Bounce rate is at 0%

Thanks for getting in touch. From inspecting your site I can see the Google Analytics snippet placed via Site Kit. I can also see a Tag Manager container snippet inserted via Site Kit (GTM-P3N7QTT), so the setup seems correct.

From further checks on your site using tagassistant.google.com it looks like you have a Google Analytics 4 tracking ID placed via Tag Manager (G-FJMRMQMDWG), with everything tracking as it should be (with a Universal tracking ID (UA-…) and a Google Analytics 4 tracking ID (G-….).

As you have both Analytics property types can you check whether you have the properties connected? You’ll find a guide on how to connect a UA property with a newer GA4 property here.

Overall note that the bounce rate shouldn’t be impacted with the installation of Site Kit, with the Analytics module only placing the Google Analytics snippet on your site. It doesn’t make alterations to the appearance or functionality of your website, key factors in bounce rates. I suspect this is more an Analytics configuration issue.

Hi James

Thanks for your response.

I checked everything and everything seems to be in order. But my bounce rate is nearly 0 for most pages.

It’s strange.

Here’s the screenshots of my set up:
https://ibb.co/FxzJR3r
https://ibb.co/6r9y0Xx
https://ibb.co/0DXpCs9
https://ibb.co/Y3DWzKF
https://ibb.co/kh1bW6Q

That is indeed strange. While I can’t be sure what’s occurring I’m wondering is a mix of your GA4 (G- prefix) and Universal (UA- prefix) property types resulting in skewed reporting. I’ll need to try and check this from my side.

In the meantime can you temporarily deactivate your GA4 tag within Google Tag Manager while we wait for a couple of days and then checking once more?

While doing so it might also be useful to check the bounce rate on your site for your UA property at analytics.google.com. Let me know if you notice anything unusual.

Yes I most definitely can.

I disabled it, hopefully this is correct:
https://ibb.co/HtRbfj6

I found another pattern, almost all pages have 2.00 pages/sessions at minimum.

There are no pages with less than 2 pages / session.

So I think the pageviews are being counted twice.

There’s only one page with 1 page view per session somehow in the last 30 days:
https://ibb.co/Kmc4NDz

This makes sense since my page views have doubled over the past 30 days, while my user count is nearly the same. So something is counting page views twice.

Do you know what it could be?

• This reply was modified 4 years ago by dieselfit.
• This reply was modified 4 years ago by dieselfit.

Many thanks for the additional insights, very useful indeed. You may be correct in relation to the duplicate snippets as the screenshot you shared shows a Universal Type snippet, not a Google Analytics 4 snippet. If you’ve used Site Kit to place your Universal type snippet and then implement Google Tag Manager to a container which also have an existing Universal Tracking snippet I would expect that may cause unusual tracking.

As I can’t be sure what’s occurring within your Google Tag Manager containers what you could do for testing purposes is temporarily remove the Site Kit placed Tag Manager snippet, while then ensuring you have used Site Kit to place your Analytics snippet. Once you do that I can check your site once more to ensure I only see a single Analytics tracking ID.

You’ll find the settings above by navigating to “Site Kit > Settings > Connected Services > Edit”.

Let me know when you perform the above and I’ll check your site once again.

Hi

Thanks for your response again.

I have removed the tag through sitekit. But the problem seems to still be occuring.

Great! Unfortunately the results won’t be instant, as the dashboards will show rates for previous dates. What we can do is see if we notice any improvements over the next few days, using the 7 day reporting tool within the Analytics dashboards. I can follow up with you to check if this is working as expected in a few days if you wish.

I see. I appreciate your quick response James.

If I am visiting a page, and scrolling down, and it tends to trigger 2 page views.

I am checking the data of today only.

So this result can’t determine anything as I still need to wait 7 days?

Thanks

• This reply was modified 4 years ago by dieselfit.

It may not take a full 7 days, if you keep check on the 7 day reporting tool within Site Kit it would be interesting to see if the rates start to reflect more accurately daily. I’ve been checking this from my side also and trying to replicate the same experience with multiple snippets, so I’ll keep you updated if I can determine any particular cause.

Do you know if GA4 would affect this?

I’ve tried disconnecting it from UA and I’m still getting double pageviews.

I’ve had GA4 and universal analytics connected.

Although I’ve disconnected GA4 from UA, I’m still seeing active visitors on GA4 so I guess it’s still tracking.

On site kit, I only see my UA is connected.

Good question. I don’t think it would impact your bounce rate as you have both your UA and GA4 property connected. Also note that I believe engagement is a metric used in GA4 more than bounce rate, more information here.

Although I’ve disconnected GA4 from UA, I’m still seeing active visitors on GA4 so I guess it’s still tracking.

This may be as you have your UA and GA4 properties connected. This is something I would need to check.

While I check this from my side let’s keep an eye on your bounce rate using the 7 day report over the next couple of days.

Hi James

Since I’m visiting a single page and I can see it’s trigging as a double view, doesn’t this mean it’s still not tracking properly?

I’m visiting one page and I would check the analytics from google analytics on my phone and I would see it count as 2 views.

Maybe I need to insert my analytics code manually, as the plugin seems to be adding it twice?

• This reply was modified 4 years ago by dieselfit.

If you’ve already manually placed your Analytics snippet or used a plugin what you can do is check your configuration settings within Site Kit. From there you can disable the Site Kit placement of the snippet (as one already exists).

Since checking this further from your support topic we’ve also opened a GitHub issue, with the experience you’ve helped us identify possibly the cause.
https://github.com/google/site-kit-wp/issues/2909

Let me know once you’ve disabled the Site Kit placed snippet or alternatively removed the Tag Manager placed snippet and I’ll check your site once more.

Edit: I’ve checked your site and I can only see one Universal Tracking snippet at present, and confirmed only one Universal Tracking snippet exists using https://tagassistant.google.com. I think temporarily deactivating your Tag Manager Analytics tag may make a difference although we’ll still need to wait a few days to check the bounce rate after making any configuration changes. Alternatively you can indeed check a manually placed snippet while removing the Site Kit placed snippet although I don’t think this will make a difference.

• This reply was modified 4 years ago by James Osborne.

I have actually disabled Site kit’s placed snippet since yesterday, and since doing this, only a few pages appear to be tracked, maybe due to the cache or something but most pages didn’t trigger the “real time” visitors” as I was checking.

I have disabled the tag manager since the start of this thread. Does it not show as disabled?

So I have reenabled the “let site kit place code on your site” and it’s tracking visits again, but still the same duplicate visits / 0 bounce rate.

By the way, I’ve been using analytics for a while, I’ve only had this issue since I’ve installed site kit.

• This reply was modified 4 years ago by dieselfit.