Rapid Fire Web Analytics Q and A with Avinash and Nick

Thursday, October 15, 2009 | 1:40 PM

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Recently we started an initiative to ask you to share your most burning questions via Google Moderator (link: Google Analytics Google Moderator site).


This week, Avinash and I sat down to do a rapid fire Q&A to answer your questions. Rather than do a dry text Q&A version, we chose to do a video, and we think you'll find it educational and entertaining.

In this episode we discuss:
  • How is bounce rate calculated
  • Effect of search bots on data collection
  • Finding a benchmarking category for sites that don't fit into any particular benchmark category
  • What is the best way to identify landing pages with high bounce rate
  • How to find new keywords to improve content performance
  • Effects of private browsing and incognito mode on data collection


Here are links to resources we discussed in the video:
If you found this helpful, we'd love to hear your comments. If you have a question you would like us to answer, please submit a question or vote for your favorite question in our public Google Moderator site. We will answer your latest questions in a couple of weeks with yet another entertaining video.

Please add your thoughts about the Q&A via comments below. Thanks!


Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics Team

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12 comments:

Garrett said...

You guys didn't really answer question #1. You explained what it means but not why I should care if I'm not an eCommerce site.

#2 A bot has been visiting my site once a month going through a large number of my pages. This keeps showing up in my analytics so what should I do now?

5:16 PM

Andy C said...

Thanks for answering so many questions - high bounce rates have been an issue for me, so I appreciate the tips on honing keywords.

8:51 PM

Gautier said...

Thank you for this video, it's really interesting to get inside on the calculation of Bounce Rates :)

6:01 AM

Dan said...

On this question:

"Effect of search bots on data collection"

Technically, I agree with Avinash and Nick's response to this; most bots don't execute javascript. However, I think JS executing bots are more common than they indicate. Load testing tools like Keynote and Gomez not only generate data in GA, they can generate ALOT of it. Of course it differs from site to site, but for us, filtering out those two tools is a must.

Speaking of which; sure would make my day if we could filter traffic by user agent.

Thanks for the video!

8:54 AM

Jimbo said...

I think you might have over-simplified Bounce Rate...if we fire a Google Analytics Event on the page doesn't that negate Bounce Rate?

In other words, it's a single page visit but since someone clicked on element (or hovered over an element depending on what we're measuring), that does NOT count as a Bounce. That seems to be our experience.

So there are single page visits that don't count in the Bounce rate calculation if an Event is fired.

Is that right?

2:25 PM

vinil said...

I get the following error when I click on my view report
"An Error Has Been DetectedPlease try again. Thank you for your patience."

What is the reason? and how can i correct it? and see my reports?

10:19 PM

Louis said...

It's really a shame that you do not show the GA page on screen...

1:29 AM

John Henson said...

Garret,

If you have a site on which the visitor can accomplish both their own goals and your goals on the landing pages that have high bounce rate, then maybe bounce rate isn't as important metric for you.

Usually, that isn't the case.

If it is common for visitors to need more than one page to accomplish goals (yours and theirs) then first, a high bounce rate is saying that they are not accomplishing those goals.

But more specifically, when the bounce rate for a particular page is very high, it says the visitor didn't feel it was worth their time to continue to try to accomplish their goals on your website.

Maybe that was because it didn't have the information they expected, they couldn't find the information they expected, they couldn't find another link on that page that looked like it would get them closer to their goal, or maybe that page is just Ugly.

#2 Bots. Have you identified the Bot? If it is "kintiskton llc" there is some information available online by searching for the above quoted name.

In some cases, in larger organizations, I have seen the IT department Pay a bot owner to scan their site, multiple times per day, executing JavaScript, to make sure everything was responding properly. And the department looking at the analytics didn't know about this, leading them to investigate the source of the bot.

Hope something in there helps,

John

4:20 PM

John Henson said...

Dan,

You may not be able to filter by user agent out of the box, but there are things you can do to accomplish this if you have the resources.

You should be able to check and capture the user agent string with the javascript:
var uagent = navigator.userAgent;

Then you can attach that to the user defined variable by doing:
pageTracker._setVar(uagent);

Now that useragent string has been assigned as a user defined variable for that visitor's session in GA.

And the User Defined Variable is something that you can filter/segment on.

Even if you are already using the User Defined Variable for other things, there are options, but that is the simplest.

NOTE: I've never done this, and there may be some caveat of which I am not aware, such as navigator.userAgent doesn't exist for some browsers, etc.

John

5:55 PM

Nick said...

Thanks for the feedback guys.

@Garrett: You're right, we really didn't answer the question about non-bounce, non-convert. We'll try to tackle that again in our next video. Per your second comment, one strategy is to try to isolate this user through the hostname or city level report and then add a profile filter to exclude traffic from this user.

@Dan: You make a good point. Exposing user agent is definitely something for us to consider.

10:16 AM

vinil said...

I keep getting an error message when I click on view report. The msg says "An error has been detected, please check back later. Your patience is appreciated." It's been happening for ever. Never been able to check my analytics report ever. What do you suggest I do?

3:18 AM

ArtColombia.com said...

Hi Avanish/Nick: Sorry to have to say that there is still so much confusing info about bounce rate:

As you say, no time value can be given to a bounced visit (1-pageview in session). So why does Google Analytics assign a time value? Does this time have no significance? ..because in your blog you do mention that time DOES have relevance to a bounced visit (eg blog pages).

Also, would a javascript signup that lands on another sites thank you page (eg Aweber) constitute a bounce...if so, then the page could be converting potential subscribers at 100% yet you say that it has no value because it would also be 100% bounce rate?

Such potential operations should be given a cleared explanation by Google...give us a few examples Google! - but perhaps you guys can clarify everything and do so! :-)

8:07 AM

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