Google analytics data is contradictory

Question

For this post http://mytabletguru.com/forgot-password-pattern-unlock-of-android-tablet/

I am two different report.

1) When I see the Content -> Site Content -> Landing page, then it has following data.

2) When I see the Content -> All Pages. Then I select the above page, then goto source-> Google then it show the following

In one it shows that Avg. Visit Duration is 01.10 and in other it shows the Avg. Time on Page is 04.32.

Plz explain this.

Answer 1

These are two different reports, which are showing the "correct" data as per Google's support page. The terms being used in both the reports are worth noting, since they sound similar but are not (I can't really blame the OP for falling for the similarity)

Landing Page seems similar to Entrances, Pageviews to Visits, Avg Visit Duration to Avg Time on Page ... lets see if we can try and decipher these in one answer (I may be wrong, folks, so if you know more feel free to add/edit/correct :-)).

The first Report

1. This is the report which gives us info about all the visits landing on our desired page. This includes all traffic sources (organic, referral, direct and so on).
2. The average pages seen per visit is 1.26. This metric in our concerned question is quite useless (since we do not have the data about the other pages which were included in these visits). Lets keep this metric aside for the moment.
3. Average visit duration is 1:10 ... hmmm ... this tells me that out of the 252 visits that came to the site, the average was 1 minute and 10 seconds. Do note that at this point we do not know the entrance page of this visit. We just know that these 252 visits included our target page (forgot-password-pattern-unlock-of-android-tablet).
4. % New visits its high ... which means most users do not return to this page. That could be a good thing if it solves the problem, it could be a bad thing if they find the page completely irrelevant. Meh! Lets keep this metric aside.
5. Bounce rate is high, and that's fine. It's a blog, deal with it. Perhaps some good plug-ins and banners on the pages might help retain the traffic, but this is another discussion, no?

The second Report

1. The first metric is Pageviews. This report gives us information about all the search traffic (assuming that you don't do CPC, this is all organic google traffic), which came to the same concerned page. This would be different to visits since visits contain all sources. Also, one visit can contain multiple pageviews of the same page. So the confusion is understood.

2. Unique Page views - Tries to de-duplicate the pageviews to the no. of unique visitors. So the actual no. of pageviews done by different visits is 192. Due to the way GA measures unique visits, we are still not guaranteed of the fact that these 192 visits are in different visitors!! A good time to see this discrepancy is during midnight

3. Avg Time on site is pretty good actually! That means that the people who searching do stay back and read the content.

4. That could also explain the Bounce rate. Once they find the content they simply act on it and move on.

tl;dr - No need to fret about the data discrepancies, they are different reports showing you different things.

Answer 2

• The first metric is for when the page is a landing page, the second metric is for when the page is visited as part of a session, but not necessarily as the first page.
• When that page is a landing page, you have a very high bounce rate (nearly 90%). When a user bounces, Google analytics doesn't actually know how much time a user spends on the page. Many users probably read the article, and then leave, but because they don't visit another page on your site, analytics doesn't properly record the time that they spent reading that page
• When a user reads that page while looking around your site, they are much more likely to read more from your site afterwards. In that case, Analytics can report a time on site that is more accurate (and higher).

Because so many of your users that land on that page are reading the article and leaving, I suggest that you implement Google Analytics event tracking when they scroll. Here is an article that explains how to do so: http://cutroni.com/blog/2012/02/21/advanced-content-tracking-with-google-analytics-part-1/ It explains how to send events when the user has scrolled down the page in various increments: first 150 pixels, content bottom, and page bottom.

When you use event tracking with scrolling, your bounce rate will go way down as you can suddenly see how users are interacting with your site, even when they have a single page session. Your time on page metric will become much more accurate.

Answer 3

In one it shows that Avg. Visit Duration is 01.10 and in other it shows the Avg. Time on Page is 04.32.

Plz explain this.

Sure, short intro:

Visit Durations referes to time a person (or IP) stay on the site, visiting N amount of pages, while Time on Page is the amount of average persons stays on the same page.

The key ingredient here is the "source".

Those who landed on landing page (report 1) shows you stay on your site on average seeing 1.26 pages / visit (almost everyone closes the landing) and stays 1 min.

Those who came from google.com stays 4.32 avg on site (including all visited pages)

These two can be together because the 'source' is different, so it's counting on different measures.

As a personal and simple conclusion, your landing is worth reading but almost no one wants to go on while your site it´s quite interesting or way too confusing when not acceded by landing.

Answer 4

There is nothing special in this report. No of visiting to that landing page and the visits in all other content page will be different. That's why the report is different. This just need Logical thinking that's all.