Cross domain tracking works separately in each domain(not linked) - google-analytics

Using Google Analytics,
I am trying to track initiated from external site(siteA.com).
At siteA.com, open new window to go main site(siteB.com).
So I put setDomainName("none"), trackPageview, and getLinkerUrl(URL_TO_SiteB) on siteA.com.
And open URL returned from getLinkerUrl, open new window to go siteB.com
And also put setDomainName("none"), setAllowLinker(true), trackPageview on siteB.com.
But, I think something wrong with this configuration.
At navigation summary, there is no previous page or next page at page tracked from siteA.com.
And strange page(another page of siteB.com) is recorded as previous page of siteB.com.
Is there any missing part of configuration?
In short,
site A > site B linking is not working(there is no page having site A as previous page and there are strange pages used as previous page of site B).
I am struggling with this issue about a month.
I eagerly waiting for your help.
Thanks in advance.

The code you are using is for tracking iframes.
To setup cross domain tracking in the <a> of link to siteB add
onclick="_gaq.push(['_link', this.href]); return false;"
Complete details here
https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/gajs/gaTrackingSite#multipleDomains

Related

Google Analytics: Visitors flow: Only showing root with 100% drop off, no pages

I would like to use the google analytics visitors flow tool but it does not show any specific page. All visits are in one big block "/". If I click on "group details" pages are listed just fine.
My site uses url parameters like mypage.com?p=products to switch between pages. I have managed to set up analytics so that it understands this and works on the "content" page and everywhere. How can I make it also work with "visitors flow" to display specific pages?
this might be the same problem: Google Analytics: 100% Drop off from landing page
Just noticed that links on my page are missing the slash before the "?". will add the slash and report back.
Edit: Though I guess that was an improvement it did not solve the problem.
I am using absolute links (http:/mysite.com/?p=contact) all over the place. Should I try relative links to get this to work?
Yes, you need to put a / before the ? in your links or else Analytics could interpret your full URL as the domain/sub-domain and not report any page paths or levels (like you're observing).
Additionally, are you sure the Analytics script is firing whenever a new page is loaded? Clicking through your site it looks like the base page template may not be reloading whenever you click to a different page (only the content is reloaded). If this is the case and the Analytics script is part of your base template, it would only fire once when the visitor first enters the site and load the page template and never again. Since Google Analytics calculates pageviews and time on site/page based on the difference in time between when the _trackPageview() is fired, it could explain your problem.
I would suggest moving your Analytics script to a portion of the markup that is reloaded every time someone clicks to a new page to see if this does the trick.

Site is showing up as a referrer to its own domain in Google Analytics reports. Why?

I am having two GA reporting problems with a site I manage that I am not sure how to solve:
The site is showing up as a referrer to its own domain in GA reports.
My goal completions (sales conversions on 3rd party off-domain
ecommerce cart) are all showing the site's domain as "source" when I
obviously want to see the true "referers" who are sending traffic
that results in goal completions.
My thoughts on potential reasons why this could happening:
I am using absolute paths for internal links, like this:
<a href="http://example.com/contact.html">
as opposed to
<a href="/contact.html">
Could this be it? Users often do click around internally before they purchase.
Also, on several high traffic pages, I am using javascript history backlinks, like this ::
go back
Lastly, I'm doing a 301 redirect on "add to cart" traffic clicks so that
http://example.com/add_to_cart
redirects to:
http://paymentprocessor.com/ugly_url/cart_page.html
(Although this is an external 3rd party domain, my GA code still fires there)
Any guesses why I am experiencing the issues stated at the top here? ... thank you to all you GA wizards.
UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE
Thanks Eduardo for the great answer.
Thought I might share that now for href text links to 3rd party ecomm site I am tracking events with jquery via class, so my _gaq.push to track both the click event and copy the cookie data over from my site to the third party site looks like this:
$('a.index_addtocart_smallest').click(function(){
_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Outbound Links', 'index_addtocart_smallest', 'buy_click'],['_link', 'ssl.thirdpartyecom.net/order/']);
});
And when I use the form action "add to cart" submit in the HTML look like this:
<form action="http://example.com/add_to_cart" method="post" onsubmit="that=this;_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','Outbound Links','index_big_buy_button', 'buy_click'],['_linkByPost', this]);setTimeout(function() { that.submit() }, 100);return false;">
... to track the event, and post the existing cookie to third party server, while adding a delay to the click to make sure it is captured by GA.
In my case I am using the asynchronous syntax for Tracking Between a Domain and a Sub-Directory on Another Domain: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/gajs/gaTrackingSite#domainAndSubDirectory
In your case it's very clear that the problem is with the cart. When you redirect the user to your cart domain he lands on a new domain and lose access to the cookies that he was using on your site. Because GA needs to create a new set of cookies on the cart site it also creates a new visitor id and a new visit, that visit will be a self referral because that's where the visitor is coming from from GA point of view.
Google Analytics keeps state on cookies, __utm*. So when changing domains we need to copy the cookies from the domain you are currently in to the domain you are moving to. The google analytics API offers some methods to implement this. This is often known as "cross-domain tracking" or "multiple domain tracking". Google Analytics documentation offers a good explanation on how to implement it. You can also search Stack Overflow for several questions related to cross-domain tracking, people seem to have a hard time getting it right.
You are free to use absolute or relative links, it makes no difference for Google Analytics at all.
Javascript redirects are usually ok. Even though there are cases where they certainly make things a little bit more difficult your use case of a back button is fine and should not be causing any problems at all. Of course if the javascript redirect changes the domain you are in you are back to the same issue and needs to implement cross-domain tracking.
Sometimes internal referrers are legitimate. One example of legit self referrals: When a user visits a page on your site and stay there for over 30 min, then navigates to a second page. In that case after the 30 minutes the visit expires and when he navigates to that second page a new visit is created. This new visit will be a self referral and the second page will be considered a landing page. That might seem odd at first, but this is a self referral and it's usually fine.

