Importance of Using Google Analytics
What is Not Considered a ‘Source’ in Google Analytics by Default?, Google Analytics is a powerful data analysis tool that can help you to better understand the behaviour and user experience of your website visitors. It can also help you to identify areas for improvement and to improve your online sales and conversions.[1]
To help you track the traffic that comes to your website, you need to set up a Google Analytics account. This is a free and easy to use website tracking platform that lets you monitor a wide range of metrics about your website, including visitor sessions, website traffic, marketing goals and ad revenue.
The “source” dimension of your Google Analytics report shows you where your traffic is coming from. You can also find out what kind of traffic it is, by using the “source/medium” dimension.
If you want to know more about the traffic sources that bring you conversions later on, it is possible to create a custom goal in Google Analytics. This enables you to see the percentage of indirect conversions, which is the ratio between the number of conversions from a specific source and direct conversions.[2]
When you are creating a custom goal, you can also set up conversion funnels to see the paths that visitors follow before converting. This enables you to identify your key conversion opportunities and take action accordingly.
A key component of this is tagging your links. This involves adding a unique tracking code called UTM tags to your inbound links, which allow you to accurately track the source and medium of clicks on those links.
UTM tags can be generated easily and quickly from your Google Analytics account, by entering the name of the channel you want to track, a description, and the URL of the link you are tracking. Once you have added these tags, they will automatically be recorded in all your analytics accounts.
Another important piece of tagging is the campaign tag, which you need to include in all your inbound links, so that you can properly track the source and medium of the clicks. This allows you to see the percentage of visits from each channel, as well as the conversion rate from each channel.[3]
What Are Google Analytics Types of Sources
Among the many things Google Analytics can do, one of the most impressive is to provide insights into which traffic sources bring you business. To do that, the analytics program uses a myriad of technologies and techniques.
In particular, the most useful is the use of cookies to track a visitor’s interaction with your website. This technology allows you to track the number of visitors who have visited your site, how long they stayed and most importantly, which ones converted into customers. This technology can be a boon to your marketing department, as it helps to identify which advertising methods are delivering a return on investment.
What’s more, Google Analytics is one of the few if not the only program in the world to offer such a service, which means you can take advantage of its unique data mining capabilities without breaking the bank.[4]
What is Not Considered a?Source? in Google Analytics by Default?
Google Analytics uses a last-click attribution model to report traffic sources. This means that if a user comes to your website through a direct source but had previously come from another non-direct source, the first session that happened within Campaign Timeout will overwrite the source and medium of the direct visit.
Google Analytics Sources
Google Analytics is a powerful marketing tool that helps you understand your website visitors and how they arrive at your site. Understanding how to use this data can help you optimize your marketing campaigns and increase conversions.
One of the first things you should do is set your sources and mediums correctly in Google Analytics. This will ensure that your data is being recorded accurately and properly.[5]
By default, Google Analytics will categorize traffic sources into organic search, referral and direct, and this will be displayed in your reports. This is important to know because it will help you identify what sources are bringing users to your website and how to optimize your marketing campaigns to maximize return on investment (ROI).
If you want your sources to be more specific, you can add additional mediums in the mediums section of Google Analytics. These mediums can be anything from ‘affiliates’ to ‘display’ and more.[6]
However, you should be careful when defining these mediums because you don’t want to make them too narrow, as this could cause an inability to aggregate data for analysis purposes.
You can also use URL tagging, which is a feature in Google Analytics that allows you to tag your links with unique identifiers so that they are recognised by the service. You can add these tags using a tool like Google Tag Manager or by manually adding them to your URLs.
Finally, you should note that when a user goes from an HTTP website to an HTTPS website, most browsers hide the referrer information on the HTTPS website and this will not allow GA Connector or Google Analytics to track this user’s source. This is why you should always consider including UTM parameters in your PPC ads if you are using them, as they will help you to track your users’ source more accurately.[7]
What is not Considered a Source in Google Analytic
While you can certainly configure Google Analytics to your liking, the default setting will not do your digital or onsite shopper any favors. As such, you will need to do a bit of digging in order to see the most relevant metrics on your dashboard. The best way to go about this is to start with a good quality spreadsheet.
