: How can pages which aren't indexed be reported as landing pages in Google Analytics? In Google Analytics I have thousands of landing pages reported, however on checking some of them they aren't

@Murphy175

It could also count your own visits (or other developers/users) while you investigate/test the site, unless you have explicitly blocked yours/their IP from loading GA.

I have seen plenty of people (especially when checking their Google indexed pages) do a Google search and click a few links to navigate around their own site. If you do that and can't find the page in SERPs, then type the URL directly...well, you can see the answers above.

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@Samaraweera270

Answer is simple. User had started with google (new session) then left your website and came back directly (or other non-tagged source) to non-indexed page. Session (from google / organic) was continued and user landed on non-indexed page, but GA still counts that as organic traffic.


Direct traffic, however, never updates or replaces an existing campaign source such as a search engine, referring site, or campaign-tagged information.


from: support.google.com/analytics/answer/2731565?hl=en

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@Megan663

One possibility is that you have Universal Analytics installed and have a "Sign in with Google" button your your site.

When a user signs in and comes back to that page, Universal Analytics sees the external referrer from Google and starts a new session that it thinks is organic.

To combat this, I had my "Sign in with Google" functionality use meta refresh redirects to send the user back to the page they were one. Meta refresh redirects don't pass the external referrer in any browser that I've tested. They either don't pass a referrer, or use your own site as the referrer.

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