Hello Ann,
I’m sorry to hear about the issue you are facing with your Google Analytics reports showing draft posts as customers. This behavior where draft posts are indexed or appearing as customers in the Google Analytics traffic report is not typical.
The Rank Math plugin itself does not directly influence how Google Analytics tracks your website traffic or indexes draft posts. However, there might be some settings or configurations that could be causing this issue.
To troubleshoot this problem, I recommend checking the following:
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Google Analytics Settings: Ensure that your Google Analytics account is set up correctly and that the tracking code is implemented on your website as per Google’s guidelines.
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Rank Math Analytics Settings: Verify your Rank Math Analytics settings under WordPress Dashboard → Rank Math SEO → General Settings → Analytics to ensure everything is configured correctly.
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Draft Post Indexing: Check if there are any settings within your website or Rank Math that might be causing draft posts to be indexed or tracked as customers in Google Analytics.
If after checking these settings, the issue persists, you may need to further investigate the specific configurations on your website or seek assistance from a developer to diagnose the problem accurately.
If you need further assistance or if the issue persists, please provide more details or screenshots related to the problem, and we’ll be happy to assist you further.
Thank you for bringing this concern to our attention.
Best regards,
Rank Math Support Team
Sources:
Making the Most of the Analytics in Rank Math
Resolving Rank Math Analytics Related Issues » Rank Math
Hello,
Thank you for contacting us and sorry for any inconvenience that might have been caused due to that.
Could you please share a screenshot with us by using a tool like https://imgur.com/upload so that we can check the issue further for you?
However, if you’re seeing the Analytics data in the Rank Math Analytics, please follow this guide to delete the old Analytics data and start a fresh import: https://rankmath.com/kb/delete-old-analytics-data/
Let us know how it goes. Looking forward to helping you.
Thank you.
Hi,
Pls see the screenshots in the following link:
https://imgur.com/a/LXxNShV
Thanks
Ann
Hello,
Draft posts are always set to noindex so it’s impossible for Google to discover them unless the said post was published before and then switched to draft, allowing Google to index an older version of the page.
Please submit the affected URL to the URL inspection tool of your GSC and see how Google is crawling that page. If you see that the date of the crawl is older, then you just need to wait for Google to recrawl the page and it will be deindexed from the SERP.
Looking forward to helping you.
Hi,
No, the post is still a draft and has not been published at all.
As per your instruction, I’ve also tested by inserting the draft URL into GS and it is confirmed that the URL is not indexed.
I even tested by creating another draft post and the same thing happened to the next draft as well.
Ann
Hello,
The data you’re seeing is the internal traffic which means these posts are not accessed by your users but by the logged-in administrator. Whenever you access any post/page, even if it is set to Noindex or a draft post, the traffic will be counted. In the PRO version of the plugin, we have the Exclude Logged-in users option to disable this internal traffic.
For more details, you can check this URL: https://rankmath.com/kb/general-settings/#exclude-logged-in-users
Hope that helps and please don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any other questions.
Thank you.
But this has not happened previously, only recently. Why was that so?
Hello,
This is happening because you are not excluding the logged-in users from being tracked on the website.
Our PRO plugin has a setting that allows you to install the GA tracking code and make sure that it excludes logged-in users but since you only have the Free plugin and are installing the tracking code manually with a code snippet you don’t have access to that.
Since you don’t have the PRO plugin you would need to implement a solution similar to this one: https://wpturbo.dev/snippet/bndlj4-2/
If that doesn’t work you might need to consult with a developer to implement a custom solution for you.
Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any other questions.
I’ve been using the free plugin all along without having this issue. This only happened recently, and that’s why I’m asking why.
So this problem arises because of RankMath? Would this be solved if I delete the RankMath Plugin?
Hello,
This is an issue with Google Analytics and you’re also not using the Analytics code from Rank Math so there is no chance that the issue is occurring because of the Rank Math plugin.
However, to ensure your peace of mind, you can temporarily disable the Rank Math plugin on your website to see if this still persists or not.
Let us know how it goes. Looking forward to helping you.
Thank you.
Hello,
Since we did not hear back from you for 15 days, we are assuming that you found the solution. We are closing this support ticket.
If you still need assistance or any other help, please feel free to open a new support ticket, and we will be more than happy to assist.
Thank you.
