I have a Flickr account with some photos that have links in their description linking to my website. However, when checking in my Google Analytics account the Source/Medium, it appears as direct/none, although I would expect it to be flickr/referral.
I have read here that it could be due to the ad blockers, but it is not the case since I did the test with a browser without any ad blocker extension installed.
Also, according to this:
https to https = should send referral info
http to http = should send referral info
http to https = should send referral info
https to http = no wont send referral info
To track https to http:
If you use custom campaign tagging on the url then it should pass whatever info
you put into the tags as the medium/source etc.. make sure to test
that though
Other alternatives would be to:
either change the site B
to https too
or
use an internal redirection script to send visitors
to a http page on the https site before then passing them thru to the
http website
Flickr is https, my site http.
However, facebook is also https and I am getting those properly. According to this other post:
sites like facebook and similar are https but are setup specifically
on their side to allow passing of referral information
How can I make that GA shows those visits as flickr/referral?
The only solution I found is, as suggested in the second quote of the question, to use a custom campaign tagging and add the following to the link:
?utm_medium=social&utm_source=flickr.com&utm_campaign=photo
Then it will be shown properly in Google Analytics.
I found this article very useful to learn about Custom Campaigns.
Note that this does not work if one cannot edit the description, i.e., it will work for own content only.
Related
A user enters https://example.com/mypage on the browser
.httaccess redirects to https://example.com/myfinallandingpage
I would like to track the traffics of /mypage.
/mypage is not an actual page, but /myfinallandingpage is a working page.
Does anybody know a way to do this?
Out of the box you can't measure server-side redirects such as 301 or 302 since the browser JavaScript, and thus Google Analytics won't be executed on the redirect source pages.
However you can by doing a little customization:
Insert a URL parameter on the redirect destination page eg https://example.org/destination-page?ref=https://example.org/source-page and track whatever you want on that destination apge
Perform server-side tracking: you could handle your redirects at PHP level, allowing you to use a GA server-side tracking library with GA Client ID retrieved via the cookies in HTTP headers
As part of user flow on my site, user is redirected to a different domain that is not under my control, where he logs in and is then redirected back to my site.
Google analytics fail to correctly display the user flow, showing the callback URL as a new landing page, which is obviously wrong.
I am considering rewriting referrer on the callback page, but it seems like a very hacky solution to a common problem.
Is there a standard way to connect the flow after a redirect?
You must enter the domain of that site in the Referral exclusions list in the Properties settings.
From my app I want to share contents on linkedin with a redirect url this is because when request comes from linkedinbot I want it to redirect to a different page from where it can gets all the meta tags, but if it comes from browser I want to show a different page(an iframe) for users.
For example:-
I want to share the below link "https://example.com/something/1000/redirect" after sharing the above link on linkedin the content have the following href "https://example.com/something/1000/social" which I don't want instead I want the same redirect url as href on the content.
Everything is working fine for facebook and twitter
Typically, you do not want to do any type of redirecting for search engines, or they may mistinterpret your redirection as abuse. Take a look at the Google Ads Policy...
The following is not allowed:
Not allowed Engaging in practices that attempt to circumvent or interfere with Google's advertising systems and processes
Example 1: Cloaking (showing different content to certain users, including Google, than to other users)...
So, you may have metadata stored in og: tags, oEmbed pages, rdf format, dc: dublin core tags, or actually plain simple metadata HTML tags.
Why would you want to show one set of this information to the user and another set to the search engine? What harm does it do to have the user see what the search engine sees, and vice versa?
A URL was generated using Google Analytic's (GA) URL Builder (https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867?hl=en).
The URL includes the utm_source and other required params for GA.
When clicking on a link with this URL the Referral Path is not available. Instead only the Source shows with an empty Referral Path. The Source is set to the value of utm_source.
However, when visiting the page WITHOUT the custom URL via a link the Referral Path is set correctly.
Why does this happen? How can I fix this?
You cannot fix this. Referral Path is available for referral traffic. If you use campaign parameters you turn your link into campaign traffic (this is obviously some unusal use of the word referrer, but Google is thinking in terms of marketing channels instead of the technical definition).
The way around would probably be a custom dimension that stores the referring url.
First you'd have to create a custom dimension in the property settings - I'd go for session level, since the referrer that brought a visitor to your site does not change during the visit.
Then you check (in the source code of your website) window.document.referrer to see if originates from your own domain (in which case you dismiss it) or from another domain, in which case you set it as a dimenson. Basic example (not production code):
if(window.document.referrer.indexOf('mydomain') == -1) {
ga('set', 'dimension1', window.document.referrer);
}
(meaning: if the name of my domain is not a part of the string that makes up the referrer url; and this would be followed by your usual page tracking).
This will store the referrer regardless and you can select your custom dimension as a second dimension or use it in custom reports (of course for CPC traffic or dispay advertising you will get google.com or the adress of the adserver as referrer which isn't that helpful, but for your use case it should work).
Been searching for an answer for this for a while but nothing that I can find that is useful.
Basically in the organisation I work in we use Shibboleth for user authentication.
We probably have 200+ sites & Shibboleth works effectively for these.
However, one site in particular is protected using Shibboleth (if the user is not a valid user they have to sign up for an account in this process also) which is causing an issue with our Analytics (Google Analytics). The referrer to the site is ALWAYS the shibboleth authenticator.
What we need is a facility to track conversions on this site based on source/campaign the user arrived from. The proposed solution right now is to use a Tag Manager product to fire off specific tags based on a combination the referrer or campaign. This one single site is used for a multitude of things (all prospective leads to EPR) but we need different information based on how the user landed on that page.
We are tracking all the interaction points that lead up to this (i.e. tracking potential leads) but a lot drop out during the signup process and right now we do not have actual conversion data, meaning the Marketing etc is being spent based on highest traffic source rather than which source or campaign is most effective.
The problem is when a user signs in, signs up using Shibboleth, Shibboleth sets a new cookie for that session. In Google Analytics all the referrer to this site are from the authenticator.
Is there some configuration issue with GA that I am overlooking for this scenario or is there something that can be done with Shibboleth so that the initial referrer (rather than the authenticator) being passed as the referrer which in turn would facilitate the rule creation of the Tag Manager to fire off the required tags
If you use Universal Analytics, you might be able to overcome using the new Referral Exclusion:
You can exclude specific domains from being recognized as referral
traffic sources in your Analytics reports. A common use for this
feature is to exclude traffic from a third-party shopping cart to
prevent customers from being counted in new session and as a referral
when they return to your order confirmation page after checking out on
the third-party site.
Google Analytics recognizes the URL you use to set up a new property
in your account and automatically excludes this domain from your
referral traffic, so you won’t see self-referrals in your Analytics
reports.
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2795830?hl=en
Another option might be to pass a parameter across the login page when you request an authentication. If you set your fields in the request correctly, you could have Shibboleth send your user back to any page or with any query string, such as adding ?source=original_page_name. After authentication, these parameters should be available to manipulate or pass on to GA. This won't actually spoof your referrers, but it will get you the data you need.