Instant Preview issue resolved

Monday, November 22, 2010 | 3:26 PM

Since Instant Preview launched in early November, some Analytics users have noticed increased pageviews in their accounts.

We’ve now fixed this issue, and visits from Google Instant Preview will no longer show up in your Analytics account. We will not be reprocessing the data to remove past visits, but you can use an advanced segment to see the visits from Instant Preview in the context of your total traffic. WebShare, a Google Analytics Certified Partner, has put together a blog post detailing this method (see “Option 1: Advanced segment”).

We’re sorry for any problems this issue caused especially as we get into the holiday shopping season. We’re working more closely with the Google Instant team to prevent issues like these from happening again.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Google Analytics Team

10 comments:

Buzz said...

I have clicked on a page from 5 different computers, and only 3 came up on Google Analytics. why would that happen?

7:44 PM

Peter said...

Was the fix made to Google Instant Preview so that it wouldn't execute js or to Google Analytics so that it wouldn't track this data? If the change was just to Google Analytics, will someone be advising the other web analytics vendors how to easily exclude this data from their tools?

1:31 AM

bergholt said...

@Peter -- That's a very good question, which I'm immensely looking forward to seeing answered.

Funny that someone at the GA end didn't envision this scenario prior to launching instant previw.

/Kasper

2:19 AM

uk.analytics said...

Thanks for promptly fixing this. Supporting Peter's request - I would also like to know how this will impact other analytics systems such as Omniture.

3:31 AM

HenryPUK said...

I would suggest that whatever fix has been put in is some kind of hack for Google Analytics rather than a change to the way that Instant Preview works - excessive Safari 3.1 visitors still appearing in Omniture SiteCatalyst statistics AFTER this so-called fix went live.
It's possible to exclude it, but it's a hassle. Why doesn't Google fix this properly?

4:00 AM

John Mueller said...

@Peter: Instant Previews will continue to execute JavaScript where possible, to make sure that the relevant content is included in the preview images.

Filtering requests for on-demand preview image generation in third-party website metrics systems could be done based on the user-agent specified in our FAQ page at https://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/faq-instant-previews

4:15 AM

SEO Scotland said...

I am glad this got sorted as our clients started asking us questions about their traffic.

Thanks again :)
Jeff@internetmarketingscotland.com

10:16 AM

Enrique said...

For those people wondering what Omniture is doing about this:
Click here for Omniture Blog explanation

Basically, they are showing that data is barely being increased (about 1%), but they're offering a free VISTA rule to have the data removed going forward, if you'd like to have it removed. Enjoy!

3:08 PM

Eddie said...

I would like to know this change will affect hong kong analytics system or not?

because our pageview in tracking report was decreasing from 22 till now. This situation is not normal.

8:32 PM

tubee,.com said...

Funny that someone at the GA end didn't envision this scenario prior to launching instant preview.
www.weblyceum.com

3:25 PM

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