I just launched a website powered by WordPress. I put the Google Analytics tracking code in my header, but for some reason it appears as if each visit might be double firing. I am getting things like a 0% bounce rate, and twice as many “pageviews” as “unique visitors.”
Has anyone had experience with this and know what might be the problem? I’ve dug through the site and can’t see why there might be a double instance. I also have webmaster tools installed, but that shouldn’t cause a problem I would think.
Any help would be greatly appreciated, I’d be happy to paste any code that would be useful as well.
UPDATE: Sorry, header code is here. Though I just copied this from the GA site:
<script type="text/javascript">
var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-33137300-1']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
(function() {
var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
})();
Your tracking code is correctly deployed, so there shouldn’t be any reason for double counting.
You can verify the number of times the visit has been registered by looking at the net panel in firebug or in Google Chrome’s developer tools. I’ve run through the implementation on your site and it seems to only be declaring one pageview per page load.
Here are some instructions on how to check this for yourself.
If you have the net panel loaded when the page loads, it shows you every http request the browser makes. Google Analytics tracks pageviews by making a http request for the file _utm.gif from the server http://www.google-analytics.com. It records the various bits of data it transfers back as parameters on this image request.
Here’s a request made from your website:
Whilst that’s a little complex to break down and read manually, the net panel can also be used to show you the parameters of the request in a readable form. Here’s what it says for your site:
Those various utm variables are declaring different bits of information about the visit being tracked. You can find a full list and explanation for them at this blog post.
In this case it’s only really important to see that there’s only one instance of utmcc, the account string; which means that the request has only been sent once, to that one account.
Reasons why you might be seeing double counting.
You’ve listed two reasons why you think you might be seeing double counting.
One is that you’re seeing twice as many pageviews as unique visitors. Unless you’re seeing exactly twice as many pageviews as you have unique visitors that shouldn’t be a problem. If a person comes to your site multiple times within the date range you’ve set for the report in Google Analytics, they’ll only be counted as one unique visitor, but every time they come back, they’ll generate an additional pageview. They’ll also generate an additional pageview if they refresh the page, still without counting as a new visitor – unique or otherwise.
You should always expect to see many more pageviews on your site than you have unique visitors. If you want to know more about the various metrics in web analytics (visits, visitors, pageviews, etc) you can find their official definitions from the digital analytics associations’s standards page.
The second reason you thought you might be seeing duplicate visits is your 0% bounce rate. Unfortunately I don’t have any clear idea what’s causing that. Google Analytics considers a visit as a bounce if it doesn’t generate at least two calls to the http://www.google-analytics.com server. In a simple implementation like this, the only things that generate calls to the google server are page loads and people interacting with videos. Since your homepage is definitely only creating one server call, and doesn’t have any videos it should definitely be tracking at least some bounces, if any exist.
If your traffic is very low, it is possible that every visit you’ve had so far has consisted of at least two page loads (and thus at least two server calls), but if you’re seeing significant traffic, then you should expect to see at least a few bounces with the tracking set up the way you have done.
EDIT: I’ve had to strip all the hyperlinks and screenshots out of this answer in order to get through the spam-filter. Since it’s my first Stack Overflow answer I’m not permitted to use multiple hyperlinks, or to link pictures.