My Google Analytics FLAT LINE for 12 days! On 5 Ning Sites

[AnitaC]

I have 5 Ning sites.  What is going on with the sites and Google Analytics? My analytics look FLAT LINE for 12 days.  I average at least 2,000+page views a day.  My analystics are showing like 161 one day, 200 on another day, the most being 400 in on one day.  I know it should be 2,000 or more.hat is going on with the sites and Google Analytics? My analytics look FLAT LINE for 12 days.  I average at least 2,000+page views a day.  My analystics are showing like 161 one day, 200 on another day, the most being 400 in on one day.  I know it should be 2,000 or more.

This doesn't look good! I was getting ready to send out my data for selling ads and that FLAT LINE for 12 days DOES NOT look good!

Anyone else having this problem? ALL OF MY SITES ARE FLAT LINED FOR 12 DAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[J.Wings]

It seems like you still haven't understood what we were saying. The graph you show here is visits, not page views. In my experience, the number of members you have has very little to do with how many visits you will have.

to get to the bottom of this, do this:

1 - make a graph of the dates from may 1st to today. Was there a dramatic jump up in the beginning of June like we said there was?

2 - look at the actual PAGE VIEWS graph. I can see the tiny version of it here, and the pageviews didn't flatline. They are trending down, but in a natural fashion.

3 - Notice in fact, the pages/visit graph went UP in the same proportion as the visits went down.

This is an indicator that before, each page view was counted as a unique visit. Now the visits are tracking properly.

If you would like further explanation of how this works, I'd be happy to do a phone consultation to explain it to you. Feel free to contact me here.

[AnitaC]

I understand perfectly what I am doing and seeing sir. I've been doing this a while and I like to see the full picture on everything, not just one thing. From a marketing perspective when I pick a date range for a potential advertiser, I show him everything. Seeing a FLAT LINE where the numbers have dropped from a few thousand a day to like 53 is just not cutting the mustard for me.

[MAXX]

No, you are not understanding what J is saying at all. You are looking at a graph that is from the past 30 days. You need to do a graph from the past 120 days and post it here. You will see that there was a huge increase in member visits from June 9 till July 26th. This was due to a bug by ning that they refused to acknowledge. So all of your member visits were inflated during that time period. And prior to that spike, you will see a flatline leading up to the spike.

The flatline you are seeing now is a true representation of the visits. Sorry, but you just weren't receiving the traffic you thought you were--blame ning. You can see the same thing in my graphs below:

30 day graph

120 day graph with abnormal spike in traffic

[J.Wings]

ok anita,

but try this:

isolate the period where it was really really good... Thousands of visits a day. Chose that date range and look whats happening.

how many pages per visit were you getting? where was your traffic coming from?

visits x pages/visit = pageviews
that's the math.

anyway,

I'm annoyed about this bug too, because its hard to explain it to advertisers, and it screws up all of our presentations.

it has been a huge inconvenience for all of us.

At least we agree on that much.

[MAXX]

All my #'s returned to normal except my bounce rate. I get daily bounce redings of .48%. Everything is always less than 1%. Prior to the goofy stuff that started on June 9th, my bounce reading averaged 35-45%.

[Kevin Rutherford]

Mine have been a mess, hard to tell what's really going on.

[J.Wings]

your pageviews show natural ups and downs

visits spike during period in question

pages per visit drop to close to 1 during mis-tabulated period. You have classic case. Your recent analytics are correct. the middle period was an error

[J.Wings]

btw, my analysis of the ups and downs of your pageviews is that its a weekly cycle. Seems to be equally spaced peaks 7 days apart.

[MAXX]

Any explanation for my bounce rates J?

[J.Wings]

less than one percent does seem suspicious.

if i had to make a theory i'd guess there was a hidden redirect or an iframe that loaded on the main page, causing a second click, and this prevented all but immediate window closings from being reported as a bounce.

[J.Wings]

Assuming we are talking about coachbook, the "update status" box (a nice touch btw) is the most likely cause (it calls a form from the profile url), followed by the image banner rotator.

If you really want to get to the bottom of it, take each off for a day and see if your bounce rate returns to a more believable number.

Anyway, how important is it to know your bounce rate? these are pretty nice features, so i wouldnt take them off permanently just because they are messing with your head a bit.

[MAXX]

Well I just added the banner rotator a week ago. The status update was added about a month ago I believe. But I understand what you mean about a hidden redirect.

The bounce rate really isn't that important, I just found it odd because it seemed to correlate with the spike in visits, but then never got straightened out.