Let's say I have a site and the user comes into it with a parameter:
http://example.com&url=blahblahblah
How do I go about passing along the url value from the parameter into Google Analytics?
1) User comes to the page with a url in the params
2) User clicks a download link with a ga tracking code attached to it which was generated from ga account like this:
http://example.com/download/param1=dkljdf&_ga=1.149898996.39207121.1424368466
You have to create a custom Dimension and a metric for that.
About custom Dimensions and metrics:
https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/platform/customdimsmets
After you have created a Dimension, you can add metrics to it by view, in example.
Follow the steps here for Universal Analytics:
https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/custom-dims-mets
Note that due to not have 10 point of reputation, I wrote the a "_" in http like "ht_tp"
BUT:
I think what you want to know is the number os visitors that clicks a download link in your site that comes from, lets say "blahblahblah" as web origin or other methods.
For that, you have the param utm_source that you can receive directly in the url.
So instead of ht_tp://example.com&url=origin you should receive ht_tp://example.com&utm_source=origin
In this way, you have no care about it. Analytics is going to take care for you so you can get a report of clicks by source.
Or, just use the referer in case all the incoming visitors are from webs:
ga('set', 'referrer', 'ht_tp://example.com');
And a final option, to use Events:
_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'ReferencedVisitors', jsVarWhereYouHaveTheOrigin]);
I am in the process of setting up enhanced Ecommerce for GA and have had a few requests of additional of what else the client would like to see in their reports. Once of which is
"Where can i see a report if the locations that a use types in when they use the store locator"
There is already an internal search functionality thats been set up and is tracking the search terms people are typing when looking for products, but i'm not sure if i would need to set this up as a second search terms report or if it's something different?
The URL of the page is different to the internal search results and is www.domain.com/store-locator#wales|GB|0|0|0
Any insight into this would be really helpful.
Thanks,
Roxi
As to me knowledge, you are not able to use bookmarks (#something) in GA for internal site search setup. Only GET and POST parameters are allowed. In your situation I think the best solution is to use GA events to send the data about used location each time the user is using this functionality. You need to include addition ga() function call to track those events. Info about how to set it up you could find here: event tracking. After setting things up, you will see all the info about number and type of called events in Behavior -> Events reports section in GA.
Example code:
<button onlick="var hash_location=window.location.hash;ga('send','event','Locator',has_location)">Click me</button>
With such function new event will be send to GA with Event Category=Locator and Event Action=hash in the url. You have some complicated hash, so most probably you need to extract first some info from this using regular expression. Example to get first item from |-separated list in the hash:
var pattern = new RegExp('[^#|]+');
var hash_location = pattern.exec(window.location.hash)[0];
I try to get a list of pages people go after visiting the selected page. pagePath is a starting page, nextPagePath is the result list of pages I'm interested in. I included a filter to show only one starting page. But the result I get is confusing:
What am I doing wrong?!
Use ga:previousPagePath instead of ga:pagePath. For the reason to me unknown, ga:pagePath and ga:nexPagePath refers in GA API to the same thing.
I have a multidomain website for which there is GA tracking. Recently we moved to Universal Analytics and noticed that whenever the domain is changed (from US to Korean/Japanese), a _ga=[random number] is appended to the URL
i.e. from
abc.com
when i click on the japanese site, the URL becomes
japanese.abc.com/?_ga=1.3892897.20937502.9237834
Why does this happen?
How can I remove the _ga part of the URL?
Appreciate your help.
This is needed for cross-domain-tracking (i.e. track people who cross domain boundaries as one visitor and not as one visitor per domain). If you want cross domain tracking you cannot remove this. The _ga - part is the client id which identifies a session and since it cannot be shared via cookies (which are domain specific) it has to be passed via the url when the domain changes.
Since somebody set your site up for cross domain tracking I guess you actually want this (it does not happen by default). The parameter is a necessary side effect of cross domain tracking with Universal Analytics. If you do want this look in the tracking code for any of the linker functions mentioned in the documentation and remove them.
Updated to answer the questions from the comment.
Is there no way to remove the _ga string and still have the cross
domain facility?
No, currently not. Browser vendors work on better ways of cross
domain communication so there might be something in the future, but
at the moment the parameter is the best way.
Also, what if some user randomly changes the _ga value and presses
enter? How will GA record that?
