Google Analytics Audit – ConversionXL, Fred Pike

Get introduced to some key chrome extensions and the developer console. These are the main tools you’ll use to run audits.

Topics Covered:

• How to begin to use the developer’s console to see all traffic being sent to Google Analytics.
• The four Chrome extensions that will be absolutely crucial to your audits.
• Quick tip: how to preserve navigation in the developer’s console.

Let’s get started by looking at the preliminary documentation about the property you’re going to audit.

Topics Covered:

• Discover where to find basic information about the property and immerse yourself in the data.
• Learn which filters to look for. If some basic ones are missing, you’ll know you may have a challenging audit ahead of you.
• Learn how to use Google Tag Assistant to discover how data is being sent to Google Analytics.

Next you’ll learn to check key setup elements of the Google Analytics Property and View.

Topics Covered:

• Verify some important settings in the Property view: default URL, referral exclusions, custom dimensions, Google Search Console, etc.
• Verify view settings and the existence of specific views. A proper Google Analytics setup includes at least two different views, and specific settings within each one.
• Verify that that raw view, if it exists, does not have blocking filters applied. The raw view is your safety net, so you don’t want to restrict the traffic going to it.

Now you’ll see how to go outside of Google Analytics to ensure that page view information is being sent accurately. When a visitor lands on a page, we’ll ensure that one — and only one — page view is sent.

Topics Covered:

• Learn how to use dataLayer Inspector+ (a Chrome extension) to verify accuracy in reporting page views. Page views are fundamental Google Analytics dimensions — you need to make sure they’re right.
• See examples of under- and over-reporting of page views and learn what can cause those issues.
• Look at a case study of a property that was only reporting about 30% of page views. You’ll be a hero when you run across instances like this and remediate the issue.

Continuing with our focus on accuracy, the hostname filter is one of the best ways to ensure Google Analytics is reporting visitors who actually visited the site you’re auditing.

Topics Covered:

• Discover which hostnames are valid. If you’re setting up a hostname filter for accuracy, you should be accurate in which hostnames to include.
• Review why the raw view should not use the hostname filter. (Skip this at your own risk!)
• Discover how the hostname (dh) is set in a Google Analytics hit.

Let’s dive deep into IP filters to see if they are set up correctly. We’ll do this with Google Tag Assistant’s recording feature.

Topics Covered:

• Learn to decode a CIDR IP address and ensure Google Analytics is properly filtering that address. Plus, how NOT to do it. Bad examples abound.
• Use the recording features of the Tag Assistant to verify that the IP filters are working properly.
• See how to deal with properties using Anonymize IP.

So far, we’ve focused on the accuracy of data being sent to Google Analytics. Now our audit switches focus: making sure traffic is being reported in the right channels (which it almost never is).

Topics Covered:

• How traffic ends up in different channels, and how to audit Google Analytics properties to ensure the rules are being applied.
• Learn how to customize the channel groupings for the property you’re auditing to better reflect the unique traffic of that property.
• Look at some of the many ways traffic can inadvertently end up as “direct” and how to move traffic to the right channel.

Stepping back into auditing accuracy, we’ll check to ensure the relevant snippets (GTM, analytics.js, and/or gtag) are on every page of the site we’re auditing.

Topics Covered:

• With two different tools, you’ll learn to crawl your audit property to look for analytics tags that should and shouldn’t be there.
• Learn to look for utm_ parameters on the site you’re auditing because they can throw off your session accuracy (and break traffic sources).

In an ideal world, Google Analytics will report all the results for one specific page in one line. As part of our audit, we’ll test if that’s happening. Way too often, it’s not.

Topics Covered:

• Discover the main reason one specific page is broken into multiple lines (query parameters) and how to fix them during your audit.
• Uncover one more issue that can cause page-reporting issues, the trailing slash, and how to audit and fix it.
• Learn when to use the lowercase filter and why you should never use it in the raw view.

Google Analytics Events are the heart and soul of a good Google Analytics implementation. How good are the Events in the website you’re auditing?

Topics Covered:

• The only thing worse than no Google Analytics events is too many. You’ll explore an example of a site with way too many events, and how they cleaned it up.
• Learn the minimum type of events every website should have
• Learn to think like the website owner: What user interactions are most valuable to track and why?

Goals are almost as important as events. What does the property you’re auditing want visitors to do?

Topics Covered:

• As with events, you don’t want too many. You’ll learn to verify that the goals make sense for the property you’re auditing.
• Learn why you want to be stingy with goals and extravagant with events.

PII in the website you’re auditing is a major problem. Google can even delete all your data if it finds PII in your account. So let’s ensure your audit finds any PII that may exist.

Topics Covered:

• Learn where and how to look for PII and how to look for it. (It can be hidden and hard to find.)
• Learn at least one approach to mitigating PII using GTM, so PII never gets sent to Google.
• Not all PII is truly PII — but you’ll see why you should probably treat it as if it were.

EEC implementation can be messy. We won’t look at the details of implementing Shopify, WooCommerce, etc., but you’ll learn how to audit some significant EEC setup issues in Google Analytics.

Topics Covered:

• Verify that the Ecommerce checkout funnel is configured correctly, so that the site properly reports drop-offs between steps.
• Using dataLayer Inspector+ and GTM/GA Debug, you’ll learn how to discover if the EEC data is being captured correctly.

Congrats — you’re just about ready to call yourself an audit hero! Now let’s look at some resources to help you continue learning.

Topics Covered:

• This is the beginning of your journey — not the end. You’ll continue to learn lots from the sites you audit. You’ll run into issues you never knew existed. And you’ll have fun figuring out what the heck went wrong!
• CXL and CXL Live are great. Let’s also look at some other channels where analytics nerds hang out as well.
• Standing on the shoulders of giants: A quick review of my personal GA/GTM heroes — the people who helped me on my journey and from whom I continue to learn.