Mixed up sources of traffic - Referral / Typed/Bookmarked / Friendly URLs | Community
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TheMarianoC
TheMarianoC
Level 2
December 14, 2018
Solved

Mixed up sources of traffic - Referral / Typed/Bookmarked / Friendly URLs

  • December 14, 2018
  • 4 replies
  • 3304 views

Hello,

I'm trying to create a chart on in Analytics Workspace to see which ones are the main sources of traffic by using the referrer type dimension and unique visitors. At first glance, it gives me the information I'm looking for:

However, when I want to get a little bit more detail, I can see some issues here. Particularly on the "Typed/Bookmarked" type. If I break it down with "Friendly URL Performance" I would expect to see 0 or close to 0% visits with a friendly URL, however, I get big percentages with  friendly URLs:

Also, row 2 (15%) is a Paid Search which I can also see under "Search Engines" and "Other Web Sites" - the same happens with row 3 and 4....

They are basically all over the place which makes me feel the information is either not bucketed properly or duplicated.

Help, please!?

Thanks

Mariano

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    Best answer by Urs_Boller

    hi. you should have been at my learning lesson today, I gave a long speech about that. trying to summarize it in a few words...

    in short: your problem is the metric "unique visitor"

    explanation in detail:

    in your first table you get numbers for "unique visitors" having touched one of the referrer types. that means analytics is looking for each cell, how many UV have had that referrer anywhere in their history. as soon as a UV had one single entry with the referrer it is counted to this "segment" (table cell on breakdown)

    just assume yourself visiting the page directly and next day by a link on social networks. in your table you would be counted in both rows for "direct" AND "social" (since you match both row criterias for at least one hit).

    going further and breaking down one referrer by URL's just filters the result. looking at your breakdown table I would call the numbers as follow:

    71'681 UV visited your page with at least one hit "Typed/Bookmarked"

    10'781 UV (first darkened row) are those visitors who had at least one hit "Typed/Bookmarked" AND at least one "one friendly url" as showed. But they do not need to be on the same hit, they need to be in the same UV container!

    does that make sense? just let me know if you need more information...

    remark: the rows sum up on the first level (referrer) just by accident! as soon as you have a closer look at the numbers, you will find out that

    a) visitors can have multiple referrer (even visits can have!)

    b) there are referrers which will never appear in workspace (eg. "email")

    read more about referrer here: Referrer Type

    4 replies

    Alexis_Cazes_
    Alexis_Cazes_
    Level 10
    December 14, 2018

    people can boomark the friendly URL or paid search url etc...

    Same fo other website and social media depends on which URLs they added to their links

    TheMarianoC
    TheMarianoCAuthor
    Level 2
    December 14, 2018

    Hi there,

    well, that's definitely one possibility, however, on the example above, 50% of the direct/bookmarked traffic comes from friendly URLs which just seems a bit hight...

    It also doesn't explain the fact that friendly URLs only used for Paid Search come up under "Social Networks" or that friendly URLs only used on email signatures come up under "Search Engines" or that friendly URLs only used on Facebook come up under "Other Websites"....

    Again, they are all mixed up, they all come up everywhere, in different numbers and % but they all seem to be detected everywhere...

    Urs_Boller
    Community Advisor
    Urs_BollerCommunity AdvisorAccepted solution
    Community Advisor
    December 14, 2018

    hi. you should have been at my learning lesson today, I gave a long speech about that. trying to summarize it in a few words...

    in short: your problem is the metric "unique visitor"

    explanation in detail:

    in your first table you get numbers for "unique visitors" having touched one of the referrer types. that means analytics is looking for each cell, how many UV have had that referrer anywhere in their history. as soon as a UV had one single entry with the referrer it is counted to this "segment" (table cell on breakdown)

    just assume yourself visiting the page directly and next day by a link on social networks. in your table you would be counted in both rows for "direct" AND "social" (since you match both row criterias for at least one hit).

    going further and breaking down one referrer by URL's just filters the result. looking at your breakdown table I would call the numbers as follow:

    71'681 UV visited your page with at least one hit "Typed/Bookmarked"

    10'781 UV (first darkened row) are those visitors who had at least one hit "Typed/Bookmarked" AND at least one "one friendly url" as showed. But they do not need to be on the same hit, they need to be in the same UV container!

    does that make sense? just let me know if you need more information...

    remark: the rows sum up on the first level (referrer) just by accident! as soon as you have a closer look at the numbers, you will find out that

    a) visitors can have multiple referrer (even visits can have!)

    b) there are referrers which will never appear in workspace (eg. "email")

    read more about referrer here: Referrer Type

      TheMarianoC
      TheMarianoCAuthor
      Level 2
      December 14, 2018

      You sir... you deserve an award!

      Thanks so much for both explanations, really helpful indeed!

      I'm sure you'll probably see me asking more questions around..

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