I have a little question about extended e-commerce (GA plugin), so forgive me to ask this question.
I'm Japanese front-end engineer and trying to introduce the extended E-commerce plugin in my EC-site. While developing with a colleague, he pointed out my coding comment about UA.
// my comment: this is a point that we provide UserAgent for GA.
ga('create', 'UA-XXXXX-Y', 'auto');
Colleague: "UA does not mean 'User Agent', because 'User Agent' is related to Browser or HTTPS header. At least your comment does not make sense."
We discussed about this small issue, but we could not reach satisfactory conclusion. I guess this is not directly related to programming, but I would like to know the other opinions.
The letters "UA" in a Google Tracking ID stand for Urchin Analytics (reference here). Urchin was a product that was acquired by Google in 2005 (see Дмитро Булах's answer).
The structure of the Tracking ID is:
UA-000000-2
The first set of numbers (-000000, in the example above) refers to your account number, and the second set of numbers (-2) refers to the specific property number associated with the account.
It's from "Urchin Analytics". Urchin was acquired by Google in 2005
Related
I asked this question in other forums, and didn't have a solution so far.
I would like to have Google Analytics' source and medium added in every form sent by my websites, as hidden fields.
I use WordPress, and the plugings that I commonly use for contact forms are Contact Form 7 and Fast Secure Contact Form.
Any ideas?
Thanks in advance!
-- Gabriel
There isn't really a way.
It used to be that channel attribution was computed in the GA tracking code in the client, and you could extract it from the cookie values. However since Google has switched to the measurement protocol (which is what's behind both analytics.js and gtag.js) attribution is determined on the Google servers and there is no really feasible way to get the information in realtime to include it in a form.
You could create a script that emulates GA attribution, but the rules are somewhat complex and it is unlikey you would get an exact match.
Another way (which, if you are in Europe, might bring you in conflict with the new privacy guidelines from march on) would be to save a unique token with the form, send the same token as custom dimension to Google Analytics, and then join the information after the fact via the API. Some time ago I described the process in a tutorial, and even if this is for salesforce (and the specific code most certainly obsolete) it describes the problem and the solution somewhat exhaustively.
I recently ran an e-mail campaign with a partner, who sent me over a URL with their own UTM parameters so they could track performance on their side.
When I handed the information over to our e-mail team and checked as the campaign went live, it appeared that they, out of habit, had added their own UTM parameters on top of the ones sent over by the partner, resulting in a click-through URL that looked like the following -
http://spirit.cruises.com/?cm_mmc=partner_email-_-sprt-multi_product--20161028--clia_plan_a_cruise_month&utm_medium=partner_email**&utm_source**=sprt-multi_product**&utm_campaign**=20161028&utm_content=clia_plan_a_cruise_month**&utm_source**=responsys**&utm_medium**=email**&utm_campaign**=20161028_50pct__Dual_Cruise_Email
As you can see, there are duplicate source, medium, and campaign parameters.
Does anyone know what happens in this situation? Does Google Analytics count both, or just the first, or just the last, or none? What is best practice when there are two parties that want to track performance of a URL in a campaign, and they may have different naming conventions?
(This is my first question, so please be nice :) Thanks!)
GA counts the last set. The proper way to deal with this is to avoid the situation. Email Software is often set to automatically add utm parameters to links (do you do not have to do it manually), but then all email marketing software I know would allow to override the configured default parameters.
I am not sure how your partner could track performance "on their site" via utm parameters unless they have their own GA code integrated in your website (or do you mean that they have access to your GA ?).
If there are two sets of analytics code that require different campaign attribution you would have use differently named parameters - let's say utm_medium2, utm_source2 and utm_campaign2 - and manually override campaign attribution for the second tracker:
// add this to after your usual tracker
ga('create', 'UA-XXXXX-Y', 'auto', 'partnerTracker');
ga('partnerTracker.set','campaignName',<value of utm_campaign2>)
ga('partnerTracker.set','campaignMedium',<value of utm_medium2>)
ga('partnerTracker.set','campaignSource',<value of utm_source2>)
ga('partnerTracker.send','pageview')
That would send data to a second account and override campaign attribution fields. It seems quite unlikely that you have or want that, but if you want to allow your partner to independently track utm values on your website (and everything else with it) that would the way to go.
Frankly I think you should just remove your partners utm parameters. Utm parameters make only sense for the owner of the respective GA account, and that is probably you, not the partner.
I agree with the first answer except for that last point where has says to remove the partner's UTM parameters.
In your case, the destination for the link provided to you by your partner is NOT your own website. The link goes to your partner's website. Therefore, your GA account has zero relationship with the link he sent you.
