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You are here: Home / Common Problems / Google Analytics Configuration Mistake #1: Missing Default Page

Google Analytics Configuration Mistake #1: Missing Default Page

Posted: September 21, 2006 14 Comments

Setting the default page for your website is a simple configuration step that insures the quality of your Google Analytics report data is good. The default page for a website is the page shown to a visitor when they enter just the website domain into the browser’s location bar. If you type http://www.cutroni.com/ into your browser my webserver returns index.php. You won’t see index.php in the browser’s location bar, but that’s the page the server returns. This is the same for directories within your website. http://cutroni.wpengine.com also returns index.php.

Why does this matter to GA? When the urchin.js tracking code executes it creates pageviews using the page name that the visitor requested. What if there is no page name, as is the case above? GA creates a pageview for /. When people type http://www.cutroni.com/index.php GA create a pageview for index.php. See how this can cause a problem? GA collects pageviews for / and for index.php. Two pageviews for the same page.

default_page_report.gif

Pageviews for a page should be summarized in a single line item, not two! Note: I know the above example isn’t all that great. It would be better if 50% of the traffic was for / and 50% was for index.php. But I don’t have any profiles with bad data :)

To remedy this problem enter the default page for your website in the ‘Default page:’ field in the ‘Main Website Profile Information’ configuration section.

default_page.gif

Be sure to only enter the page name, no ‘/’ before the page name and no regular expressions. Just the name of the page, nothing else.

Remember, this change will not affect data that has already been processed by Google Analytics. It will only affect data that will be processed in the future.

Filed Under: Common Problems, Tracking Tagged With: google-analytics, Tips

Comments

  1. Rob says

    November 28, 2006 at 1:10 am

    Thanks for the great tip! I have read all your blog posts and you are VERY helpful!

    I made this change in my Google Analytics profile. My question is now for all the date ranges BEFORE i made this change I am getting visitor information for BOTH the root / AND /index.php.

    AFTER I made this change when you look at the visitor information the top content just has /index.php.

    How would I join the data for “/” and “/index.php” for the previous dates before I made this change in my profile?

    Thanks!!

    Reply
  2. Justin says

    November 28, 2006 at 8:38 am

    Hey Rob,

    Unfortunately you can not change your historical data. Changes that you make to a profile configuration only affect the data going forward.

    Thanks for the comment!

    Justin

    Reply
  3. Mike says

    May 18, 2007 at 9:17 am

    Hey there, great article-good read.

    I’m curious though, have you ever had the issue where GA wasn’t returning “great” data for the index page? See, I’m having an issue similar (or the same) as this one. My stats are showing very small pageviews for my homepage. Everything is set up correctly in my settings, but the numbers are still in the 10-15 range, while every other page is in the 1000’s. Ideas?

    Also, you can actually see an entry for “/”. I don’t…and searching for “/” is difficult as it picks up pretty much every other page…

    Anyway, if you have any suggestions or ideas I’d love to hear them…

    Have a good one,

    Mike

    Reply
  4. Mike says

    May 18, 2007 at 9:58 am

    k…I think I got it (for what it’s worth)…I missed the “/” at the end of the Website URL entry

    Reply
  5. Justin says

    May 18, 2007 at 10:01 am

    Hi Mike,

    I’m gald you figured it out and glad you you enjoyed the post.

    Thanks for reading!

    Justin

    Reply
  6. Jeff says

    January 31, 2008 at 11:23 am

    Hey Justin,
    Thanks for the tip – the default page setting works fine on my site but do you know of any solution to GA tracking separate entries for url’s that are entered with different capitalization?

    ie – http://www.mySite.com/thisFolder/ is tracked separately than http://www.mySite.com/thisfolder/

    Thanks,
    Jeff

    Reply
  7. Justin Cutroni says

    June 24, 2008 at 11:22 pm

    Hi Jeff,

    The solution for mixed case URLs is to use a lowercase filter on the profile. You can read more about this solution in my post on Makeing GA data quality suck less.

    Thanks for the question,

    Justin

    Reply
  8. ben says

    July 15, 2008 at 6:26 am

    Hi Justin

    That’s been killing me. Thanks for solving at least half of my problem with Google Analytics, which otherwise is just great.

    Ben

    Reply
  9. Lara says

    November 22, 2011 at 4:18 am

    Hi Justin,
    Can we do something about the https? I have my account where my website visitors are tracked for both / and /http://mywebsite.com/

    What is this new /http://mywebsite.com/ ??
    I don’t understand where the mistake arises?

    Previously I dint add index.html as a default web page. But few weeks before I added index.html as default page as I was not getting rid of this new /http://mywebsite.com/ thing which kept showing a huge no. of visitors compared to the usual /

    Any suggestions?

    Reply
  10. Lara says

    November 22, 2011 at 4:29 am

    Here is a little change…….. the new parameter shows /http://www.mywebsite.com/index.html ..? Instead of index.html or simply ( / )
    Please suggest me what should be done…As am getting weird looking at traffic to this new home page which is the same as my home page ( / )
    ….I do also see traffic to / but the traffic to /http://www.mywebsite.com/index.html is more than I get for ( / )

    How can I remove showing up traffic to /http://www.mywebsite.com/index.html ??
    Can you analyze where I went wrong?

    Reply
  11. Lara says

    November 22, 2011 at 4:35 am

    Justin, I think it has to do something with the redirect from http to https? My site is 301nd to https but why am I getting traffic to my old http:www.mywebsite.com/index.com url structure still?

    ( / )indicated home page, but /http:www.mywebsite.com/index.com url indicates what…? Another home page? Am confused..!! :(((

    Reply
    • Justin Cutroni says

      December 20, 2011 at 12:00 pm

      @ Lara: It sounds like something at the server level. As you mentioned, it might be the configuration of the 301. You can use an Advanced Filter in Google Analytics to normalize the page, but I would try to fix things at the server level.

      Reply

Trackbacks

  1. this just in » Google Analytics Configuration Mistake #2: Query String Variables says:
    September 21, 2006 at 10:09 pm

    […] In my previous post I discussed how an incorrect Default Page setting can cause a single page on your website to be counted as two different pages. That same concept is the driving force behind Common Google Analytics Configuration Mistake #2. If your website uses query string parameters you may be creating hundreds or thousands of unique page views which don’t actually exist. […]

    Reply
  2. Analytics Talk » Top 5 Google Analytics Resolutions for 2007 says:
    January 3, 2007 at 1:15 pm

    […] Google Analytics Configuration Mistake #1: Missing Default Page Google Analytics Configuration Mistake #2: Query String Variables Google Analytics Configuration Mistake #3: Third Party Domains […]

    Reply

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