Back to Basics: "not set" Entries

From time to time you might see a "not set" entry in your Top Content or Keywords reports. Hopefully at this point you go to the Google Analytics Help Center to do a search for "not set" to find the definition. :) If you don't, not to worry - this blog post sums up why this entry appears in your report and what you can do to prevent it from happening in the future.

"not set"
Any direct visit or referral visit will be shown under "not set" because it does not have a keyword, ad content, or any other campaign information associated with the visit. The explanations below can help you figure out why a campaign attribute wasn't collected along with the visit.

Re-tagging your AdWords destination URLs
If you are seeing a significant amount of "not set" or '(not set)' entries in your AdWords-related reports, you may wish to disable auto-tagging and instead use the URL Builder to tag your destination URLs so that they're set to the specific campaign variables you want to appear in your reports.

gclid redirection for keywords
Sometimes Analytics users are master URL taggers and still see a "not set" keyword entry. Usually this happens when there is some kind of redirection and the gclid (which is the magic that makes autotagging happen) doesn't work the way it's supposed to. At this point, we recommend you do some detective work going backwards from what you know. Start by clicking on the "not set" entry, and from the Dimension menu, select 'Source' and then 'Medium.' You can also select 'Landing Page' in the Dimension menu if 'Source' or 'Medium' doesn't give you any clues about the missing keyword. These segmenting options should help you narrow down the source of this keyword so that you can pinpoint which keyword's gclid isn't behaving properly.

For more information, search the Google Analytics Help Center (it's important to include the quotation marks!) by entering "not set" in the search box. If you know of any other tips or tricks about "not set" entries, please feel free to post a comment.


Posted by Christina Park, Google Analytics Team

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Back To Basics: Comparing Days Of The Week

You probably already know that you can quickly compare two date ranges against each other simply by clicking Compare to Past. So, in the screenshot below, clicking Compare to Past will allow me to compare the current period (Mar 16 - Apr 15) with the previous period (May 16 - May 15).

Once I click Apply, I'll see the graph below. The problem, though, is that this graph is not very useful to me as a comparison tool because the days of the week don't line up.

The first day of the current period (March 16) is a Monday, so I'll use the date slider to move the first day of the previous period back to Feb 9, also a Monday. Just click the Timeline tab to see the date slider and drag the previous period (in green) to the left, one day at a time. The date will change in the text box as you drag the slider. Then, click Apply.

Once I've lined up my days, I can compare weekdays to weekdays, and weekends to weekends. For example, I can see that, except for the first Wednesday, I received more traffic on all of the Wednesdays in the previous period.

Next time you use Compare to Past, try using the date slider to adjust your previous time period. It's possible that you'll uncover new insights about your day to day traffic.


Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

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Back to Basics: Free Google Analytics Tools

We've picked two free tools that anyone can use while setting up Google Analytics for your site. The tools below are pretty basic but are applicable to anyone tracking a campaign with an Analytics account.

URL Builder

The first tool we want to introduce our beginners to is the URL Builder. In order for Google Analytics to track your marketing campaigns effectively, you'll need to tag your online ads with the right information (e.g. campaign, medium and source) so that Google Analytics can track your marketing campaign and show you which activities are paying off. To help the the tagging process goes smoothly, you can use the URL Builder from our Google Analytics Help Center.

Tagging your campaign links will consist of a URL address followed by a question mark and your campaign variables. But, you won't need to worry about link syntax if you fill out the URL Builder form and press the Generate URL button. A tagged link will be generated for you and you'll be able to copy and paste it to your ad.

SiteScan

The Google Analytics SiteScan tool, created by EpikOne, a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant, is a very handy tool to verify that all pages on your site include the tracking code.

SiteScan picks up on some classic signs indicating that your site has improperly implemented tracking code like:

1. No data in your account. (The tracking code was either never implemented or has the wrong account number)

2. You're seeing a high bounce rate even though your site isn't a blog and has more than one page. (If you've only tagged your homepage, your Google Analytics account will be unable to identify any other pageviews from your site. )

SiteScan then reports each page in an easy-to-read CSV file after you've installed the tool. This makes it easy for you to isolate the pages with tracking problems, fix them, and effectively manage your Google Analytics Tracking Code installation.

We're constantly working on developing tools to diagnose problems associated with your account or increase the usability of Google Analytics. We hope that you find the above two tools useful and leave us a comment about any other diagnostic tools you would like to tell us about on this blog!

Posted by Christina Park, Google Analytics Team

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