{"id":6125,"date":"2019-02-22T09:15:14","date_gmt":"2019-02-22T08:15:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.red-orbit.com\/blog\/?p=6125"},"modified":"2020-08-18T14:59:19","modified_gmt":"2020-08-18T12:59:19","slug":"google-analytics-broken-default","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.red-orbit.com\/blog\/google-analytics-broken-default","title":{"rendered":"Google Analytics is broken by default"},"content":{"rendered":"

The default Google Analytics setup is broken.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes, it is, it really is.<\/strong><\/p>\n

What you should be looking at in terms of Google Analytics needs some tweaking from the start. It\u2019s not only about setting goals or measuring events but also about changing the way things are being measured. Out of the box your Referrals or Direct might contain traffic from search engines and Direct might also include social shares, whilst Referral might include all your email campaigns. Basically if you don’t start by fixing this from the start or correct it so it reports more accurately from now onwards, you will worse than flying blind. You\u2019ll think you have a picture of your audience, but it will be misleading.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t you just love direct traffic in Google Analytics?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Direct traffic in Google Analytics is something I hardly ever see explained properly.<\/strong>
\nI can’t stress how important it is that Direct traffic is not what it seems so let’s start.<\/strong><\/p>\n

What is Direct traffic?<\/h2>\n

Basically Direct traffic<\/strong> is any kind of traffic that Google can’t put into any one of the other brackets.
\nThe more technical definition is that when there’s no referrer data then it puts it into direct traffic. I often hear people say that Direct traffic is typed in traffic but actually it is very rarely purely this. In absence of any previous session referrer data and if someone types in the URL directly – yes Direct. But that’s the exception rather than the reality.<\/p>\n

One of the largest cases that meets that no referrer rule is when somebody sends a link through some messaging app like Slack or Whatsapp or Facebook Messenger or anything pretty much that isn’t a classic browser-based source (non http) – it won’t have a referrer. As such when people click this they become direct traffic sessions in Google Analytics.<\/p>\n

You need to be aware that this is happening and then you can start thinking about how you can fix this. If you fix this common scenario to track more accurately you get a better idea of what what Direct traffic is really is AND how your links are being shared in social chats.<\/p>\n

Internal redirects or incorrectly set up redirects that lose the original referrer are also a big source of direct traffic.<\/p>\n

So in my session at inOrbit 2019<\/strong><\/a> I will actually be diving into (simple) solutions on how to properly set up your Google Analytics that will support your (data) driven decisions rather than mislead you with incorrect information.<\/p>\n

\n

Direct traffic is the bottom of the barrel of Google Analytics<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Tips on UTM tagging<\/h2>\n

UTM tagging is extremely powerful to measure things and to put it into the right brackets in Google Analytics but there are things you have to be careful when using UTM tagging.<\/strong><\/p>\n

So let’s start with the basics:\u00a0<\/p>\n