Google Analytics Code Placement May Affect Your Reporting
Brought to attention recently by Duncan Riley over at the Inquisiter, it appears that depending on where your Google Analytics code is placed; your page views may be skewed and under reporting. The experts at Interactive Return investigated.
Riley noticed his page views were far less than ad impressions, and the gap could not be accounted for; but while there had been issues with Google Analytics in the past, there didn’t seem to be an explanation available for the problem. Through some experimenting in order to work out the problem, he discovered that based on the time it takes for an entire page to load, that in many cases people were hitting the site and leaving before it was completely loaded.
Since the Google Analytics code was placed at the bottom of the page, it was not picking up on the times where people may have visited the site and then left in a short period of time (usually under 30 seconds).
So what do you do? Put the code at the top of the page to ensure more accurate results?
Well, Justin Meighan, Senior Web Developer at Interactive Return points out that the reason the code is placed at the bottom of the page is that if connectivity issues with Google Analytics arise, then the page will still load and page content will still be visible. However, if you decide to put the Google Analytics code at the top of the page, and there is a connectivity issue, the page will not load at all.
So, Interactive Return will continue to place the Google Analytics code at the bottom of the page in order to ensure that every visitor is able to view the content of the page, because at least that way…there is more of a chance that they will stay there and wait for the rest of the content to load. The alternative? You may have slightly more accurate results, but may have more unsatisfied visitors to your page, as there’s a better chance that they may not be able to view your page.
We’ll continue to make note of any underreporting of page views, but at least now we know the basis of this problem. Let us know if you’ve had any unsolved mysteries with your Google Analytics reporting, and we’ll work it out together!
Emer Lawn, Online Marketing Executive, Interactive Return