Google Analytics referral triggered by a bookmarklet

I have a question regarding Google Analytics and unwanted referral stats generated by a bookmarklet.
I have a web service with GA installed. My users are using a bookmarklet to accomplish a certain task while visiting some other web page. Bookmarklet creates an iframe and opens up a page which is also on my domain and that page contains the same GA code.
For some reason GA sees those web sites (pages that bookmarklet was used on) as referral pages. That creates a problem for me since those pages are not real referrals (no actual links to my site). I have no desire to track pages my users marked with the bookmarklet.
It’s important to mention that bookmarklet page must be a part of the same domain as my main page. I can not move it on other domain or subdomain.
This is what I tried so far:
I’ve created a new GA account (subdomain.mydomain.com) and used it only on my bookmarklet page hoping that all stats related with the bookmarklet will appear on that account. This worked only partially. Stats for the bookmarklet started to appear on the new account but my original GA account continued to track referral pages.
We tried to use a pop up window to load a web page instead of the iframe. No difference.
Any help on how to get rid of unwanted referral sites would be appreciated.
See _setReferrerOveride:
_setReferrerOverride()
_setReferrerOverride(newReferrerUrl)
Sets the referrer URL used to determine campaign tracking values. Use this method to allow gadgets within an iFrame to track referrals correctly. By default, campaign tracking uses the document.referrer property to determine the referrer URL, which is passed in the utmr parameter of the GIF request. However, you can over-ride this parameter with your own value. For example, if you set the new referrer to http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=hats, the campaign cookie stores a new campaign with source=google, medium=organic, and keyword=hats.
_gaq.push(['_setReferrerOverride', 'URL-YOU-WANT-AS-REFERRER']);
Or, you could try
_addIgnoredRef():
_addIgnoredRef()
_addIgnoredRef(newIgnoredReferrer)
Excludes a source as a referring site. Use this option when you want to set certain referring links as direct traffic, rather than as referring sites. For example, your company might own another domain that you want to track as direct traffic so that it does not show up on the "Referring Sites" reports. Requests from excluded referrals are still counted in your overall page view count.
Async Snippet (recommended)
_gaq.push(['_addIgnoredRef', 'www.sister-site.com']);
You would have to grab the referrer and populate it dynamically. Probably with parent.document.referrer Of course this might make any referrals (non-bookmarklet) from these sites not record in the future. And, at some point you would need to clear them.
The most simple solution, if you don't need to track the hits from the bookmarklet at all, is to simply not include the GA code in the web page when it is opened by the bookmarklet.
Your bookmarklet can open the page like http://yoursite.com/?mode=bookmarklet
And in your server side code you can use something like
if ( mode != "bookmarklet" ) {
outputGaCode()
}

Google Analytics in Wordpress - Cross-Domain Tracking

I've searched high and low for an answer for this problem and need the help of experts.
The website I'm helping to oversee has a registration in a frame on their main website. When a user visits the site, they can choose which course to take and click on a "Register" link to be taken to the externally hosted form.
I was able to get the GA tags changed on the framed pages, so that step is done.
However, I realise that in order to properly cross-domain track with Google Analytics, I need to also add an onclick event to any links that bring users to those pages, such as the example below.
Link
However, the site I'm working with is in Wordpress, and when I view the link in there it looks like this:
[iab_event link="http://www.EXAMPLESITE.com/course/4105/register.asp" text="Register"]
And when you view the page source of the live site this link is translated to this:
Register
I tried adding the second onclick event to the one above, but that didn't work. Is there any way to add the onClick="pageTracker._link('http://www.EXAMPLESITE.com/course/4105/register.asp'); return false;" to this link without breaking it?
Thank you in advance for any advice given!
Try stacking them in the onclick event like this:
Register
It should run all of the commands as long as they're separated by semi-colons.

Add goal in google analytics for a framed page

I have a page in ASP.NET C#, In my page I have iframe with another page. I want to add a Goal in Google analytics when people press the Submit-linkbutton in the framed page.
While my url doesnt change when I press the submit button I have heard that you can use the following javascript to tell Analytics that you´re on the specified page:
pageTracker._trackPageview('/booking.html');
So I have added the following line in the page_load function:
SubmitButton.Attributes.Add("onclick", "pageTracker._trackPageview('/booking.html');");
And in Google analytics have I added the goal url:
/booking.html
But nothing happends in the goal section when I press the submit button.
Im really not sure of what im doing so some help had been really appreciated.
Martin
Since iframes are treated as completely separate pages, I suspect you need to add the tracking code to the framed content as well.
You might also try calling a function in the parent page which triggers the page tracker:
SubmitButton.Attributes.Add("onclick", "parent.TrackPageView(window.location.href)");

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