I have my UA setup across three sites www.aerserv.com, platform.aerserv.com, and support.aerserv.com. I want to be sure I'm tracking users across the domains properly so the analytics don't see each visit from one user as a "new user".
Is there a way to verify that I've setup my tracking correctly and Google isn't mis counting visitors?
Subdomain tracking is done out of the box in GA, and the only thing you need to make sure is that the cookie domain setting is set to 'auto', and that the referral exclusion list includes the main domain. Once you have those set, and if all pages across all applicable subdomains are tagged, then you should not have any issues. If you need to check, then you can look at the client ID (cid) for each pageview hit from one subdomain to the next. The client ID should be the same.
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I need help with the following case. My client has a website where the catalog and product informations is on the main domain https://fixed.zone from the product cards links to the eshop which is on the subdomain https://obchod.fixed.zone
I need the person who clicks through from the root domain to the eshop to be a referral in GA4. It now appears as Direct.
Can anyone advise me how to achieve this? The GA4 code is only on the eshop. It is not on the catalog page. I didn't set up the analytics on the main domain but someone else did. However, I can also intervene in the website on the root domain
I tried to google the solution but it seems to be kind of rare set up
Referral attribution is something you typically don't touch. It's something Google comes up with on its own. If this dimension doesn't do the trick, you just use a different dimension, like the actual referrer, or a segment where you select sessions that have both hostnames.
Still, there is a way to trick GA. A few ways, actually. For example, you could have logic in GTM that would run on subdomain that would check user's document.referrer on every hit before sending pageview. Once the referrer is from the TLD, you override the referrer dimension in the call and replace the TLD in it to something else, that way those hits will look like they came from a different TLD and will be treated as referral traffic.
Or you could issue an event every time a user navigates to the subdomain, so you could just look at those events.
Same issue here. Managing a GTM container and GA4 property for a subdomain that is separate from main domain. By default in GA4, it appears as though the main domain traffic is lumped in with direct traffic rather than a referral. We need isolated referral data from main domain to subdomain in GA4. Lumping the traffic into direct will not work for us. The UA property for the same subdomain lists the traffic from the main domain as a referral.
I created a GTM GA4 event tag for traffic tracking.
parameter name: referrer_URL
value: {{HTTP Referrer variable with component full URL}}
trigger: Page View - trigger fires on: {{HTTP Referrer variable with component full URL}} does not contain "my.subdomain" (to exclude self-referrals)
created custom dimensions in GA4 for new parameter "referrer_URL" so it will be visible in reports
After approx 24hrs my new custom dimension started showing up in reports.
In GA4 reports->Acquisition->Traffic acquisition click the "+" next to first column header of "session default channel group" and select custom->"your.custom.dimension" (or search for your custom dimension). Default channel groups should be broken down further into your custom dimension urls.
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
I use Google Adwowrds and Analytics for my website, when I check, as the main source of sessions, is shown paid searches (adwords), but Google Analytics shows that most of the referrals for transactions (Purchases) from my own website.
There are two possible reasons for this in my situation. Cross Domain Tracking and Page Dropping Cookie.
Regarding Cross Domain Tracking, I use single domain, but after the customer checks out, the Thank You page comes with Shopify domain, can it be considered that I use multiple domain?
Regarding the Cookie Drop out, how can I find it out? and fix it.
When a user moves from one domain (your domain) to another domain (the Shopify domain) then a new Google Analytics cookie is generated and this cookie has a difference client ID stored in it for Google Analytics. So even if the Shopify domain is sending data to the same Google Analytics property, since the client ID is different, Google Analtyics will treat this as a new user and a new session and in the eyes of Google Analytics, this session will be a referral from the first domain (your website).
If you want to prevent this from happening, you must implement cross-domain tracking which you can read about here.
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.
The set-up:
1 site, 2 domains: = mysite.com and mysite.co.uk
These 2 domains use DNS to point to the same site (IP).
There is 1 snippet of Google Tag Manager (GTM) code just after the opening <body> tag of the site (every page).
In the GTM container, I have added both domains on the "Container Settings" page.
There is one Google Analytics (GA) account which only contains the .co.uk domain. (An analytics account can only contain 1 domain.)
A tag has been set up in GTM with the type of Google Analytics and it has the UA code from the 1 GA account added.
A rule has been added to fire on all pages
Now, I don't care whether someone visits via .com or .co.uk, but I want to capture combined analytics for both. My questions is, with the way I've set things up using GTM, will GA save data for both domains ie mysite.com and mysite.co.uk, or do I need to set things up another way to achieve this? Ideally, I don't want to go down the forwarding route i.e. forward all traffic from .com to .co.uk.
First a bit of pedantry: Google Tag Manager cannot even collect informatiom from a single domain (it's not a tracking tool). And while you can only enter one domain in Google Analytics that domain setting serves no actual purpose; a Google Analytics account can track multiple domains in different "properties" (porperties are sections in an account that each have a unique id) or in a single property via cross domain tracking. Cross Domain tracking is used if you want to treat multiple domains as a single presence on the web (i.e. if you have a website and a shop with different domains, they still belong together).
Now, the way you have set things up data will be collected from both domains. There are at least two caveats:
1) If users can switch between domains inside a session (go from .com to .co.uk and back) their sessions will be interrupted and Google Analytics will register multiple visitors (that's because users are tracked via cookies which are domain specific). To avoid that you'd need to set up cross domain tracking (and how you would do that depends on if you are using Universal Analytics or asynchronous code. Look at your tracking code, if it contains a line that starts "ga("send"...." your are using analytics. If it contains lines that start with _gaq.push you use asynchronous code).
Cross domain tracking documentation for UNiversal Analytics (analytics.js)
Cross domain tracking for asynchronous code (ga.js)
2) By default Google Analytics tracks only the path, not the domain. If pages on both domains have the same path they will be displayed in aggregated form in the reports, that is if you have an index.php on both pages the visits for both will be added up. Maybe that's just fine with you, if they show the same content in any case. Else you'd either have to use "hostname" as a second dimension (which is not a sticky setting, you would need to re-apply that every time you switch to another report), or you create a filter on your view that includes the hostname in the reports.
Those caveats are relevant because data will show up in any case and will look perfectly okay even if it's not (even if you decide that those two things do not bother you you need to take them into account when you interpret the data).