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Common Questions

How do I add tracking code to my website?
Copy the code segment into every webpage you want to track immediately before the </body> tag. If your site has dynamic content you can use a common include or a template. If you are not the person who updates the website, email the code segment and instructions to your technical team or website administrator.
 
How do I add tracking code to my BLOG page?
Please refer to 'Add third-party functionality' before including it in your BLOG. Generally, just log into your blogger account and search where you can edit your HTML content or third-party functionality. Paste the code you received by email to the section which is displayed all the time (header, footer, left/right pane). When pasting the code, it is important to make sure you have the HTML tab selected first. The code should look exactly as it was provided to you. Once your blog is live, select View Source from your browser's menu and look for the code.
 
I'm not seeing any data in my reports
The most common cause of reports not being populated with data is an error in your statistics tracking code. Please ensure that you've installed the code exactly as it appears in your email. Once you've correctly installed your tracking code, you should allow up to 24 hours for data to appear.
 
How can I confirm that I've entered the tracking code correctly on my pages?
If you used a WYSIWYG ("What you see is what you get") editor such as Macromedia Dreamweaver, make sure that you don't see the code when you're viewing your page in a browser. Some such editors will attempt to place the code as text on your page - try to use the "source" view when you're pasting the code to your web pages. Once your page is live, select View Source from your browser's menu and look for the code. It should be immediately before the </body> tag of your page, and should look exactly as it was provided to you.
 
How long does it take for data to appear after adding the tracking code?
We generally updates your reports every 24 hours. This means that it could take 24 hours for data to appear in your statistics reports after you have first installed the tracking code.
 
Why is statistics not tracking some of the pages on my website?
There is likely an issue with the tracking code as it was added to your page. Please verify that the tracking code is installed correctly by viewing your page source. It should be immediately before the </body> tag of your page.
 
How do I install the tracking code on PHP sites?
When a visitor views a PHP site, their browser receives HTML output from the PHP code. Analytics is able to track PHP sites as long as the rendered HTML output contains the correct tracking code. Read more
 

Statistics Reports

What's the difference between clicks, visits, unique visits, and unique visitors?
The clicks column in your reports indicates how many times your advertisements were clicked by visitors, while visits indicates the number of unique sessions initiated by your visitors. Statistics measures both visits and visitors in your account. Visits represent the number of individual sessions initiated by all the visitors to your site. If a user is inactive on your site for 30 minutes or more, any future activity will be attributed to a new session. Users that leave your site and return within 30 minutes will be counted as part of the original session. The initial session by a user during any given date range is considered to be an additional visit and an additional visitor. Any future sessions from the same user during the selected time period are counted as additional visits, but not as additional visitors. A pageview is defined as a view of a page on your site that is being tracked by the tracking code. If a visitor hits reload after reaching the page, this will be counted as an additional pageview. If a user navigates to a different page and then returns to the original page, a second pageview will be recorded as well.
 
Why does my statistics report different values than some other web analytics solutions?
The following list points out some of the main reasons your actual numbers may differ: (1) The terminology used in one program may not mean the same thing or may not be measured the same way as in another program. (2) There are more methods of tracking activity, i.e., cookie-based method, IP with User Agent method. (3) Some browsers give users the option to disable images that are requested from domains other than the current page. Disabling such images will prevent data from being sent to Statistics. (4) If your web statistics solutions group data using different timezones, your daily or hourly data will be affected. (5) Visitors must have JavaScript, images, and cookies enabled in their browsers in order for Statistics to report their visit. Depending on their method of collecting data, other analytics solutions may still register these visitors. (6) Other analytics solutions may not record an additional visit if the page is pulled from a user's or server's cache. (7) Even among cookie-based tracking solutions, there's a difference between 1st party and 3rd party cookies. Because 3rd party cookies are set by a source other than the website being visited, they're often blocked by browsers and security software. We use 1st party cookies.
 
How are the Length of Visit report values calculated?
In order to capture the length of a visit, statistics tracks the elapsed time between pageviews. The last page of a visit will not be recorded (as there is no subsequent pageview). Single-page visits are assigned to the 0-10 second category.
 
