topic Re: Problems with tracking for Organic Search in Reporting & Analytics

Problems with tracking for Organic Search

SPELARNA — Mon, 19 Dec 2022 15:34:56 GMT

Hello,

We did the switch from WordPress to HubSpot earlier this year. Right from the start we noticed that we had a huge decrease in organic traffic (according to Google Analytics).

Initially we just though this was just some temporary issue with Google since we made a "huge" switch, and we decided to let a couple of week past.

And in general we didn't notice any decrease in total traffic nor conversion on site. So we actually forgot about this issue until this autumn when we started to do some comparison with last years data.

What we noticed then was that at the same time as we did the switch the "Direct"-traffic had a similar increase in traffic that matched the decrase in "Organic"-traffic.

After some research and talking with some friends of mine we probably discovered the issue... the cookie popup.

Since all new users (and majority of organic users would be new) they get the popup that they need to approve. I guess that we don't start to track data of the user UNTIL he approved, and when he approved he is already on the site = direct traffic.

Is there any way around this "bug"? We want to continue using Google Analytics for measuring our data but without the data its hard to measure the work we do.

Anyone had the same issue?

Attached is 2 images of "Organic" and "Direct"-channels in Google Analytics 3. So you can see that Direct increases at the same time as organic decreases.

Re: Problems with tracking for Organic Search

Ben_M — Tue, 20 Dec 2022 13:58:04 GMT

That's not really a bug. You are not supposed to be collecting data without opt in consent. Hubspot's tool is very basic in regards to cookie consent and in most cases, I would say that companies would typically outgrow Hubspot's tool and move to platforms like Onetrust, UserCentrics, etc.

Also - with regards to your analytics, I would highly recommend starting your transition to GA4. Google is shutting down UA in July and it will take time to build up the analytics and migrate events and conversions.

Re: Problems with tracking for Organic Search

SPELARNA — Tue, 20 Dec 2022 14:06:54 GMT

Hmm, so there is no way around this? Because obviously this will give us wrong data for SEO?
What do you recommend?

I've already activated GA4 with events etc. Thanks for that.

Re: Problems with tracking for Organic Search

Ben_M — Tue, 20 Dec 2022 14:46:13 GMT

What you are experiencing has nothing to do with Hubspot, but rather with legal compliance. What those solutions I listed do for you is to create a more robust compliance solution to have required cookies and include Google in there if you wish. They also allow you to integrate with more solutions than Hubspot and set required cookies vs. optional cookies which is not an option in Hubspot.

You can also fire Google Analytics code on your Hubspot pages by including it yourself in the header/footer HTML instead of through the integrations on Website-->Pages in the backend. That will fire it the way you used to ignoring preferences, but it does expose your company legally as you are collecting data without consent. Just make sure you disable the other integration or you will double collect data.

Re: Problems with tracking for Organic Search

SPELARNA — Tue, 20 Dec 2022 16:38:49 GMT

But how come we only see a decrease in Organic.
We have all other channels remaining the same. For example social, "affiliate"-channel, email-channel etc. All of those didn't encounter any drop.