Google Analytics - Referring Sites by Goal, is it accurate?

Question

Preface: I'm taking a look at the Google Analytics we have for our product's website and we have a bunch of goals setup for each specific type of account we have on the website.

Question: When looking at the Traffic Sources > Referring Sites page, and then looking at it by Goals, it gives me a set of percentages for each goal by referring site. However, it seems like the only things that have conversions are our internal pages, our blog, and Google.

I guess my question is: if a user shows up from another website, and then clicks around before signing up, will they be counted?

Answer 1

If your main referring sites are internal pages, it means your Google Analytics is mis-implemented, and is leading to self-referrals.

In other words, people are coming to your site from external pages, then at some point, likely due to a subdomain change without proper code to handle the change, they're being treated as a new visit, with a referral from an internal page. Then when they complete your goal, that session has a source that is your internal page.

Hypothetical Example:

Google Search "Jon Lim's widgets" That leads me to jonlimswidgets.com/buy-now. On this page, I'm a visitor referred by Google Search.

I click a 'Buy Now' button, which takes me to secure.jonlimswidgets.com. But, if I didn't setup subdomain tracking in my tracking code, I've initiated a new visit, referred by jonlimswidgets.com.

Then I buy your widget, trigger your goal, and the Referring Site for completing that goal is jonlimswidgets.com

There are other things that could cause self-referrals, but this is the most common cause.

To prevent this from happening, you should read up on Cross-Domain Tracking in Google Analytics.