Paid search in Google Analytics. We analyze traffic sources. Page loading time

In order to install the google analytics counter, you need to provide all pages of your site with the so-called tracking code - GATC ( Google Analytics Tracking Code).

GATC (aka google counter analytics) is a fragment JavaScript code a, which we insert on all pages of the site. Essentially, it works as a beacon to collect information about visitors and forward it to collection servers Google data Analytics.

Google analytics code

Typical google code analytics (GATC) looks like this:

var _gaq = _gaq || ;
_gaq.push([‘_setAccount’, ‘UA-ХХХХ-ХХ’]);

(function() (
var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script'); s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
})();

This is a sample code that Google automatically suggests, consisting of 3 parts:

• Unique account identifier in the format UA-XXXX-XX. It is important here not to enter another number by mistake, as you can transfer valuable data to someone else’s account.
• Calling the _trackPageview JavaScript procedure. This is the main procedure in Google Analytics that collects URL addresses page views that visitors load into their browsers, as well as parameters such as browser type, language setting, referral source, and timestamp.
• Calling the main JavaScript file from Google servers. Most important file- this is ga.js, contains the JavaScript code necessary to collect data. This file is used for all Google Analytics accounts.

The Google Analytics counter is asynchronous code- this means that it is loaded in parallel with the page. Using asynchronous syntax is possible thanks to the _gag object. It acts as a queue, which is a first-in, first-out data structure that collects API calls until ga.js is ready to execute them. To add something to the queue, use the _gag.push method.

The line “var _gaq = _gaq || ;" creates JavaScript array. If _gag is already defined, the script will continue to use this variable. If not, it creates an array:

Gaq.push([‘_setAccount’, ‘UA-ХХХХ-ХХ’]);
_gaq.push([‘_trackPageview’]);

When the ga.js file is loaded, two commands are pushed (queued) into the array. The first one sets the account ID in which your data will be stored. The second intercepts the URL of the page to be loaded. Once ga.js has finished loading, it replaces the array with a _gag object and executes all queued commands. Subsequent calls to _gag.push are resolved by this function, which executes commands as they arrive.

Installing Google Analytics

Often many people do not know how to install Google Analytics. It turns out that everything is simple - you need to install the Google Analytics counter before the closing tag.

This improves tracking accuracy since the ga.js file will be loaded first. After installing the counter, the data in your account should begin to be displayed no later than 4 hours later. But in the case of a new account, this may take up to 24 hours.

After creating a site, we immediately become interested in who is visiting it and how users find it in the first place. You can, of course, ask users how they came to you :), but the easiest way is to install analytics systems. I use both Metrica and Google Analytics, but I prefer the latter. And in this article I will tell you how they behave and interact with each other different sources traffic.

When you log into your Google Analytics account, you see something like this:

Organic Search is traffic from search engines(Google, Yandex, etc.).
Direct – direct visits to the site.
Referral is the traffic you receive from links on other sites.
Social – traffic from social networks.
Other – traffic the source of which Analytics could not determine.
Email – visits from your mailings.
Campaigns are a separate type of traffic via links with UTM tagging.

It would seem that everything is quite simple: a user found you on Google and came to your website - this is an organic visit; you were mentioned on the forum, and users who want to learn more came to you - this is referral traffic; someone shared your link on Twitter and people came to you through it - that's social traffic.

But think about it, you often find something interesting on the Internet and save it in your bookmarks to watch later. In the first case we get an organic visit, in the second - a direct one. How will this be shown in Analytics?

Hierarchy of traffic sources, or who is more important.

First, try to answer the question: which traffic source gives the least amount of traffic? useful information for you? In my opinion, this is direct traffic, and therefore it is in the hierarchy of sources that it looks like the “weakest link”; it is this that is “eaten up” by all other channels.

Examples of recording traffic sources in Google Analytics Organic -> Direct = Organic

Misha reads a lot and follows all the new trends in real estate. He found one on Google interesting article(organic), but there was no time to read it, so Misha simply left it in the browser until better times. They arrived a week later, Misha got to the article, which was already open in his browser (direct). However, this young man will still be considered a user coming from a search engine.

