Using AMP? A known bug is probably screwing up your Google Analytics
Issue can cause visitors to be overcounted, single sessions to be divided into separate ones, and more.
Spy on Any Website
If you are using the Google-backed Accelerated Mobile Pages, there appears to be an excellent chance that those AMP pages are not being tracked correctly, if you use Google Analytics.
Christian Oliveira, a technical SEO consultant, posted a long, technical explanation of the issues AMP is giving with proper tracking in Google Analytics. Malte Ubi, Google’s technical lead for the AMP project, confirmed the problems and that they have no easy solution, in tweets today.
In summary, Oliveira found that:
- A unique visitor potentially can be reported as up to four different people, when accessing AMP pages.
- When a visitor navigates from an AMP page to a regular page in a site, that causes a new session to be generated, even though technically, it was the same session.
- Bounce rate will appear higher than normal when AMP pages are involved, because since new sessions are generated as described above, it appears as if visitors are leaving quickly when they are not.
- Pageviews per session will appear lower, when an AMP person moves from an AMP page to a regular page in a single session.
- Visitors who come to AMP page from search and then goes to another page will appear as if they are new visitors coming from referral traffic, rather than search.
Oliveira documents a solution to this, but it’s not for everyone nor perfect. Hopefully, Google will accelerated efforts on its end to come up with a solution, but that doesn’t look to be coming quickly, based on Ubi’s tweets.
Contributing authors are invited to create content for MarTech and are chosen for their expertise and contribution to the martech community. Our contributors work under the oversight of the editorial staff and contributions are checked for quality and relevance to our readers. MarTech is owned by Semrush. Contributor was not asked to make any direct or indirect mentions of Semrush. The opinions they express are their own.
Danny Sullivan was a journalist and analyst who covered the digital and search marketing space from 1996 through 2017. He was also a cofounder of Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land, MarTech, and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo and MarTech events. He retired from journalism and Third Door Media in June 2017. You can learn more about him on his personal site & blog He can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.
View Author Profile
Add us as a preferred source on Google
Google's "preferred sources" feature allows users to customize their search results by selecting news outlets they want to see more often in the "Top Stories" section.
Add Martech NowRelated Articles
Not every change in a marketing metric deserves a response. Marketers need to separate temporary fluctuations from signals worth acting on.
Read More
Free tools have lowered the cost of marketing mix modeling, but data quality and human expertise remain the biggest barriers to success.
Read More
CMOs are spending more on digital media and acquisition as consumers grow more skeptical of AI-generated content and its value.
Read More
Vibe coding can replace SaaS tools fast, but risks in security, integration and maintenance can quickly outweigh the savings.
Read MoreRelated Articles
Not every change in a marketing metric deserves a response. Marketers need to separate temporary fluctuations from signals worth acting on.
Read More
Free tools have lowered the cost of marketing mix modeling, but data quality and human expertise remain the biggest barriers to success.
Read More
CMOs are spending more on digital media and acquisition as consumers grow more skeptical of AI-generated content and its value.
Read More
Vibe coding can replace SaaS tools fast, but risks in security, integration and maintenance can quickly outweigh the savings.
Read More