After installing Trellis on your site, perhaps you've noticed that your traffic in Google Analytics doesn't look quite right. These issues can often occur because of some simple oversight in the Trellis installation process. Essentially, if something isn't set up correctly, it can throw off your reporting.
If you haven't installed Trellis yet, be sure to read this help article to get you ready and avoid any such issues!
The good news is, when you have a reporting issue, it's not actually affecting your traffic or your ad revenue. These Analytics troubles are usually really easy to fix. In this article, we will go over a few common scenarios and what you can do to make things right again.
Google Analytics Not Reporting Any Traffic
If you have no traffic reporting in your Analytics, that likely just means your tracking ID is missing from the site. Grab your tracking ID(s) and go to Appearance > Mediavine Trellis > Display > Google Analytics.
If you have a Universal Analytics (UA) tag, you can add it to the below setting.
If you have a Google Analytics 4 (GA4) tag, you can add it to the below setting.
You are able to track tags in both fields at once. Remember that if you are a Mediavine publisher, you need to keep that UA number in place for now to maintain your connection with the Mediavine dashboard.
Once that’s done, this will allow GA to pull in your traffic reporting.
Doubled Pageviews and Extremely Low Bounce Rate
This reporting issue manifests as inflated pageviews (around double of what they were previously) and a bounce rate that is much lower than normal for your site.
You would see this when your UA and/or GA4 tag is being tracked twice on the site. This usually means you accidentally have the tag(s) added in two places.
The first step here would be to check for a Google Analytics plugin and remove it.
Perhaps you added your tracking ID(s) into the Advanced tab of the Trellis settings (in one or both of the fields below), but forgot to remove your old Analytics plugin that you were using with your previous theme. MonsterInsights would be one example of these plugins, but there are a lot of different ones on the market that you might be using.
You no longer need a Google Analytics plugin with Trellis because we give you the capability to add the tracking ID right in the settings. Additional plugins can also slow your site down. This should solve your reporting issue and can benefit performance as well.
You can also make sure that your Google Analytics tracking was not added accidentally into both your Advanced tab and the Hooks tab. You can track Analytics by adding the script to the <head> tag in the Hooks, but you don't want it to be in both places.
Sessions/Pageviews Slightly Lower, But Ad Revenue Not Affected
This scenario is actually not an issue to be concerned about, but it is something that you may notice is a bit different after installing Trellis.
For the sake of pagespeed, the Trellis framework defers the Google Analytics script from loading for 3 seconds. This means that anyone who is on your site for less than 3 seconds will not be tracked, which can cause lowered sessions/pageviews in GA reporting.
This does not affect your ad revenue, and anyone visiting your site for less than 3 seconds wouldn't be providing any valuable insight into your traffic. Therefore, most Trellis users find this trade-off to be worth it for performance.
If you want to see those unreported sessions/pageviews, you have the option to disable the setting (shown below) in the Advanced tab of the Trellis settings. Just note that it is not recommended and can negatively impact performance.
If none of the above information seems to resolve your Analytics issues, you can email trellis@mediavine.com with details and our team will be happy to look into it.