Ask my any Google Analytics/Adwords question!

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LinkPlate

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Since I am new here and want to show that I can be valuable to this forum. Please ask me any Google Analytics/Adwords question and I will answer it right here!

Thank you
 
@kingofthewiki

I've attempted to remove a lot of the garbage that appears in Analytics by setting up a second view with a lot of filters. I've:
  • enabled the checkbox to remove "known bots and spiders".
  • set up filters to remove referral traffic from the big spammers domains
  • removed any ghost-host traffic that doesn't actually land on my page
However, I'm still seeing a lot of traffic coming through various channels that have an Average Session Duration of 0:00. Basically any channel that sends traffic at some point eventually sends this 0:00 traffic. I'm assuming that's still spiders crawling.

Is there any way to filter any traffic that literally spends no time on the site, from any source? Is that what's actually going on, or is it just mis-reporting on the part of Analytics?

Thanks!
 
Hmmm.. Where are you seeing the 0.00 session duration? from the traffic sources tab?

You could setup a filter to filter out session duration that are less than 0 or even create an advanced segment that will remove that from your view, but that will not help since you are only hiding this data from yourself and not really fixing the problem (if there is a problem!!) Does that make sense?

Ryuzaki said:
@kingofthewiki

I've attempted to remove a lot of the garbage that appears in Analytics by setting up a second view with a lot of filters. I've:
  • enabled the checkbox to remove "known bots and spiders".
  • set up filters to remove referral traffic from the big spammers domains
  • removed any ghost-host traffic that doesn't actually land on my page
However, I'm still seeing a lot of traffic coming through various channels that have an Average Session Duration of 0:00. Basically any channel that sends traffic at some point eventually sends this 0:00 traffic. I'm assuming that's still spiders crawling.

Is there any way to filter any traffic that literally spends no time on the site, from any source? Is that what's actually going on, or is it just mis-reporting on the part of Analytics?

Thanks!
Click to expand...
 
Yeah, it makes sense. I've got one unfiltered view and a filtered view with the filters I discussed above. I don't mind adding another. Anything less than 1 second would be fine. It's up to Google to fix "the problem" but for me, another filter would be fine. I'll look into that. I just wasn't sure if that was google mis-reporting or if it was just registering more spiders. Yeah, I see it in the traffic sources, from organic, social, and referrals.
 
If you are seeing it from all the different traffic sources then the code must be placed incorrectly or there is an issue with the code. I am assuming your website is not a one pager - right?

Ryuzaki said:
Yeah, it makes sense. I've got one unfiltered view and a filtered view with the filters I discussed above. I don't mind adding another. Anything less than 1 second would be fine. It's up to Google to fix "the problem" but for me, another filter would be fine. I'll look into that. I just wasn't sure if that was google mis-reporting or if it was just registering more spiders. Yeah, I see it in the traffic sources, from organic, social, and referrals.
Click to expand...
 
Which are the best resources for learning more about Google Analytics (besides Google sites) ?
 
Adwords:

Aside from all the obvious CTR, ad copy, QS stuff - you ever sit back and go "shit how are these [competitors] getting these clicks for this cheap?"

I'm in a large vertical where I feel that way quite a lot. I just get out-bidded everywhere and our approaches are very similar. The competitors are spending much more than me. Maybe that's it?
 
Spending more doesn't necessarily get you more conversions as you probably know. Its definitely annoying when your competitors are out bidding you because they have more money or because they are just dumb and bidding on everything. That shouldn't stop you from competing though!!

Get better landing pages and setup retargeting - that should drop your cost. Also, you can bid on your competitors names (its a little expensive) and retarget those specific users with ads saying how you are better.

Hope this helps!

Zach said:
Adwords:

Aside from all the obvious CTR, ad copy, QS stuff - you ever sit back and go "shit how are these [competitors] getting these clicks for this cheap?"

I'm in a large vertical where I feel that way quite a lot. I just get out-bidded everywhere and our approaches are very similar. The competitors are spending much more than me. Maybe that's it?
Click to expand...
 
Anyone using Google Data Studio yet?

This template is for Facebook ads data within Google Data Studio. https://datastudio.google.com/org//reporting/0BxGPgjQHCLwZWVAyNDJMLVNYWFU/page/VgD. Freakin awesome

QK0OTRu.png
 
I'm looking for a good Adwords ad testing script so I don't have to constantly monitor tests. I found this one which looked pretty good: http://www.freeadwordsscripts.com/2013/12/automated-creative-testing-with.html

However, it doesn't seem to work anymore.

Can you recommend something else? Do you prefer scripts yourself to cut down on the time it takes to manage tons of ads that you're constantly split testing?
 
finnegan said:
I'm looking for a good Adwords ad testing script so I don't have to constantly monitor tests. I found this one which looked pretty good: http://www.freeadwordsscripts.com/2013/12/automated-creative-testing-with.html

However, it doesn't seem to work anymore.

Can you recommend something else? Do you prefer scripts yourself to cut down on the time it takes to manage tons of ads that you're constantly split testing?
Click to expand...

The basis of that script looks legit but I have not tested it. I like the fact that it sends you an email and doesn't automatically pause/update things for you. Anything that cuts your time optimizing is great, but automating the entire process is not something I would recommend entirely. These free scripts can help minimize your time but can also lead to issues in the long run.

Optimizing for CTR is great, since ads are the "window" to your website, however post ad clicks are also important. By that I mean, with ads you are setting expectations for the user. Even if 1 ad gets clicked more, that doesn't necessarily mean that it converts more, etc..

What users do on your website after they click the ad (or what they expect to see on your website based on your ad) can have an affect on your conversion rate which many scripts don't take into account.

Also, some scripts might break or stop working like you mentioned above so what I would recommend is setting up a Google data studio template specific to your ad testing and dump all the adwords metrics + analytics metrics on it. That way you can easily tell which are ads are performing/not.

You should also label your ads so that when it comes time to pause, all you would have to do is filter to that label and pause.

Hope this helps
 
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