Tracking and setting goals referral sites using Google Analytics - google-analytics

Using Google Analytics is it possible either by using goals or creating a custom chart to track month by month how much traffic a referal network site passes to my website?
I'd like to measure the traffic source from a paid directory service, let's say, Yell - so I want to see how much traffic each month comes to me from their site and ideally set a monthly target so I can monitor this ongoing.
Any help or direction with this would be very helpful.
Thanks

Goals are not necessary for this. Simply ask the referring website to add utm parameters to all links on their domain that point to your website. So if your website is www.example.com, any links on their website pointing to your domain would be www.example.com?utm_source=yelp&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=summer_2017. Once that is done, you would just check the Acquisition > All Traffic > Source/Medium report and you should see a row for "yelp/affiliate". For that row, one of the columns will be sessions, which tells you how much traffic they sent you for the selected time period. More info on campaign tracking can be found here: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867?hl=en

Related

Google Analytics: Which domains are sending data

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

Real-Time Data shows visits of pages that don't exist for the selected domain

In Google Analytics, I have navigated to All Accounts-> SomeDomain.
I see a lot of traffic to that domain.
However, most pages listed there are from another domain of mine.
Real-Time for example shows this:
This is hilarious because this page doesn't exist on that domain.
I thought that it shows only traffic to the domain that I have selected above after "All accounts".
Is that not correct?
Or does anybody know any situation where this might happen?
This goes on since months already.
My GA is managed via GTM.
I don't use any CMS.
In GTM, I have a GA Page View Trigger:
I don't see where I could have made a mistake.
Does anybody do?
Thank you.
Create a custom report with dimension Hostname and metric Sessions (for example). You'll see what domains send data to your GA Property.
May be somebody stole code of your site (including trackers).
You can filter alien domains in GA settings for View.
UPD. Lookup table to push GA ID's depending on Hostname.

Google analytics Direct vs Referral traffic for 2 sites being on same domain name

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

Google Analytics.js > track data in a website reachable by multiple domains

I can't find this answer in the official documentation.
I'm tracking google analytics data on mycustomerwebsite.com
But the website is also working and reachable in seofriendlydomain.com
Website is the same, so I include analytics.js data in both of them.
My customer asks, to know how much traffic comes from each domain,
not needing complete data but only few stuff like % of incoming visitors or number.
I found similar topics:
Google Analytics multiple domains one website
Why there is no answer ? is there no solution ?

How to track traffic of example.com/?ref=uniqueCode with Google Analytics

I give each visitor who signs up to my Google Form an unique url to my landing page for them to share with their friends. The idea is the more they share and their friends visits the site through their given unique url, I'll move them up the waiting list for a product launch.
So for each visitor I gave them example.com/?ref=uniqueCode which is unique to each visitor. Currently I'm using Google App scripts to programatically generate individual url to each visitor who signs up my Google Form.
The goal is if I see traffic coming in from eg: example.com/?ref=a, and I know tag a belongs to John Doe, I'll move John Doe up the waiting list.
Tried googling for a solution but couldn't find any. All solution directs me to creating a particular campaign in Google Analytics with the URL building which really isn't the right solution for this purpose.
How do I set this up with Google Analytics and track the incoming traffic for each unique code of the ref tags of each user?
Going over your question I cannot see why URL builder does not fit your needs.
However, when it comes to immediate and accurate statistics of incoming referrals you may also use a server side script to track incoming visitors.
Also for lots of existing CMS there are plugins to track referrals. If you use a CMS please update your question.

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