Some questions about Google Analytics and Webmaster tools

1. 38

   Ceres Schwarzposted 10 years ago

   Hello. I have some questions regarding Google Analytics and Webmaster tools. Any help is greatly appreciated.
   
   When I checked my webmaster tools, I saw a lot of URL errors, a 404 crawl error because apparently "Googlebot couldn't crawl this URL because it points to a non-existent page". These are some of the error URLs that I saw:
   
   http: //ceresschwarz. hubpages. com/xml/stats/ relatedhubevents.php?aid=3652041&type=
   http: //ceresschwarz. hubpages. com/xml/stats/ relatedhubevents.php?aid=3653584&type=
   http: //ceresschwarz. hubpages. com/xml/stats/ relatedhubevents.php?aid=3649999&type=
   
   They're all pretty similar. But where did these URLs come from? What do they mean? I have no hubs with these URLs. Clicking on the links just brought me to a page not found in HubPages.
   
   Also, is there any way to find out a list of all the hubs that Google has indexed on my analytics or webmaster tools account? My index status says that there's 17 total indexed. How do I see a list of those 17? Also, why am I only seeing 17? I have more hubs than that. I ran a search on Google for my profile and all the titles of my hubs and they all show up in the search results so doesn't that mean that Google has indexed them all? Then how come I'm only seeing 17 in webmaster tools and analytics?
   
   I did try to search in Google about this but I only got more confused. All I saw was about checking the index status but I did that already. Is there something I'm missing? I pretty much clicked practically all the buttons and links in analytics and webmaster tools but still nothing.
   
   Also, am I supposed to add my hubs to webmaster tools? How do I do that? I was under the impression that they will automatically be added by Google. Is that right?
   
   Thanks for taking the time to read and answer my questions.

   replyreport
2. 72

   livewithrichardposted 10 years ago

   Check your index status in Google by using this search string:
   site:username.hubpages.com 
   
   This will return all the pages that you are indexed with under your subdomain and will include your answers and questions.
   
   I wouldn't worry about those URL errors in WMT, you have no control over them.
   
   You can try to add your hubs to WMT by using the Google Fetch operation, but WMT will populate only those hubs that become indexed.
   
   In Analytics, you have to add the hubs you want to track on your own.

   replyreport
   1. 38

      Ceres Schwarzposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Hello and thanks for your reply. I did what you said. I put "site:ceresschwarz.hubpages.com" on Google search and Google showed me all the hubs that I currently have published as well as my profile, except some hubs still have their old titles and summaries since I've recently changed them. But this does mean they've all been indexed, right?
      
      But then, when I went to my webmaster tools account, the index status shows 17 indexed, 43 ever crawled and 0 on blocked by robots and removed. How come this is what I'm seeing? If Google has indexed all hubs plus my profile, shouldn't I be seeing 21 indexed? Can you explain what this means?
      
      Oh, thanks on your clarification about the URL errors. I was just surprised because I suddenly saw lots of errors being listed and when I went to the links, I just saw page not found and I didn't recognize the URLs.
      
      So, I don't really need to add my hubs to webmaster tools if they're being indexed anyway?
      
      I didn't know about having to add my hubs to analytics. I'll have to look into that some more.
      
      Again, thanks a lot for your help. I'm still rather confused about all this and all help is greatly appreciated.

      replyreport
3. 65

   Vin Chauhunposted 10 years ago

   Thanks guys for these important bit of info ! What exactly is WMT?

   replyreport
   1. 72

      livewithrichardposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Here it refers to Google's Webmaster Tools... just Google it.

      replyreport
      1. 65

         Vin Chauhunposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         O......k thanks very much

         replyreport
         1. 0

            Ethan Greenposted 10 years agoin reply to this

            Have a read of my longer post on this thread for one example of what WMT can do for you:-)

            replyreport
4. 65

   step2csposted 10 years ago

   BTW - WMT is useful for SEO and SEM helping you improve ROI while creating better HTML and improving position in the SERPS - FYI

   replyreport
5. 84

   rebekahELLEposted 10 years ago

   It could mean that you are seeing what many hubbers are also seeing.  All of your hubs are indexed but you may have some that are showing up with the 'hubpages.com' URL first instead of your subdomain URL.  The only hubs that will show up on WMT are those with your subdomain URL.
   
