There are lots of things I know in SEO and a lot many I don't yet. I like it when I discover a new thing that I can do, or find some of the dumbest mistakes I did in the past. Anyway, learning is always great.
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| All page views in Even numbers |
But this time I discovered a mistake, not of mine, but not being aware of it for such a long time is my mistake indeed. But as said before, I have still a lot to learn and finding that I'm learning new things feels great.
The mistake is the Google Analytics code was implemented twice on our website.
Well, not a mere mistake, it is a blunder.
Because of that, the code is triggering twice when a single action is taking place. So, the wrong report in analytics.
It was implemented much before my taking responsibility for the website, and it is not a regular mistake that you check in a routine website audit.
It happened to be that I was learning re-marketing and I wanted to have a campaign for our website. For that, I needed to connect the Google Analytics to Google AdWords for unlocking advanced retargeting capability.
And I also wanted to migrate to GTM instead of adding all the tags directly to the website each time I need one. Every time I had to beg before a developer to help me. So, before that, I was checking how Google Analytics tag is implemented on the site right now.
I found the tag is added twice.
I checked the home page and checked the few other pages. Google Analytics Tag has been added twice on all pages other than the blog pages as they have the different template. And it is added at the end of the <BODY> section, it should be at the top of the <HEAD> section.
To make sure whether the tags are triggering twice I checked Google Analytics report hoping there I will be able to find some clue and I saw all the pages have Page Views in even numbers (see the image on the right), so it seems - yeah, that is it. To make sure I changed the date range. I saw the same.
I was getting the wrong report of the traffic not only that for a long time I was wondering why there is such a significant difference between the number of leads we are actually getting and the number of leads shown in Google Analytics. It was there even on the thank you pages.
So, next time I audit a website Checking how the Analytics and all other tags known to me will be there in the process and on my checklist of website audit.
In the "thank you" pages I found this piece of code, It seems to me to be some other tag. Please let me know if anyone knows what this is -
And also share your learning experience about SEO or any other thing, in the comment.
Update (25th Oct 2017): The best way to check about tags is to install Google Tag Assistant plugin on Chrome browser.
The tag that I didn't know of is Google AdWords tag for tracking conversion. Stupid me! I have linked AdWords to Analytics; now I think I do not need this tag as Analytics Goals are imported in AdWords Conversions that can be found under Tools tab on the top of AdWords (after signing in). I will make it sure and update later.
