Here’s a Google Analytics query for you…

Posted by: Marketing Guy Date posted: November 8th, 2008 Published in: Google

Just checking my GA stats for Zero Strategy (launched this week) and found keywords in the report that have absolutely no chance of being real results – it was a search I conducted via the Google toolbar earlier on in the day (I was looking for a Twitter profile of a colleague – Zero Strategy makes no mention of Twitter or my colleague’s name).

An error with GA presumably, but why is toolbar search data being included with the GA data in any shape or form?  I *may* have been logged in to Google when I made the search via the toolbar, I can’t remember (I log in and out all the time).

I’m guessing there’s some mix up with data tracking – because I had also been back and forward to Zero Strategy between searches – so perhaps GA has registered the search query and then noticed I ended up on Zero Strategy?  But it definitely wasn’t a direct SERP click through so why is the referral in my logs?

I only noticed due to ZS being a new site so has fairly low search volume right now – how many other odd results are slipping into GA logs?

Scott

Comments

  1. Posted by: Marketing Guy Date posted: 11th November, 2008 at 12:57 am

    And again – now I’m seeing blogs I commented on (no link dropped!) showing up as referrers for Zero Strategy in GA! C’mon Google – get your act together!

  2. Posted by: John Date posted: 22nd November, 2008 at 10:31 pm

    There has been reports around the web about the malfunctioning of the GA tool over last few weeks. Not only that, Google’s SERP went haywire for about 10 days before it was restored to some extent but not fully till now. One can still find SPAM sites/pages on top results.

  3. Posted by: Kasumi DeMarco Date posted: 2nd December, 2008 at 1:00 pm

    I have had a lot of problems to with GA for myself and my clients over the past week or two

    Clicky is a good alternate for getting stats and this one also includes live data http://getclicky.com/59189

    Here is a review of it too http://www.kasumiseo.co.uk/clicky-web-analytics-review/