A campaign ghost keeps returning to my Google Analytics - Help!

[Sam.at.Moz]

A couple of campaign tracking links were created on my homepage (leading to internal pages), these were removed a few weeks ago (100% removed from the site).

I understand there is a 6 month window and as long as a user returns (no matter from which source) they will be counted as a session against that campaign.

Since these campaign links were set-up in error, I hoped creating a fresh new view within Google Analytics would stop them appearing.

However they are still showing as sessions even in the new view (created after removing the campaign links in question).

Is there anyway to stop this happening!? I want to be able to report on sessions correctly.

Thanks,

Sam

[DmitriiK]

Hi there.

New view wouldn't help anyhow, because it's tied to the same tracking code. My guess is that either users are getting to those pages through bookmarks or browser history, or those links were indexed somehow and now you're getting hit by bots and crawlers.

Go to campaigns, see what source/medium those sessions are coming from, also check how long those sessions are and the bounce rate. If it looks like it might be crawlers - look into ghost and referral spam filtration. here is the link on how to implement - https://moz.com/blog/stop-ghost-spam-in-google-analytics-with-one-filter

Hope this helps

[Sam.at.Moz]

Thanks, bounce rate is in the early 90% so high but not 100%, exit pages also differ.

Interesting note on the tracking code.

Since if any visitor revisits (whom orginally clicked on one of the campaign links) counts as a session against the old campaign I don't think it's as complicated as people visiting through bookmarks or browser history.

Is there really nothing I can do about these old campaigns coming back ot haunt me!?

[DmitriiK]

I know it's too obvious, but what about just creating a segment, filtering out that campaign traffic?

[KristinaKledzik]

Hi Sam,

First, to be clear, campaigns will be overwritten if visitors come from any other source, it's just direct traffic that the campaign parameter holds on to. Here's Google's direct quote from its article on campaigns and traffic sources:

Existing campaign or traffic source data for a particular user will be overwritten by new campaign or traffic source data, regardless of the configured timeout period.

If you look at the flowchart a bit below that quote, you'll see that Google starts by looking for new campaign data, then looks for traffic source data, then, if it doesn't find either of those, uses existing campaign data.

That means your theory could still be correct, but only if all of the visits you're still seeing come in are just from direct visits. You can check this theory by using the % New Sessions column - if it's 0%, you're right, these are just returning visitors, and the best I can recommend is that you set up filters to make these show up as "direct." If it's not, though, (and I'm suspecting it's not, because I doubt this would make a large enough number for you to be concerned and reach out for help), you've still got some of those campaign URLs floating around for the public.

Here's how I'd go looking for them:

• Use a third party tool like Screaming Frog or DeepCrawl to triple check that there are no internal links on your site with those old campaign parameters. CMSs can easily miss things like this, so using an outside tool that just tries to find everything helps.
• Search for the original URLs + parameters in Google to see if any affiliates or coupon sites are using those links.
• Check your old emails - did you ever send out these URLs? It's possible that people are still accessing old emails.
• Was this a campaign that could have been shared in any other way? I know that my company often shares shortened URLs, which redirect to URLs with parameters appended. Have you shared any bit.ly or other aliased URLs that are appending those parameters you've tried to get rid of?

I hope this helps! Let me know if you still have any questions, or if anything stumps you along the way.

Best,

Kristina

[Sam.at.Moz]

Very interesting Kristina.

I think I've figured out what's going on.

Our product is a browser based CRM hosted on a secure server, so I believe someone has previously visited our site and clicked on one of the old campaigns and then is either returning directly to our /login page or is clicking on the ? buttons within our browser-based CRM which leads to our website support articles and since our browser-based CRM is on a secure server this would count as direct traffic not referral.

So as you mentioned I will set-up a filter to have these campaigns show up as direct.

Hallelujah!

Sam

[KristinaKledzik]

Good luck!

[Sam.at.Moz]

Thanks Kristina,

I set-up the filter in the following way:

Filter type - Custom

Search and Replace
Filter field - Campaign name

Search string - 'nameofmycampaignimremoving'

Replace string -

I figured by adding in the campaign name but not replacing it with anything, Google Analytics should now pick this traffic up as direct.

The campaign is no longer showing in my traffic, so I assumed it's worked.

Is there a better way of doing this?

Sam