Is there a way to tell which sites my Google Analytics tracking code is implemented on? I am suspecting it may have been used with different micro landing pages with different domains and sub-domains. (Our developers were testing a cross domain tracking but did not went as expected)
I could not figure out where to see this on my GA reports, tried to search it but all ends up explaining referrals list which I am not looking for:(
You can check what Hostnames are sending data to the GA reports for a Property, via the Audience > Technology > Network report. Change the Primary Dimension from Service Provider to Hostname.
Filters are not retroactive, so you can instead create and apply a Segment based on Conditions to Filter Sessions Include based on Hostname that exactly matches yourdomain.com.
Doing this will allow you too also view the historical data in your reports in relation to valid Hostname
More info on building segments from the GA Help Center
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/3124493?hl=en
Related
With the goal of performing analysis that does not include staff traffic, I started following this guide to exclude internal visits which seemed great but apparently cannot work retroactively. In fact, I've heard differing opinions on if any sort of retroactive filtering of this sort can be done in GA at all. I'm very new to using GA, but one field I noticed is the Client ID, which seems to track browsers. If I could identify which Client ID's correspond to my coworker's browsers, could I use this to retroactively exclude them from analysis? This seems like it may work to me, but I have found no sources online suggesting this as an option.
If it matters, the analysis I am most interested in is tracking exit clicks.
ClientId is not a value normally available in Analytics reports, also if the coworker has deleted the cookies that value will be different.
This solution works for Univeral Analytics and not GA4.
With Google Tag Manager, you can create a configuration that allows you to filter out internal traffic.
In GA, you can create a custom dimension that tells GA which users are internal users and not. This information is passed on by Google Tag Manager via a query string.
For a step-by-step guide read: How to Filter Internal Traffic in Google Analytics with Google Tag Manager
I'm seeing entries in my analytics data for pages that no longer exist.
This could be developers looking at legacy versions of a site, it could also be triggered by something like wayback machine.
Is there a way to either identify what hosts an analytics tracking pixel is being triggered on, or restrict analytics to only execute on either a set of domains/hosts or ip address
LinkedIn campaign manager and Hubspot have features where you can tell the tracking script what domains to include/exclude
This is different from excluding ip addresses when setting up filters
Thanks
you can use filters on view level (Universal Analytics, not GA4) in order to exclude or include specified domains to ga data. Keep in mind, adding or removing filters work for new collected data only. Maybe add an additional view, so one view contains all data (based on your ga setup). With this solution GA collects data but will not show the data in the filtered view.
In order to fire the ga tag on a specified domain, specify the host in the trigger in Google Tag Manager, if it is implemented on page. This setting the tag will not be fired on other domains.
If there is no Tag Management on the page, you can check the domain using js before firing the ga script.
Keep in mind, that it is possible to send data to GA without fireing the GA tag by using Measurement Protocol. So if a lot of spam data appears in the interface, may add additional filters to exclude this data aswell.
I have a site abc.com e.g. It has a UK and US variant with different content and based on country of access directs to abc.com/en-gb or abc.com/en-us.
Now in the site in the footer there is a link to our App-store website. Now that website too uses the same primary domain name of abc.com but at the proxy based on URL directs it to a completely separate installation of a stand-alone site which is abc.com/app-store.
Both the sites have different GA tracking code enabled. the abc.com corporate site has GA360 (Analytics pro) while the abc.com/app-store uses regular GA account. Basically no way the 2 are connected.
Now what I see is any traffic coming from abc.com/en-gb or abc.com/en-us to abc.com/app-store is being recognised as "Direct" traffic type in GA. While actually it is a "Referral" though they are both sites owned by us.
We need to somehow measure the traffic being sent to our app-store from our corporate site in the GA in the app-store for reporting purposes. We can track traffic sent from abc.com in the GA360 enabled on abc.com/en-gb and /en-us but then it is a different GA account and data store and needs manual sync up.
I had thought of using utm campaign source/medium - but that is giving false impression of bloated traffic as the UTM URL paramters remain even after landing on the destination site and for any filtering operation on the site it keeps reloading - giving the false impression of traffic coming from abc.com.
Any advice?
The reason abc.com/app-store GA account shows this in 'direct' because the referrer is the same domain. And Google will consider this as self-referrer.
GA doesn't care if you have 3 different GA set up in 3 different pages but the domain from which it is referred to, if it is different then it is fine else it considers it as 'direct'. Equivalent to user opening a bookmark.
How to solve this,
Use outbound event tracking on abc.com/en-gb & abc.com/en-us. But it will lead to manual merging of the data.
As UTM parameters are messing up your app store campaign data and filtering options, you can go with the ref parameter. I usually use it for tracking internal navigation. for example - abc.com/app-store?ref=main_site. You can easily filter out ref parameters from your view or create a segment. And it is considered different than the original URL, so no clashes.
Hope this helps
We have a web service which is installed on different stations. Each has a different ip and domain. we want all of them to report to the same suite.
Can this be done?
The JavaScript tracker for Google Analytics can be used if you allow calls to the Google Servers, if you allow your clients to execute JS and either can set cookies or provide a client id in some other way (must not be personally identifiable data).
If you cannot use Javascript then you could still collect data via the measurement protocol, although this might require substantial development effort.
The domain setting in the Google Analytics interface does not affect data collection, it is used in the (soon to be removed) in-page analytics feature and as base url for the "open document" feature in the behavior reports.
Google Analytics does not collect by domain, but by property ID (UA-XXXXXXX-X), else cross-domain tracking would not be possible (it is actually a documented feature).
Cross domain tracking would be important if somebody could hop from one of your stations/domains to the other and you wanted this to be tracked as a single session. This does not seem to be your use case.
The only pitfall is that the reports display page paths, not full URIs. So if you have similar paths on all your stations the metrics for the page paths will be lumped together unless you do a breakdown by hostname. A common workaround is to add a filter to your data view that prepends the hostname to the path, or to provide custom paths in the first place.
But basically this is not a problem. If you do not need cross domain tracking you'll be okay if you dump the same tracking code in all your sites.
I have set up Cross Domain Tracking for two different domains with two different GTM containers. I added both domains, a.com and b.com in the Auto Link Domains in both Universal Analytics tags, set Allow Linker for both to true and set Cookie Domain to auto. However, when I'm surfing from Facebook to website a.com and click through to b.com I see a.com / referral as a traffic source in the real-time reports in Google Analytics. This should be Facebook in this case right? Does someone have a method to debug this issue?
Thanks!
Use Referral Exclusion List in Property Tracking info. This will exclude traffic from a.com from referrals.
Possibly you are not a Google Analytics Premium member?
The second thought is maybe you are using two Google Analytics properties (one for each domain) and not using one property for both domains?
To be able to utilize the cross domain function you must have one Google Analytics property associated to all domains. You might have the results of funny "referral sources" because you are using two different properties (UA-1111111-1 and UA-2222222-2.
Read more about multiple cross domains
Or for specific cross domain info (notice the part about "UA PROPERTIES)
Let me know if that is the issue, and what your next strategy might be.