This morning Alex Moss reported a weird bug with Google Analytics where going to the “landing page” or “exit page” reports and clicking on the URL would pop open a random site, instead of the URL of that page.

Here is a screen shot shared by @SEOsherlock.

Alex Moss claimed this was a privacy issue within Google Analytics. I didn’t see how this can necessarily be translated into such an issue, so I asked Google for a statement. A Google spokesperson confirmed this is a bug but is in no way a privacy issue, the page that opens for some users (I cannot replicate it myself) is completely random.

Google said:

We are aware of a potential issue where some users who click to open pages in their Content Reports via the icon in Google Analytics are seeing random domains rather than the website being tracked in their account. No private information is being shared during this process. Our team is working hard to fix it.

Postscript: Google informed me at 7:45pm EDT today that the bug has been fixed.

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Google: Analytics

About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here. See more articles by Barry Schwartz

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