Google organic search doesn't seem accurate - maybe a bug?

[roundbrix]

| nord vineyards estate wines jonquil vineyards napa valley cabernet sauvignon 2006 | 40 | 3.40 | 00:00:24 | 90.00% | 0.00% |

This is a sample of an entry that got 40 visits to our website. Obviously 40 people didn't type the full phrase above.

Have others seen that google analytics organic search seems not accurate quite a bit of the time?

Does this mean people are typing segments of this and they group it together somehow?

I think there is some kind of bug in google analytics.

[wattssw]

There are a few exact matches to this phrase....

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22nord+vineyards+estate+wines+jonquil+vineyards+napa+valley+cabernet+sauvignon+2006%22

Perhaps this is related to a content scraper? I doubt this is a bug in Google analytics.

[Copstead]

That is most likely based on Google's "Search Suggest". Google's Search Suggest automatically recommends popular searches as you type your query into the search field.

40 people may not have typed that, but Google suggested it and they chose those terms to view.

Here is a Whiteboard Friday Rand did on the topic back in March, 2012.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-googles-search-suggest-instant-works-whiteboard-friday

[Copstead]

Could be as well.

[roundbrix]

But this search phrase has 12 keywords. When I try google suggest has about 3-5 suggested phrase words, so I don't think it's google's "Search suggest".

I've seen this quite a bit on our site where a certain long phrase gets several visits on just one day. It is not just a one-off. I bet everyone has seen this to some extent.

[roundbrix]

But this search phrase has 12 keywords. When I try google suggest has about 3-5 suggested phrase words, so I don't think it's google's "Search suggest".

I've seen this quite a bit on our site where a certain long phrase gets several visits on just one day. It is not just a one-off. I bet everyone has seen this to some extent.

[roundbrix]

A content scraper would come from one IP address correct? In that case, Google analytics would only see this as one visit. Maybe I need to look in the raw log files to see what this actually is...

[wattssw]

It just seems a bit odd that there are multiple recent instances of this precise phrase...something seems fishy!

[EGOL]

I am wondering if Google's preloading of the SERPs into mobile devices is doing this?

When I use my cell phone with safari I can thumb through browser windows that have the top sites loaded into them.    If I go back to the SERPs these seem to reload.

[roundbrix]

In the data logs, I see bingbot.htm accessing /profile_1414-2006-Nord-Estate-Wines-Jonquil-Vineyards-Cabernet-Sauvignon.html as well as a few IPS from Google's Googlebot and facebookexternalhit

I think the valid people searching for this exact phrase "nord vineyards estate wines jonquil vineyards napa valley cabernet sauvignon 2006" should be 0 in google analytics instead of 40.

I think either bing, googlebot or facebook or possibly even Google site search (we use for searching internally on our site)  is making the results inaccurate for google analytics.

I've seen this before. I don't think it is just related to me either as I've seen similar issues on other people's websites (we host about 50 websites)

[Copstead]

You can break it down to see exactly where those searches are from in GA to see if they are bots or not.

Login > Traffic Sources > Search > Organic >

Select the Keyword

Select "Domain" as Secondary Dimension" under "Technology"

and it will show where those visits came from.

[roundbrix]

Ok. Shows 25 different domains.

But I still don't see 40 people from 25 different domains typing in 12 word phrases that match exactly (or in any order). Maybe certain people typed in one or two of these words and that gets counted as part of the 12 word phrase, but then that would be a bug in google analytics.

Something weird is going on, but not sure how to find out what.