Google Analytics Common problems in use (V)

Google Analytics FAQ Series continues to update, this week mainly to solve the use of some of the details of the problem. For example: Some keywords of the number of visits is 0, which in most reports the amount of data is not large, even if the neglect will not affect the trend. In the report, for example, use a report-level filter to filter information by stay time. These are very detailed questions, but knowing them can help us learn more about Google Analytics's working mechanism. Let's start by introducing each of these.

One, why some keywords of the number of visits is 0?

　　

Do you have a keyword in your keyword report that hits 0? These keywords may come from Google or Baidu, or other search engines. The number of these keywords is not large, but in the number of visits, page browsing depth, dwell time and other indicators are shown as 0. This situation is available in my report, as shown in the screenshot above. I think most of my friends should have been in this situation. What is this for?

This problem at the beginning I also very can not understand, even directly blame data loss, even the Great Firewall. But it turns out that this is not the answer. Some foreign blogs and forums in the answer to this question is: When a visitor in a visit two times search keywords into the site, access to the indicator data will be recorded in the first keyword. But in order to record the second search keyword and visit the site, Google Analytics will also record the second keyword, but does not duplicate the access to the indicator data. So is that really the case? Let's do a validation.

As we all know, the last set of numbers in the Google Analytics Utma cookie is used to record the number of visits. Before visiting the website, let's look at this number first. In my own blog cookie, I've shown my current number of visits to 1155 times.

　　

Then, I searched the name of my blog in Baidu, then clicked the search result to visit the website. Once the page has finished loading, check the cookie value again, and now the last set of numbers in the UTMA cookie has been added once, to 1156 times. This is my current visit.

　　

Now, I search for new keywords again and click Search results to visit the site. When the page is loaded, checking the cookie value finds that the number is still 1156. The number of visits did not increase at this time. But if you pass the HttpWatch check you will find that when our second search keyword to visit the site, Google Analytics still sent a new return data, which recorded a new keyword or source.

　　

So far, we have proved by returning data and cookie values that Google Analytics will record every time we visit the site, but not repeat the number of visits. The previous answer is correct. This also shows that the number of visits to 0 of keywords and some keywords have a higher degree of overlap. So, what's the key to the number of hits that are 0? What does this data have to do with us? Let me take a wild guess.

In the first case, when the first page of the search results have more than two Web site results, it is easy to produce the number of visits to 0 keyword records. For example, the brand Word of our website, or the keyword that makes a bid. This type of keyword in the case of visitors at the same time to open a number of search results, the number of keywords to be opened after the visit will be recorded as 0.

In the second case, when the visitor optimizes the search keyword, the optimized keyword is often recorded as the key word for the 0 visit times. Imagine a scene where a visitor clicks on a page after the first search result is not satisfied (the visitor does not close the browsed page at this time). At this point, the visitor optimizes their own keywords to search again and comes to your site again. At this point, the visitor uses the keyword Access data will be recorded as 0. Let's be bold and assume that if your keyword report has a combination of the same keyword and other qualifiers, and there are spaces between the two groups of words, the number of visits is 0. Then these words are likely to be the search keyword after the visitor optimizes. This kind of situation is most common in the brand word.

After you know the number of visits to the keyword report is 0, interested friends can take a look at the referral source report. The same problem also exists in the referral source report. I suspect that Google Analytics is also using the same approach to access sites from two different referral sources in one visit.

　　

　Two, why some pages of the average stay time is 0?

　　

In the Google Analytics report, in addition to the number of keywords visited 0, there is a page stay time of 0. As I have shown in the screenshot above, the page has browsing volume but the time of stay is 0. According to our usual understanding, this situation is impossible to exist. Because only visitors look at the page, there will be time, even if it is 1 seconds. It is impossible to have a page browsing without time. But in the actual report, this situation exists. The reason is Google Analytics the way to calculate the length of a page.

Google Analytics uses the timestamp of the page to calculate how long visitors will stay on each page. The specific method is to use the time stamp of the latter page minus the time stamp of the previous page to get the visitor's stay in the previous page. This method of calculation requires visitors to browse at least 2 or more pages at a time. If a visitor leaves the site only by browsing one page, the Googel analytics does not have a second timestamp for the calculation, so the average visitor's page stay time is 0.

For each visit to browse only one page, we are called out of the access. Therefore, if the current page stays at 0, then its bounce rate and exit rate must be 100%. Because only single page access will cause Google Analytics to calculate the stay time.

　　Third, how to filter the report according to the stay time and the bounce rate?

　　

In the Google Analytics report, we often need to filter the contents of the report according to various metrics. When you filter by stay time, you need to be aware that the 00:00:00 format shown directly in the report does not filter out the desired results. The reason is that Google Analytics, although it is in the format of hours, minutes, seconds to display the time, but actually in seconds to record the time. When we need to filter by time, we cannot enter the time directly in the format shown in the report, but in the second format.

　　

For example: when we need to filter the stay time is equal to 1 minutes of the page, we can not use 00:01:00, but to enter 60 directly. At this point, Google Analytics will convert 60 directly into the hours, minutes and seconds of the format.

　　

The best way to check how to filter for such a particular metric is to see how the filter conditions at the top of the filter report are displayed. As shown in the figure above, when we enter any number, the filter condition is displayed as a time format, and the conversion to seconds is exactly the same as the number we entered.

　　

Similar to the stay time is also a percentage of the jump rate and exit rate, in the Google Analytics report-level filter to support direct input percentages and decimal numbers. For example: When we want to filter the jump rate is equal to 60% of the page, you can either enter 60% directly, or you can enter 0.6. The two effects are the same.

　Four, why does the keyword report contain the website?

　　

We all know that Google Analytics keyword reports are used to record the keywords visitors visit the site. But now things have changed. GA's keyword report appears more and more things we do not know, Google began to put more information in the keyword report. such as the website address. I recently found a lot of web site URLs in my keywords report. Most of these URLs come from Google's paid ads by matching sources. By communicating with a colleague in charge of AdWords, these URLs are part of the Web site location in Google's content online ads. If you want to get rid of the content network, the marketing and the interest marketing part of the traffic, you can use the Advanced group function to exclude the "Placement ads" section of the traffic. The specific setting method is shown below.

　　

　Five, Google AnalyticsV5 version of the dynamic chart

The last question in this article is about the Google Analytics V5 version. Remember when V5 just came out, I asked why there was no dynamic chart feature. I finally found it today. The new dynamic chart feature opens the Chart mode menu in the Chart mode menu on the upper right of each report line and selects the dynamic chart, where the dynamic chart can be set and viewed on the current page.

　　

Of course, this is not the reason why I am going to introduce the new dynamic chart alone today. The V5 version of the dynamic chart already supports report-level filters and advanced community functionality. That's the biggest reason. How strong it is, you know.

　　

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Original: http://bluewhale.cc/2011-07-31/google-analytics-question-and-answer-5.html

Common problems with Google Analytics in use (Iv.)