   There are a couple of threads addressing similar issues.  I started one this past week.  This might help explain if this is what you're finding.
   
   EDIT: If they're all showing with your subdomain URL as indexed, but not showing up on WMT, the above may not apply.  Try to Google fetch them like livewithrichard suggested.

   replyreport
   1. 38

      Ceres Schwarzposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks for your response. I'll check that other forum thread. And I'll also be double-checking the URL of my hubs but I think they're showing up with my subdomain URL. I'll look into it again. I'll also be trying the Google fetch thing you guys mentioned.
      
      By the way, in webmaster tools, is it possible to see a list of all the hubs that you have indexed? Like, can you see the titles of the hubs that have been indexed? Can you tell me where I can find that? All I saw were numbers but maybe I'm missing something?

      replyreport
6. 0

   Ethan Greenposted 10 years ago

   The way I do it in Webmaster tools is like this:
   
   1. go to 'traffic' on the left hand-side
   2. go to 'search queries' on the left-hand side underneath traffic
   3. go to 'top pages' which is on the right above the chart you see
   
   That then lists all your top pages. Which for me happens to be all 24 hubs. I don't know how many hubs you need before it doesn't show some of them, but it works for me at the moment:-)

   replyreport
   1. 38

      Ceres Schwarzposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks for the response. I tried this and I did see some of my hubs. I also saw some of the questions I asked. But it didn't seem to be listing all my hubs because some were listed twice - once for the link itself and the other with the referral tracker in it.

      replyreport
   2. 59

      paradigmsearchposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      I just went and did this.
      
      Can someone explain to me why WMT says I have 5,500 impressions in the last 30 days on a particular hub, but HP, Adsense, and Analytics all agree it is under 300. All my hubs WMT have listed have the same sort of outlandish numbers.

      replyreport
      1. 84

         rebekahELLEposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         Ethan gave a thorough response.  I'll give a quick one.  When we think of impressions on HP, we think of views, how many times our hubs were viewed while ads showed on our 60% time.
         Impressions on WMT simply means the amount of times your page (URL) was served to a viewer in the search results.  It doesn't mean how many times your page was viewed. If your URL shows up in the search results and is served to a viewer, it's an impression.

         replyreport
         1. 38

            Ceres Schwarzposted 10 years agoin reply to this

            Thanks for this. Didn't know that HubPages and Google had different definitions on impressions. That can get confusing but thanks for clearing it up.
            
            By the way, I used the "fetch as Google" for all my hubs in webmaster tools and I got "success" for all of them. I then selected to submit them to Google index. But I'm just wondering if I'll be seeing a change in my webmaster tools account, like if it will tell me if it successfully got submitted to the Google index or something like that?
            
            I also checked the other forum you mentioned but I don't think it applies to me since my hubs show up in my subdomain when I used the site:subdomain.hubpages.com search in Google.
            
            I tried reading up more on webmaster tools and it seems that the data isn't actually real time and isn't always updated, at least that's what I found when I searched around in Google. Maybe that's the reason for the discrepancies? And I guess it's okay not to see data in webmaster tools as long as our hubs are being indexed by Google, like as long as we see them in search results?

            replyreport
7. 0

   Ethan Greenposted 10 years ago

   An impression is not always a page view, that's why. An impression is where your Hub shows up on the same results page of Google as the website the viewer actually decided to look at. And that website may not have been yours, especially if you are not in the top couple of places.
   
