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Hi all, GA analytics isn’t recording all sessions. The recorded visits are around 15% of what the actual site visits are. This started for seemingly no reason around 2 months ago.
Hey adibranch,
Thank you for the inquiry.
Did you enable the privacy options in the Enfold > Privacy & Cookies panel? It is possible that some of the users are not accepting the cookies on their first visit, which hinders the analytics script from loading. You can set the Enfold > Privacy & Cookies > Cookie Handling > Default Cookie Behavior to the first or second option to immediately allow the analytics script on page load even without user consent.
Best regards,
Ismael@adibranch
Assuming there is no problem with your tracking methods: This is one of the many pitfalls of Cookie Consent Policies required under EU Data Protection Laws.If you serve customers in the area covered by GDPR then you are supposed to ask users to accept tracking cookies to be compliant. You should not load Google Analytics by default.
If you operate in the USA or other parts of the world where GDPR does not apply to those customers you can load all cookies on page load – Unless there are other local rules where cookie consent still applies.
However what you can do is improve the UX design to make it easier to click accept all cookies rather than reject all. Improving your data capture See below:
The Cookie Bar Popup
I normally set Enfold to essential cookies accepted on first page load only.
Button 1 – Accept All Cookies button – Accept all Cookies and dismiss the popup
Button 2 – Settings – Opens the modalIn the Modal:
They can turn cookies on and off in the modal.
Button 1 – Accept All Cookies button – Accept all Cookies and dismiss the popup
Button 2 – Do Not Accept – Reject all Cookies and Close windowThis give the user the option to opt out but makes them more likely to click accept all to hide the message without going into the modal – Helping improve Analytics data while still being compliant.
I hope this helps!
Hi,
Thank you for the update.
Where do you check the actual site visits? Are you using another form of tracker in the site?
Best regards,
IsmaelHi, yes we have server stats for the site confirming the actual visits as much higher than the analytics visits. We’ve also been running this site for many years and know the traffic stats extremely well. They are definitely far over what is being recorded in GA.
You can see here that the problem occurred in August. There are a couple of peaks later on when i have tried to amend things, but its still not right.
Which figure are you using in Analytics to compare against the server stats?
I would expect analytics to be lower than the server stats because Analytics will filter out bots, some known IPs and bad traffic.
I doubt your server stats will do this. So it is probably correct. “Hits” vs “Users” are two different metrics.Yes, i’m aware of that. However, the discrepencies in GA would be minimal. The server stats are around 3-4 times as large as the analytics stats.
As i said, we know the site inside out (I also know the server stats inside out). You can see in the above image that things went wrong in September (I edited the post). However, we have been using the theme since last year, so something happened in september. Maybe an update to the theme.The site is also using WP Rocket which was installed mid year. However, i’m using WP rocket on around 20 other sites and seeing no problem on those.
Did you upgrade your analytics property from UA to GA?
There was a bug in Enfold cookie popups a while ago but that was only if you had cookie consent enabled.
I had several sites stop recording until the bug fix came out.I can think of five things that might have caused the failure to report traffic.
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Your site/server had an error stopping visitors reaching the site
(having not seen the site) If the site has speed issues – visitors may have left before the cookies and analytics were processed.
The version of Enfold running contained the cookie consent popup bugs
WP-Rocket is set to defer inline JS then that would stop the Cookie consent working and stop analytics.js and gtag.js running.
Google analytics outageOther than that – If traffic reports appear back to normal now then the problem is resolved
Hi,
Thank you for all the info.
We cannot be really sure what happened in the past months but according to the graph, the traffic is now coming back to normal or to what it used to be before the incident. We also checked the site today and the tracker seems to be working as it should as shown in the screenshot below. Please observe the site in the coming days or weeks and let us know if the issue happens again.
Happy holidays to both of you!
Best regards,
Ismael
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