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Analytics shows merchant.mvc and BASK as landing pages

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    Analytics shows merchant.mvc and BASK as landing pages

    We've noticed on all of our sites that google analytics reports merchant.mvc and BASK as landing pages. The only logical way I can think of for this to happen would be if someone added an item to their cart, then copied the address and emailed it to themselves, and clicked the link from a different machine later on.

    However, analytics also frequently shows the 'source' for these landing pages as a shopping search engine (various engines, not just a single one). If someone did click a link they emailed to themselves, the source wouldn't be a shopping engine.

    Meanwhile, shopping engines have no way of sending a visitor to our BASK screen.

    One other way I can think of for this to happen is if, somehow on add to cart, the visitor's google analytics cookie was reset. Then on BASK page load they would appear as a new visitor. But again, there should be no source in this case, especially not a shopping engine.

    Any ideas on other ways this might happen?
    Looking for work as of March 2024! I've been a web developer for going on 20 years, with most of that time spent on Miva sites.

    #2
    Re: Analytics shows merchant.mvc and BASK as landing pages

    We get that too. We even see INVC as landing pages some times. My take on it is, Google Analytics just sucks. I think it misses on information from time to time either due to network issues (code/beacon doesn't load) or some other internal issue. We still have issues where only about 80-90% of our transactions get recorded in GA...

    The new on that just popped up for the first time this month is Landing Page: "(not set)". First occurrence was 7/18 and we've already got like 11k visits for it.

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      #3
      Re: Analytics shows merchant.mvc and BASK as landing pages

      Google Analytics will never be 100% accurate by design. (it's Javascript based) That said my initial guess on Brandons would be Adwords Auto-Tracking issues and/or firing Ads to the index page without the proper query string handling applied to the DirectoryIndex declaration in the .htaccess file. (lot of folks are implementing remarketing and using the index page as the landing url) Bottom line, the gclid values are being lost somewhere when "not set" is displayed in reporting. "not provided" means the search was performed via SSL, in which case there is nothing that can be done there.

      Mike, your issues are a little more difficult to diagnose without seeing the specifics, but I suspect you are right that some basket pages were saved, bookmarked and/or linked to at some point, which is pretty common. The reporting of "
      merchant.mvc" can be caused by any number of things, including the saving, bookmarking and/or linking associated with the basket.

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        #4
        Re: Analytics shows merchant.mvc and BASK as landing pages

        Originally posted by Dan - Glendale Designs View Post
        Bottom line, the gclid values are being lost somewhere when "not set" is displayed in reporting. "not provided" means the search was performed via SSL, in which case there is nothing that can be done there.
        I'm not talking about keywords shown as "(not provided)", I'm talking about landing pages marked "(not set)"

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          #5
          Re: Analytics shows merchant.mvc and BASK as landing pages

          Thanks Dan and Brandon,

          We do see similar issues were we don't have 100% order tracking although we're pretty close.

          Dan, but what about the source? A bookmark wouldn't have a source of a shopping engine. I can't think of any way that this can happen, except for a glitch like Brandon mentioned. But it happens so frequently, I don't think google analytics is *that* buggy
          Looking for work as of March 2024! I've been a web developer for going on 20 years, with most of that time spent on Miva sites.

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            #6
            Re: Analytics shows merchant.mvc and BASK as landing pages

            Ah, sorry, my misunderstanding. If it is the landing pages being reported as "not set", that can be associated with filters or actions that take place on the page, most commonly associated with social media plugins. That is where I would look first.

            Again, sorry for my misunderstanding. On my second cup of coffee now, hopefully that will help ;)

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              #7
              Re: Analytics shows merchant.mvc and BASK as landing pages

              Dan, but what about the source? A bookmark wouldn't have a source of a shopping engine. I can't think of any way that this can happen, except for a glitch like Brandon mentioned. But it happens so frequently, I don't think google analytics is *that* buggy
              Correct, a bookmark would not have the source of a shopping engine, but previous index pages without short links or canonical tag could be a possiblity, open graph tags or sitemap specifying the wrong url, I can think of a number of possibilities here.

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