the loading of your site and you have only 4 - 10 seconds to impress that visitor.

      If all they see is "loading Google analytics" for 30 seconds trust me they are not waiting around for your site to load.

      James
      James, I think it is wrong to exclude one over the other. GA has it flaws, non-access to log files being the major one, and cleared cookies and blocked JavaScript amongst other things,

      One the other hand, log files were meant to be accessible only by sys admins and tech engineers. Log files record everything including search and scraper bots, with a few exceptions. There are many inherent inconsistencies on how log files record data, making it very difficult to monitor trends and campaigns.

      Your average IMer would be driven scatty trying to make sense of them! I doubt whether they would have neither the time or the inclination to try and interpret them.

      The data presented by the two are never going to exactly match up. That does not make GA useless.

      GA is best used to observe trends, goals, campaigns and reports in ways that businesses can easily understand.

      There is sometimes a problem with latency, but this is often down to putting the code into the <head> rather than the <body>. And a junk-laden page does not help! This will be somewhat addressed with release of GA's new asynchronous tracking code.

      A good pro SEOer should really use GA and a good log analyser in tandem.

      Adrian
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[1739927].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author Bewley
      Originally Posted by TheRichJerksNet View Post

      Google stats will always be wrong anyways as they do not have direct access to your server logs .. if you can avoid using them I would. They also slow down the loading of your site and you have only 4 - 10 seconds to impress that visitor.

      If all they see is "loading Google analytics" for 30 seconds trust me they are not waiting around for your site to load.

      James
      James, I think it is wrong to exclude one over the other. GA has it flaws, non-access to log files being the major one, and cleared cookies and blocked JavaScript amongst other things,

      One the other hand, log files were meant to be accessible only by sys admins and tech engineers. Log files record everything including search and scraper bots, with a few exceptions. There are many inherent inconsistencies on how log files record data, making it very difficult to monitor trends and campaigns.

      Your average IMer would be driven scatty trying to make sense of them! I doubt whether they would have neither the time or the inclination to try and interpret them.

      The data presented by the two are never going to exactly match up. That does not make GA useless.

      GA is best used to observe trends, goals, campaigns and reports in ways that businesses can easily understand.

      There is sometimes a problem with latency, but this is often down to putting the code into the <head> rather than the <body>. And a junk-laden page does not help! This will be somewhat addressed with release of GA's new asynchronous tracking code.

      A good pro SEOer should really use GA and a good log analyser in tandem.

      Adrian
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[1739932].message }}

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