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There's Peanut Butter In My Chocolate – Social Media Is Polluting Your Web Analytics
So, okay…. We all know Twitter, Google Buzz and myriad other social networks are becoming part of the marketer’s toolbox. And, with that comes the URL Shorteners.
They’re so popular, in fact, that they’re built into almost all of the client-side applications that both you and your audiences are using for Tweeting out content. Whether you’re using Hootsuite and generating Ow.ly links – or Tweetdeck and Bit.ly links – or just using URL Shorteners to tidy up your Facebook pages, it’s a big piece of our new technological tool box.
But it’s good to be mindful that using these URL Shorteners can be a double-edged sword and some thought needs to go into how you’re handling URL Shortening and your Analytics Strategy.
Sharp Edge #1: Is That Traffic? Or Are You Just Happy To See Me?
So, if you’re not aware, the way that most URL Shorteners work is that they take the URL that you want shortened, and create a re-direct to whichever page you have shortened.
Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineLand wrote a great piece last summer (warning it’s a bit numbers-heavy) on how Twitter and other Social Media sites may be sending you more traffic than you might think. It’s especially informative because he actually did a test of a Tweet with a Bit.ly shortened URL. He basically added a URL with no tracking parameters (e.g. http://www.adaptivemarketer.com/archives.html) and one with tracking parameters (e.g. http://www.adaptivemarketer.com/archives.html?
utm_source=Yahoo&utm_medium=CPC& utm_term=Marketing&utm_
campaign=Promo).
Note the words in bold above. This is a link to the same page – but everything in bold tells Google Analytics (or most Analytics systems for that matter) that the link came from “Yahoo”, it was a “CPC ad buy”, that the keyword was “marketing” and the campaign was called “Promo”. If you’re not building these types of URL’s in general for your Search Marketing, you should look into it – as it’s the absolute best way of assigning credit for your target.
But as Danny, and others, have pointed out – in either scenario, traffic can be miscounted when it comes through Twitter or other sources. So, if you have a page get virally hot through Twitter – you may be getting more traffic than is being accounted for. His point in the article is that building URLS (as above) does seem to have some mitigating effect on this.
There are also some other articles on this… Here from Zebu Group… and here from MoreVisibility… That are also really informative on this topic.
But – really, it’s the other side of the sword that really got me to thinking…
Sharp Edge #2: Are The Kids Cleaning Up After Themselves?
My actual inspiration for this post was actually a Tweet that I made this morning – and as I shortened the URL, it got me to thinking.
So, ask yourself – when you Tweet a link that you really like – how are you doing that? If you’re like me, at least occasionally, you’ll open up your iGoogle Page or your MyYahoo, or your Google Reader or you might even click on an ad. Then, you really like the ensuing page; enough so that you want to Tweet it out to your followers. You go up to the address bar, click, press CTRL C, or Command C (whichever your platform), head over to your trusty ol’ Hootsuite, Seesmic, Tweetdeck etc… Type our your pithy tweet, shorten the URL – And away you go.
Now, maybe you don’t do this for every link – but I would guess you do it for at least some – and I guarantee you that a good number of people in the Social Media Universe do as well – because I’ve seen many of these kinds of links recently.
Whaddya mean “these kinds of links?” Well, here’s the thing. Remember all those UTM tags we just talked about above, and how they are so great for tracking social media URLS? Well, they’re very likely to be in that URL you just slurped up with the Copy/Paste.
So For example… Just now, I head to MyYahoo Home page and I see a wonderfully compelling headline from CopyBlogger (one of my favorites):
What Do You Do When You
Run Out of Knowledge?
I click on it… And am dutifully brought to this URL:
http://www.copyblogger.com/out-of-knowledge/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed :+Copyblogger+(Copyblogger)&utm_content=My+Yahoo
I whack that into my Twitter client – and tweet out this URL:
Guess where Google Analytics is going to think all the traffic for that link came from? Go ahead… click on it if ya want… I promise it’s not a Rickroll.
Yes, that’s right – GA will show that traffic is coming from their Feedburner Feed from MyYahoo. And if that short URL gets retweeted or emailed or whatever happens – The Analytics will show the same thing. Suddenly the Feedburner/MyYahoo feed looks much more popular than it really is.
It’s an interesting challenge – and not one that I have an immediate solution for. But it’s just definitely something to be aware of – and remember. As social media starts to feed us more traffic, and as we start to associate that with our success, it will be important for us to have thought through the process of both how we distribute links across Social Media – and for what we read into the results.
Would love to hear from any Analytics Gooorooos out there who have either thought about this challenge, or have an opinion on it.
