: Over reporting in google analytics - social media stats I have a client and their traffic from social media reads thus: 80% from facebook 1% from Twitter This suggestsd they are not exploiting

@Yeniel560

I have not looked into it lately to see if it's still an issue or not. But at one point many of the clicks received from twitter were coming through as "Direct" traffic because the way desktop and mobile twitter apps handled links no referring URLs were passed. Here's an article (circa 2009) explaining the issue:
searchengineland.com/is-twitter-sending-you-500-to-1600-more-traffic-than-you-might-think-22696
It may be what your boss is referring to, whether it's still accurate or not I don't know (with an 80-1 difference it seems like it might be).

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@Hamaas447

Without knowing the Client it would be hard for me to judge on the fb/twitter ratio. If the twitter is feeding the facebook, and they don't have the right followers.. How engaging are they, -- there are too many factors involved to comb through...

I have two ideas for you to look through/investigate. I would think option two would be the easiest, but you wouldn't have your answer until your test time passed. The first option will be tasking, depending on your site traffic.


1) I would verify this information by going through Traffic Sources -
Sources and comb through all traffic, direct, referrals, etc and take
not of all the traffic listed in there. Compare that to your Social
Analytics.


.


2) Another way to verify this information is to use a URL shorten
service with analytics (bit.ly) And only use those short links for
Twitter. Compare this with your analytics information and see how it
goes!


Good luck to you. If you would like any further help or insight, please comment and I'll see what I can do for you.

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@Vandalay111

Social analytics only report actions made using the "official" facebook, twitter and Google+ buttons. In the case of facebook, it's quite flexible but you have to be very strict with twitter.

Here you have the implementation documentation for social analytics: analytics-api-samples.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/src/tracking/javascript/v5/social/facebook_js_async.html
And here the implementation samples: analytics-api-samples.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/src/tracking/javascript/v5/social/facebook_js_async.html
Please take note that you have to declate a tweet as a Twitter Web Intent:

function trackTwitter(intent_event) {
if (intent_event) {
var opt_pagePath;
if (intent_event.target && intent_event.target.nodeName == 'IFRAME') {
opt_target = extractParamFromUri(intent_event.target.src, 'url');
}
_gaq.push(['_trackSocial', 'twitter', 'tweet', opt_pagePath]);
}
}

//Wrap event bindings - Wait for async js to load
twttr.ready(function (twttr) {
//event bindings
twttr.events.bind('tweet', trackTwitter);
});

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