Direct -> Referral -> Organic = Organic

Sasha came to the site via a link sent to him by a friend (direct); a week later, while reading some blog that links to your site, Sasha clicks on the link and again ends up with you (referral). After another 2 weeks, Sasha developed a very important question, and to solve it, he Googled it, as everyone usually does in modern world. From the search, Sasha clicked on your site again. In Analytics, this visit will appear as an organic one that “overshadowed” the referral visit.

After Sasha was convinced for the third time that your site was useful, he saved it to his bookmarks, and then returned to you from them several more times. Attention, question: what source of the visit will be recorded in these cases?

Referral -> Direct -> Direct = Referral

Masha came to the culinary site from a forum (referral), where she was looking for how to make mulled wine. She liked the recipe and saved the link to it in her recipe file. After that, there were several more holidays when Masha needed to prepare mulled wine, and she came to the culinary site, copying the link from her file. But in Google Analytics, Masha was still listed as a user who came from another site (referral). Then Masha remembered the recipe and stopped visiting that culinary site, but she often looks for other recipes. But that's a completely different story.

It is important to know

All previous conclusions on the “seniority” of traffic sources were made under the following conditions:

The user visits the site from the same computer and browser.

The user always has Javascipt enabled in the browser.

The user does not clear cookies.

Between the first and last visit no more than 6 months pass in the chain*.

6 months – this is the default time for storing information about any campaign in Google Analytics. Universal Analytics allows you to change this period up to 24 months.

This is how you track users who come to you every day. Such a system once again proves a simple principle of life: not everything is always as it seems; The user who comes via the link is not always registered as direct. I hope I was able to help you understand how things really work with the interaction of traffic sources.

Let's return to the series of articles “Working with Google Analytics”. Today we propose to talk about the report that we often use when conducting website audits. You can find it using the link “Traffic sources => All traffic”. We already mentioned this type of report in the first article about Google Analytics, and now we want to tell you how it can be used in your work.

The first thing we see in the “ Traffic sources => All traffic", - a graph of the number of transitions by day and the sources from which users come to the site. This is what the main report looks like:

We wrote earlier that a special mark is placed near the traffic source:
Organic – transition from search results;
Referral – referrals from sites linking to your domain;
CPC traffic – clicks on advertisements;
Direct none – traffic from bookmarks, direct traffic, etc.

By analyzing the primary report, you can determine which source brings nai large quantity transitions, and which one is problematic. This is especially important to understand if you are investing in attracting traffic from a specific source (for example, contextual advertising). However, this report is most valuable because it allows you to flexibly segment the received traffic and make comparisons over specified periods.

To analyze, first of all, select the source you are interested in by clicking on it in the general list.

Now you have a graph that reflects the dynamics of transitions one by one specific channel, and not according to all sources.
Pay attention to the discrepancy between the general dynamics of transitions and the dynamics of a separate source! It often happens that, looking at the total traffic, we do not see any problem, but when we look at the traffic from a separate source, we observe a sharp drop. This usually reveals the application of a filter and the period in which it was applied.
It also helps track seasonal declines.

Now we need to use the filter " Additional parameter »:

There are quite a few filtering parameters, each of them is useful under certain conditions. I will focus on the most popular ones.

First of all, this is a keyword filter ( Additional parameter - Traffic sources - Keyword). By selecting it, you get a list of keywords that led to transitions to your site.
Now you can clearly see how many visits this or that request brings, for what requests users view a large number of pages, and which ones have high level refusals.

This report is especially useful if you have goals set up. This makes it possible to track which queries are the most converting and bring real sales.

For example, one of our customers had low conversion rates despite a fairly high number of visits. Thanks to this report, we were able to see that many of the queries that were clicked on were non-topic and had a high bounce rate. Knowing this helped create a competent promotion strategy.
Unfortunately, getting this query information from a search engine Google systems You won’t be able to, not so long ago this feature was “disabled”. For Yandex it still works.

An equally important filter " Landing page» ( Additional parameter - Traffic source - Landing page). By selecting this filter, we can get information about the login page.

This data can also be used for analysis and certain conclusions. For example, you have traffic, and the queries by which users go to your site are thematic, but the conversion is still low. In this case, it is worth checking which pages users are visiting. It is likely that the page is inconvenient or does not fully meet visitors' expectations.

