GA has details about the full path of the URL being visited so it’s a shame they don’t make that information available. You’re dead right about having to be thorough when looking through some site’s stats. Call me nerdy, but I actually enjoy poring over traffic statistics

I discovered how GA can be manipulated by making the mistake myself that FruitMedley Post pointed out. I’d been adding the code to several niche blogs I’d set up at once and mistakenly added the same code to two different websites. I didn’t realise until later down the track when my stats were showing weird keywords etc. I’ve mentioned to the guys at Flippa.com that I wouldn’t rely on GA as they can be manipulated. Accessing an account and thoroughly looking over the origin of the traffic and or the keywords driving it could reveal the truth. I guess the problem is that most people don’t know to look out for that type of thing and with a ‘verified by Flippa’ pdf, well it creates even more trust in the stats.

Danger corner is a great idea, I’m looking forward to more of your posts there!

GA allocates extension numbers, one per site: Eg: UA-123456-1, UA-123456-2, UA-123456-3 etc. But it relies on you to post them in the right places.

I don’t think I’ve seen the site by site separation in GA, I’ll have a look for that – ta.

I’ve recently being doing a due diligence job on behalf of a client and discovered a large disparity in the Analytics stats. It turned out the seller had the same analytics code on multiple sites!

GA offers the option of a site by site separation within an account. Some sellers make mistakes setting it up. Some deliberately use the same code on multiple sites and I’ve found that there’s also unintentional third party contamination: one site giving away free templates ended up with hundreds of sites using not just their template code but, inadvertently, their GA code as well.

Can’t wait to hear your rant.