Why my CPC data is being reported as 'organic' or 'direct.'?
If your CPC data is appearing in your reports as organic or direct traffic, it's likely due to improperly tagged or untagged destination URLs in your ads. Also make sure that you've added the tracking code to your landing pages. If a visitor lands on a page that isn't tracked, the campaign information associated with the link to that page will not be recorded. This is true even if the user then navigates to another page of your site that is being tracked.
 
What does google[referral] mean?
Not all referrals from Google domains come through organic search or AdWords ad listings. Referrals may come from a variety of sources, including Google Groups posts, base.google.com listings, or static pages on related Google sites. Such visits are tagged as [referral] instead of [organic] or [cpc].
 
What are referrals coming from pagead2.googlesyndication.com?
Referrals from pagead2.googlesyndication.com are clicks on your AdWords ads showing on the content network - specifically, ads showing on publisher sites in the AdSense program.
 

Webpage Conversions

What is A/B Testing and how can it help me?
A/B Testing allows you to compare different versions of advertising content and their effectiveness at referring quality leads and customers. Read more
 
What is auto-tagging and how will it affect my ads?
In order for statistics to display details about your AdWords keywords and costs, you must do one of the following: Use Destination URL auto-tagging, or Manually tag your keyword destination URLs with tracking variables. Read more
 
Can you track non-AdWords online advertising campaigns?
Yes, this solution can track all types of online media including banner ads, referral links, email campaigns, and organic and paid search.
 
How do I tag my links?
Here is a three-step process to help you get started. (If you'd like to learn about all of the variables you can use to differentiate campaigns, read The five dimensions of campaign tracking.): (1) Tag only what you need to - If your Google Analytics account is linked to an active Google AdWords account, you don't need to tag your AdWords URLs. Google Analytics will automatically track all of your AdWords campaigns. You'll still need to tag all of your non-AdWords paid keyword links, though, as well as your banners and other ads, and the links inside your promotional e-mail messages. (2) Create your links using the URL Builder - Campaign links consist of a URL address followed by a question mark and your campaign variables. But, you won't need to worry about link syntax if you fill out the URL Builder form and press the Generate URL button. (3) Use only the campaign variables you need - Google Analytics' link tagging capabilities allow you to uniquely identify virtually any campaign you can think of. But, don't think that you must use all six fields in the URL Builder form in each of your links. On the contrary, you'll usually only need to use Source, Medium, Name, and Term (for paid keywords). The table below shows how you might tag the three most common kinds of online campaigns - banner ads, email campaigns, and paid keywords.
 
Understanding campaign variables: The five dimensions of campaign tracking.
Statistics tracks online campaigns using a combination of the following five marketing dimensions: (1) Source - Every referral to a web site has an origin, or source. Examples of sources are the Google search engine, the AOL search engine, the name of a newsletter, or the name of a referring web site. (2) Medium - The medium helps to qualify the source; together, the source and medium provide specific information about the origin of a referral. For example, in the case of a Google search engine source, the medium might be "cost-per-click", indicating a sponsored link for which the advertiser paid, or "organic", indicating a link in the unpaid search engine results. In the case of a newsletter source, examples of medium include "email" and "print". (3) Term - The term or keyword is the word or phrase that a user types into a search engine. (4) Content - The content dimension describes the version of an advertisement on which a visitor clicked. It is used in content-targeted advertising and Content (A/B) Testing to determine which version of an advertisement is most effective at attracting profitable leads. (4) Campaign - The campaign dimension differentiates product promotions such as "Spring Ski Sale" or slogan campaigns such as "Get Fit For Summer".
 
My ROI reports show 0%. How do I set up ROI tracking?
Because Google Analytics can easily import your AdWords cost data, it's able to return detailed ROI tracking on any AdWords campaigns. At this point, ROI information is not available for other types of campaigns. In order to see ROI information, you'll need to set up the following: (1) AdWords campaign tracking - if your Google Analytics account is linked to your AdWords account, you won't have to do anything to track your AdWords campaigns - Analytics will automatically track this information. If you haven't linked your accounts, you'll need to tag your AdWords URLs with campaign and keyword information. (2) Conversion goals and funnels - you'll also need to define a conversion goal and, optionally, a funnel. The conversion goal settings will tell Google Analytics the value to assign to that conversion. For information on defining your conversion goals, please read How do I set up goals? Once you've set up these two elements, Google Analytics will be able to track your AdWords ROI.