This is what the landing page report looks like:

There are also a number of filters aimed at contextual advertising analytics:

If your business is “tied” to any city or region, the “Visitors” filter section will be useful to you:

It will help you find out which cities and regions the traffic is coming from. This is what the generated report looks like:

For technical debugging of the site, solving problems with layout, etc., the “Technology” filter settings are applicable:

For example, you may notice that the bounce rate among users of one browser is significantly higher than the bounce rate of others. Then it’s worth looking at how the site is displayed in this browser - it’s likely that there are problems with the layout.

Another important feature this report provides is a comparison between two periods.

Most often, we make comparisons in the event of a serious drop in positions - to analyze the difference.

You can compare the number of transitions for each day. It looks like this:

When making comparisons, be sure to take into account seasonality and possible differences between the two days of the week.

Also in this situation, we make comparisons by queries and pages. To do this, by selecting two periods, use the previously described filters.

Then the report looks like this.

One of the conditions for successful advertising campaign on the Internet - attracting high-quality, targeted, interested traffic. All traffic sources can be divided into four main channels: search traffic, advertising traffic, referral traffic, direct traffic.

IN Lately email newsletters and traffic from social networks are separated into separate channels, although, according to by and large, they are parts of direct, referral or advertising traffic, depending on the situation. Let's look at each of them in more detail.

Search traffic

This is traffic coming from organic, i.e. natural, free search engine results. These are the top ten places that all sites strive to get to. SERPs are built as a result of sites being ranked by search engine algorithms based on many factors (their number is measured in thousands). Accordingly, in order to get to 1st place, you need to be as relevant as possible to all these factors. A set of measures aimed at search engine optimization website is called (Search Engine Optimization).

The huge number of factors that need to be taken into account often causes panic and misunderstanding of the promotion process among people who are not involved in this professionally, which, in turn, gives rise to many misconceptions about this industry: some people think that it is actually very simple and has enough influence on several factors, others believe that the result should be as fast as possible, others do not understand at all why they should pay money to SEO studios, because organic results are free results, and people go to the site for free.

Promotion results, as well as website ranking, depend on many factors:

• quality of contractor's work;
• changes in search engine algorithms;
• level of client involvement in the promotion process;
• the quality of the client’s business as a whole;
• and much more.

People who are disappointed in SEO usually blame everything on just one factor - the quality of the contractor’s work, not even wanting to think about other reasons. Quality SEO, especially in a competitive field, always takes a lot of time (can reach several years) and cannot cost a penny, but, at the same time, it is always reliable and has a lasting effect. By developing your website in the right direction, search traffic will constantly grow, and moving a high-quality website from the TOP position will be much more difficult than one that got there by accident as a result of using “holes” in search engine algorithms.

Advertising traffic

Perhaps the most diverse channel for attracting traffic by type of source. These include:

• contextual advertising;
• media advertising;
• targeting and retargeting advertising;
• partnership programs;
• advertising on social networks;
• advertising in aggregators;
• and much more.

The main thing that all advertising traffic has in common is that it is always paid. Payment models can be very diverse: per click (CPC), per action (CPA), per views (CPM), per orders (CPO) and others. Unlike search traffic, it has an immediate start, but is always more expensive and does not have any effect after the end of advertising. While advertising is running, there is traffic; when advertising is stopped, there is no traffic.

Referral traffic

Referral traffic includes transitions from other sites. At the same time, these can be both natural transitions and transitions from placed paid posts or articles. The quality of natural referral traffic is extremely difficult to control, because putting a link on the forum, in social network or on your website anyone can. The same rules apply to paid posts as for advertising traffic.

Direct traffic

TO this channel include direct visits when people enter a URL or go from bookmarks. Usually this is a user returning to the site who originally came from one of the three sources listed above. The exception is people who came to the site after seeing its address in offline advertising (flyers, billboards, TV advertising, etc.).

How do visitors behave on your site and do they come back to you? How does an advertising campaign affect other traffic acquisition channels?

Link accounts

In order to see the full picture of the effectiveness of your advertising campaign, you will need to link your account. Google AdWords With Google account Analytics.

This will give you the opportunity to see not only more data in the AdWords interface, but also track how the advertising campaign affects other channels, and see the payback of your advertising. And also the connection between AdWords and Analytics will allow you to set up more subtle settings through the Analytics account.

So that you can track in detail which keyword brought you orders and which page was the most effective, you should also tag the links. There are plenty of resources online for manually tagging links if you don't use the automatic tagging feature.

For example, Google itself offers a URL builder, a handy resource that helps you add required parameters to track campaigns, from campaign source to keyword.