This should be a combination of both organic traffic and paid search (PPC) data in order to get a clearer picture of your web based marketing efforts. The resulting spreadsheet should be a one pager with a minimum of 10 columns and a maximum of 5 rows. You may also want to consider adding a column for your website’s unique visitors in order to identify which pages are most effective at converting leads and sales into the black gold.[8]
What is first user source in Google Analytics?
The first user source is the originating source of a visit to your site or app, which Analytics uses to identify which device and browser is being used. This is a crucial feature to help you accurately track the source of a user’s visit, which can be important for attribution and determining the value of a conversion.
Users can be tracked by cookies stored in their browser, which Analytics can then use to identify them as visitors and determine what devices they are using. In addition, Google Analytics has a Client ID feature that stores a unique identifier to identify the user’s device and browser.
If the user is a new visitor to your site, they are marked as a New User. This is important because it can indicate that they are a potential customer or that they are learning about your product category.[9]
This metric is available in the report settings of all reports and is a useful tool for A/B testing and remarketing. It is also a useful metric for measuring loyalty because it can be used to calculate how long it takes for a user to purchase something from your website.
For example, if a user searches for yellow tennis shoes on Google and visits your site to look at your inventory, they are marked as a New Visitor. However, if they follow you on Twitter and then return to your website without purchasing anything, they are considered a Returning Visitor.
All of these metrics are available at the first session level in Google Analytics. They can be accessed by clicking the Sources tab in your Google Analytics dashboard and selecting the first session. You can then view a full list of these metrics and drill down to get more information about them by clicking the dropdown box next to each one.
What is direct source in Google Analytics?
A direct source in Google Analytics is the simplest way to refer to traffic that arrived on your site by typing your URL directly into their browser or clicking on a bookmark. This is an important category, as it represents a significant proportion of your overall traffic and can be a good indicator of where your customers are coming from.
Direct traffic can come from a number of sources, including “favourited” webpages, or even pages that are cached in a user’s browser. It can also be a reflection of users that have chosen not to use cookies, or are using more advanced privacy features such as Chrome incognito mode.[10]
One of the most popular and most comprehensive web analytics platforms, Google Analytics is able to track the smallest of details regarding your website’s visitors, from how many people visited your site, to which pages they clicked on.
It also provides some pretty cool insights into the traffic your site is receiving, from organic search to social media links, and even what keywords were used by your visitors. But the most useful information is the data Google Analytics has about your visitors’ behavior and engagement on your website, which can be found in the “Acquisition” panel of your account. Getting the most out of your analytics program is a matter of understanding what is going on with your traffic, and then implementing strategies to improve it.
What is a traffic source?
The term traffic source refers to the method used by a user to reach your website. It can take several forms including organic (when someone finds your site in search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing), paid, referrals and social media.
Organic search is the most common form of traffic and accounts for about 50% of a firm’s total online traffic. Organic search is a powerful marketing tool as it allows a firm to track how their site is performing in terms of click through rates and conversion rates.
Paid traffic is also a very valuable online marketing strategy and should be included in a firm’s marketing mix. It is important to note that paid traffic should be secure with SSL certificate and served over HTTPS.[11]
Referral traffic is a type of web traffic that arrives on a firm’s website through links on other sites. This can include links on social media platforms or from a company’s newsletter subscription page.
The firm’s website will need to be tagged with proper URLs for this kind of traffic to be properly tracked and evaluated. It is also crucial to avoid tagging internal web pages for this purpose as it could lead to inaccurate results.
Another possible reason for direct traffic sources is when a user enters your website through the address bar or through a bookmark. If this is the case, Google Analytics will deem it as a direct traffic source even if there was an AdWords campaign parameter or a URL tag involved in delivering the session.
In all these cases, it is vital to consider why the source is being reported as a direct traffic source. It could be a misconfiguration in your Google Analytics account or it might just be that you have not set up a referring source for that particular session.[12]