The way we're getting around this (without doing anything in analytics) for our many partners that we send links to is by using different email subjects per partner. Most email platforms use the subject line (or the internally defined Campaign "Name") as the value for UTM_Campaign.
So different subjects that include the partner organization in them:
"Special discount for ABC Organization members!"
"Special discount for XYZ Company members"
We can then analyze each unique campaign name in GA.
I'm starting with google analytics and i don't realize how make it works.
We are making a site and we want to add the user name as custom variable in google analytics in order to analyze the behavior of each user with the site.
For this, i start to use google analytics (analytics.js) a couple weeks ago and i created a custom dimension (to know who user access) and a custom metric (to know how many visits made) as it's indicated in documentation.
The dimension and metric were created with session scope because those values must be sent once per session.
After that, i add the code needed as is explained here:
ga('create', 'UA-#######-1', 'domain.com');
ga('set', {
'dimension1': 'userName',
'metric1': 1
});
ga('send', 'pageview');
I've tried this code and others configurations but google analytics doesn't take the values.
Look this image (http://snag.gy/Ou8vG.jpg)
What i'm doing bad? it can be because i'm sending the request with 'pageview' and the dimension is scoped with session?
Finally worked!!
Apparently you must wait a time (like 2 days for me) before Google starts to record the information. Documentation not specified this detail.
I hope this answer helps other people with the same question!!
I have been asked to provide recommendations on "Verified Analytics" for the next iteration of my company's site. Verified to mean that when we sell ad space, it's based on a number of page-views, and the people who buy that space want a way to verify that the numbers we give them are the actual numbers we're delivering.
I have turned to The Google and the only services I can find for this sort of thing revolve around Google Analytics and the sale of a domain name. I export my analytics numbers to a PDF, have Google email the PDF to my auctioneer, and they look for signs of tampering. If no signs of tampering are found they put a little "Verified" badge on the domain auction. (Here)
Other than this, and something similar on another domain sales site, I haven't found anything like what I've been asked to find.
Currently we are using Google Analytics, however I've been also asked to recommend a replacement for that based on the ability to be verified. I'd rather just stick with Google Analytics since we also use Google for advertising.
Google analytics is a third party service, so you can't modify the stats data yourself anyway. If google is sending them the report directly there's not even scope for you to be editing the numbers so their concern is more paranoia than reasonable.
a) You can add another user in google analytics and give them report-only access. This way they can look at the stats themselves.
b) Add another hits tracking service such as http://www.hitslink.com/ and give the client access to these reports too.
Quantcast / Comscore / Compete all make estimates of site traffic based on limited amounts of data. As an ad buyer I would never take these stats as proof of anything really.
Online Audience Measurement is a term to search for - you're looking at providers like Quantcast, Comscore or Compete. These work alongside, rather than replace your current web analytics package.
Qauntcast actually measures traffic directly. You insert a tag, same as Google Analytics. Most ad agencies and advertisers accept Quantcast numbers for traffic validation.
We have some third parties that are sending us traffic and have asked us to put a tracking pixel on the confirmation page so they can track through the sales.
We are currently using Google analytics for our own usage.
Google will remember the original referral through cookies. This may be a good or bad thing. If someone purchases through company B's link but they had originally found our site through company A - then company A still gets the 'referal'. That doesn't seem fair, but it seems to be the way google analytics works:
For example, if this is the user's
first visit to your site, the tracking
code will add the campaign tracking
information to the cookie. If the user
previously found and visited your
site, the tracking code increments the
session counter in the cookie.
Regardless of how many sessions or how
much time has passed, Google Analytics
"remembers" the original referral.
This gives Analytics true
multi-session tracking capability.
Currently we only have one tracking pixel on our 'receipt page' from a company that we're not even doing business with. Having a second company ask me for us to add one makes me thing 'wait a minute - we're going to suddenly be inundated with these things!'. Plus it means someone can look at the source and see all the people we do business with.
This isn't Oprah - you cant ALL have tracking pixels. Right ?
How should we manage sales from multiple traffic sources in the most honest way for both sides - especially if they already have a system set up that they insist on using?
Here's how I solved the problem at our company: we gave our partners a URL that has a parameter in the query string. This parameter triggers a cookie. On the "goal"/confirmation page (where the tracking pixel is usually inserted), we insert some logic to see if the cookie value is correlated with a one of our recognized partners (chained if-else or switch statement). If a match is found, then the tracking pixel is displayed.
Even though you asked this question a while ago, I hope that this still helps you or someone else with the same problem!