Define your goals

First of all, before you track the effectiveness of an advertising campaign, you need to determine what you will track? Subscribe, order, watch a video, click the “Order” button, etc. as well as the correctness of the configured goals.

The correctness of setting goals (as well as setting the analytics code itself on the site) can be seen in Real time report. In addition, you can see who is on this moment be on your website, from which channels it came this traffic what content are your visitors currently viewing and if we're talking about about the correct setting of goals, then you can track correct setting in the Conversions section.

This report shows any technical problems on the website or with a real-time advertising campaign.

Channels and Traffic Sources

In Channels and Traffic Sources you can see from which channels your visitors come. And also how long they stay on your pages, i.e. How interested they are in your site's content. Which channels generate the most conversions (or let’s say, achieving goals).

So, what does each of these channels mean and include?

Referal – transitions from sites where links leading to your site are located.

If you see enough large percentage traffic, then you should pay attention, this may be referral spam. It does not affect the operation of the advertising campaign or the operation of the site, but it unpleasantly spoils the statistics. In the screenshot, pay attention to the Average session duration - it is equal to 0. That is. there was no activity on the site.

Organic Search – traffic from search network. In this channel you can see for which queries you are found in organic results.

Direct – when visitors go to the site by entering a link on the site in the browser line or via a bookmark. Traffic from this channel is also called “branded”. And as the contextual media network operates, the percentage of traffic on this channel should increase. This means that visitors are already familiar with your brand and enter your brand name directly into search bar browser.

Paid Search is paid search traffic, which is what we are currently considering.

To understand more detailed information, you can go directly to each channel.

The picture shows which campaign attracted a certain number of clicks and orders.

What to look for?

Please note the discrepancy in the number of clicks and sessions. The thing is that in Google Analytics, clicks– deciphers the number of transitions to your site from search engines, and sessions– this is the period of time during which the visitor interacts with your site. Term Session includes the concepts of both the number of screens viewed and transactions on the site.

The bounce rate is also quite important. This indicator is related to the effectiveness of pages on the site and the interest of visitors in the content on these pages. The higher the bounce rate, the more likely there is a problem with the site or page, such as: the page content is inconsistent key query or advertisement, not found on the site necessary information or clicking occurs.

If you have a one-page website, then the failure rate can reach up to 90%. The viewing depth of a single page is checked by the percentage of scrolling (for this you need to use a special page scrolling script and set it to ).

For regular blog sites or online stores, the failure rate is no more than 40-50%

The low failure rate should also be alarming. Some of the reasons could be: an incorrectly installed analytics counter, or the same analytics counter is located in both the GTM and on the site at the same time, or the navigation on the site is bad and people simply “wander” in search of the information they need.

Conclusions need to be drawn both for the site in general and for each individual pages. Does the landing page match the key query that leads the visitor to landing page. Does the name of the product or product group contain the key query itself?

Those. the keyword should be mentioned in the ad and the information in the ad should be mentioned on the landing page.

But it's possible that campaigns that didn't result in direct transactions helped drive conversions through other channels. This can be seen in multi-channel sequences, how users completed their conversions, which we will look at in more detail in the next article.

In the Traffic Sources section - AdWords section - tab Keywords Pay attention to which words bring you more income and whether their cost per click is worth it.

I would like to draw your attention to the fact that with the help of Google Analytics you can see how many actions a visitor had to take in order to make a conversion.

Those. In the picture you can see that 26 conversions were completed in one interaction, the rest of the conversions were completed in two or more interactions.

We can say that the navigation on the site is done perfectly, but this is a one-page site, in the case of stores, you need to pay more attention to what difficulties your visitors may encounter while getting to their “cherished goal”.

I want to warn you right away that many people make the mistake of conducting analytics only on traffic sources in standard reports. Paid Search and Display often don't look as impressive as Direct or Organic in standard reports. But in order to understand all the details, I advise you to do a more detailed analysis.

In the report Multi-channel conversions You can look at the Time to Conversion report to see when conversions usually occur.

You can also see when your visitors usually make a purchasing decision. The Multichannel Conversions – Time to Conversions report can help you with this.

By using this report You can understand after what time to launch remarketing.

Pay attention to the Time of Day report in the AdWords section

Pay attention to the amount of traffic on certain days of the week and which days bring in the most purchases.