   HP, adsense and analytics are only going to give you info about actual pageviews. So those numbers will always be much, much less than the impressions in WMT.
   
   To explain in more detail with an example - one of your Hubs is about pinterest. Taking an example of the phrase ‘what is pinterest’ – there are 22,200 monthly searches for that phrase. A good number you would think. But there are well over 1 million web pages with that exact phrase, all of which are therefore your competition and making it a hard phrase to rank for.
   
   You don’t show up on the first 3 pages of Google (at least not for me, and not today, but it could be different for other people or on other days of course). So let’s say hypothetically you show up on page 4.
   
   Every time one of those 22,200 searchers isn’t happy with the info. on the first 3 pages and goes on to page 4 to continue their search you will get an impression.
   
   They may or may not click on your Hub out of the 10 possibilities on page 4, but you get an impression nonetheless. And of course it is never stable - sometimes you will be on page 1, 2, 3 or even worse than page 4.
   
   That's why WMT can show you having thousands of impressions for some keywords, but very little actual views. To see your actual views on WMT, the 'clicks' section tells you this for each keyword.
   
   So the impressions part is useful for giving you an idea of the quantity of people searching for keywords that your Hub is getting closer to appealing to.
   
   If you have thousands of impressions for a keyword or phrase, but are averaging position 8, 9 or 10 on Google for it, then you know you are in the right ball park with your choice of keywords. And sometimes it is a good way of seeing which keywords your Hub is picking up, even if you didn't choose them.
   
   I have changed keywords in my Hubs and websites before based on suddenly seeing massive numbers of impressions for a keyword I had not even thought about putting in. I just add one or two more of those keywords carefully to the hub and see if some of those impressions turn into clicks as my Hub moves up a notch or two in the search results.
   
   For example on one of my websites I wrote an article about the correlation between food and sleep. All of a sudden I started picking up a lot of impressions for the phrase 'healthy foods' even though I only had the phrase twice in my article.
   
   So I added it a couple more times in the right places and a couple weeks later the article started getting even more views for that phrase. Incidentally I then did an experiment and added it a few more times and a couple weeks later started getting less impressions and views than I did originally.
   
   There could have been many explanations, but to me it's a good example of why these days you need to be really careful with doctoring your articles for search engines. I just wanted to give a warning example so I don't give you bad advice about playing with keywords based on what you see in WMT. My point is that the impressions can be very useful data, but you need to be careful what you do with that data to not shoot yourself in the foot!
   
   I hope my long-winded explanation helps a bit - and I hope it's accurate too;-)
   
   Here is a link to the WMT help page which explains all the same stuff but a bit more concisely!
   
   http://support.google.com/webmasters/bi … swer=35252

   replyreport
   1. 59

      paradigmsearchposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Mr. Green,
      
      A sincere thank you for your post! As far as I'm concerned, you have won the internet for the day. I could not have asked for a more intelligent, precise, and complete answer than the one you have given. If I was HP, I'd put your post in the Learning Center under WMT Info. Again, thank you.
      
      -paradigmsearch

      replyreport
      1. 0

         Ethan Greenposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         You're very welcome Paradigm, and I'm glad you found it helpful. I think I had too much coffee and wrote more than I usually would do!

         replyreport
   2. 38

      Ceres Schwarzposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      I also want to say thanks for such a detailed explanation on impressions. I understand impressions much better now. And I'm off to check my own impressions and keywords. Looks like I have a lot more to learn about all this.

      replyreport
      1. 0

         Ethan Greenposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         No problem - have fun seeing what keywords your hubs are attracting - and remember that if you click on the 'top pages' part, then the little arrows next to each hub (not all of them will have an arrow, but many will) then you get a break down of which keywords each hub is picking up. This is easier to go through than the massive list you get when you first click on search queries because it puts every keyword across all your hubs in one giant list. So it makes studying your keywords more manageable and specific if you do it one Hub at a time:-)

         replyreport