Browsers, Devices & Traffic Sources

Last updated: 3rd February, 2023

Browsers

The browsers widget in Dashboard shows all the browsers that visitors are currently using to visit a site. The number on the right hand side is the total number of visitors using that type of web browser and currently active on the site.

The GoSquared Tracking Code installed on the site uses basic browser detection to display which browser is being used. Browsers are grouped into one type even when there is a variation in browser version.

The browsers widget displays the browsers in a live-updating list with the most popular browser at the top.

Devices

The devices widget in Dashboard shows the total number of visitors right now and what devices they are visiting from. As with all widgets in Dashboard the devices widget shows data in real-time.

Devices are segmented using platform detection in the GoSquared Tracking Code. Through this platform detection we're able to detect whether a visitor is viewing a page from a tablet, smartphone or desktop.

Traffic Sources

The Sources widget shows you what is sending people to your site right now.

Traffic Sources are broken down into 4 categories: Sites, Search, Social, and Other.

Sites

The Sites tab shows how many people currently on your website have come from websites linking to you. The list groups URLs by domain, so you can quickly see the top sites sending you visitors. You can double click any domain to see the individual URLs that are sending people to your site.

Search

The Searches tab shows how many of the people on your site right now have searched on popular search engines such as Google, Bing or Yahoo to find your site. The list shows the search engine they used, and is ordered by the number of searches made with each engine.

Why do the searches all say Unknown Query?

This is a problem that affects all analytics services including Google Analytics themselves. In 2013 Google changed the way they report keyword searches so that they are not available to analytics tools.

This means it is impossible to recover the original search term used. It was essentially to stop very aggressive marketing companies from gaming the system.

Businesses would try to manipulate all search terms so that their website would always be at the top of the list no matter what term you had actually searched for. This created a negative experience for all Google users as you could never actually find what you were looking for. Understandably they decided to stamp out the practice completely. Soon after most major search engines did the same.

Social

The Social tab is similar to the Sites tab, except it only shows websites that GoSquared regards as "social". Any visitors currently online who have found your website via sites such as Facebook, Pinterest, Dribbble, Reddit, and similar sites and networks will contribute to this number.

Other

The Other tab shows you how many visitors are currently online from sources that do not fit into "Sites", "Search" or "Social" categories. These are visitors who have reached your site directly entering a URL, following an offline bookmark, or have come from a native application that has not set a referrer of any kind.

GoSquared also shows a count for the number of "Internal" visitors on your site. Visitors from internal sources are people who have been referred from another part of your site that is not tracked by GoSquared (for example, pages on a different subdomain that you may be tracking separately).

🎓 What to read next?

Learn how to track multiple sites

Learn how to set up campaign tracking

Read our blog post on 21 ways to drive traffic to your website