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I have a page with content hosted in an iFrame, both using the same Google Analytics account ID. When I look at the pages report, the parent page has about 9000 unique views, but the iFrame content only has 3700. Anyone have an idea what could cause that kind of discrepancy?

My only guess is that it would be caused by people moving on before the iFrame content has a chance to load, but the average time on page for the host page is 56 seconds, so that doesn't seem possible.

This is the page in question.

The flipbook is hosted in the iFrame on a separate domain. I have each page of the flipbook triggering a virtual pageview to try to evaluate engagement with the book - when the flipbook loads, it fires a pageview for the page it is on, so that is the page I'm using for the 3700 number. I also looked at the source of the iFrame in the pages report, and that number just about matches the virtual pageviews so that piece is consistent.

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  • I've looked at this using HTTPFox and wanted to know what virtual page you are looking at that is giving you 3700? Is it /MarinerStar/View/Page3?
    – Blexy
    Commented Nov 6, 2013 at 1:35
  • /MarinerStar/View/Page1 has 3,573 unique views for October, and that's the pageview that fires automatically when the parent page loads. The parent page has 9,393 unique views for October, so I would think the Page1 views would match...
    – surfbird0713
    Commented Nov 6, 2013 at 17:51
  • Have you tried creating a profile (view) specific to your IP? Have you monitored the real-time content report when you visit the page? What do the other virtual page #'s look like for the flipbook? /Page2, /Page3, etc?
    – Blexy
    Commented Nov 7, 2013 at 0:13
  • Do a breakdown by browsers, if the iframe does not show older IE versions you are possibly missing a valid p3p policy.
    – Eike Pierstorff
    Commented Nov 7, 2013 at 12:02
  • @EikePierstorff, good idea, but it shows all the same browser versions so I don't think that's the problem.
    – surfbird0713
    Commented Nov 8, 2013 at 15:09

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You don't seem to be using _getLinkerUrl(). That would be my best guess as to the source of the problem.

https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/gajs/methods/gaJSApiDomainDirectory

Elsewhere, I found this comment:

If you don't use _getLinkerUrl GA inside the iframe will think it's a brand new visit referral from the top level page.

If you say page 2 and 3 are also counted on page-load, then if these are both triggering a top level page visit at the same time, then it would explain why your top page has three times as many hits.

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