If the user happens to create a client id that has been used before
(highly unlikely) his visit would be attributed to another user.
Realistically Google Analytics will just record him as a new user.
Updated
For those who like to play I did a proof of concept for cross domain tracking without the _ga parameter. Something along those lines could be developed further, as-is it is not suitable for production use.
Update: David Vallejo has a Javascript solution where the _ga parameter is removed via the history API (so while it is still added it is for all intents and purposes invisible to the end user). This is a more elaborate version of Michael Hampton's answer below.
I'm using HTML5 history.replaceState() to hide the GA query string in the browser's address bar.
This requires me to construct a new URL having the _ga= value removed (you can do this in your favorite language) and then simply calling it.
This only alters the URL in the address bar (and in the browser's history). Google Analytics still gets the information passed in via the query string, so your tracking still works.
I do this in a Go html/template:
{{if .URL.RawQuery}}
<script>
window.history.replaceState({}, document.title, '{{.ReplacedURL}}');
</script>
{{end}}
I was asked to remove this tag after it started showing up when we split our website between two domain names. With Apache Rewrite Rules:
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} _ga
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1? [R=301,NC,L]
This will remove the tag, but will not be able to pass the _ga params to Google Analytics.
If the user doesn't mind a short refresh, then adding this code to every page
<?php
list($url, $qs) = preg_split('/\?/',$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
if (preg_match('/_ga=/', $qs) ) header( "refresh:1;url=${url}" );
?>
will refresh after a second, removing the query string, but allowing the Google Analytics action to take place. This means that by the time your user has bookmarked or copied your URL, the pesky _ga stuff has long gone.
The above code will throw away ANY query string. This version will just strip out the '_ga' argument.
$urlA = parse_url($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
$qs = $urlA['query'];
if (preg_match('/_ga=/',$qs)) {
$url = $urlA['path'];
$newargs = array();
$QSA = preg_split('/\&/',$qs);
foreach ($QSA as $e) {
list($arg,$val) = preg_split('/\=/',$e);
if ($arg == '_ga') continue; # get rid of this one
$newargs[$arg] = $val;
}
$nqs = http_build_query($newargs);
header( "refresh:1;url=${url}?${nqs}" );
}
You can't stop Google from adding the tag, but you can tell Analytics to ignore it in your reports. Thanks to Russ Henneberry for this: http://blog.crazyegg.com/2013/03/29/remove-url-parameters-from-google-analytics-reports/
It was written before Universal was released, so the language is outdated - now you create a new "view" (rather than "profile"). Creating a new view ensures that you still have the raw data in your default view (just in case you ever need it), so it's really the best solution (keeping in mind that you can't ever apply new settings retroactively in G Ax). Good luck!
You can't remove the _ga parameter from the URL on the website...BUT you can use an Advanced filter in Google Analytics to remove the query parameter from the reports!
Like this:
1) Field A: Request URI
Pattern: ^(.+)\?_ga
2) Field B: not needed
3) Output To -> Constructor
Field: Request URI
Pattern: $A1
This filter that will strip off all query parameters when _ga is the first parameter shown. You can get a lot fancier with the regex, but this approach should work for most websites.
See this page: https://support.google.com/tagmanager/answer/6107124?hl=en
& search for "use hash as delimiter"
Setting this value to true allows you to pass the value through a hash tag instead of through a query parameter
Should fix it
One way to handle this is to use the history.replaceState Javascript function to remove the query string from the URL after the page is finished loading and Google Analytics has done its thing. However, if you remove it too soon, it'll affect GA functionality (one visitor will show as multiple visitors). I've found that the following Javascript (with a 3-second delay)
<script defer src="data:text/javascript,async function main() {await new Promise(r => setTimeout(r, 3000));window.history.replaceState({}, document.title, window.location.pathname);}main();"></script>
I used "window.location.pathname" for convenience so that you can use the same script on many pages. However, you can also do like this (for the top page of the site):
<script defer src="data:text/javascript,async function main() {await new Promise(r => setTimeout(r, 3000));window.history.replaceState({}, document.title, '/');}main();"></script>
Or for a sub-page:
<script defer src="data:text/javascript,async function main() {await new Promise(r => setTimeout(r, 3000));window.history.replaceState({}, document.title, '/something/something.html');}main();"></script>
I did the "data:text/javascript" thing instead of a true in-line script so I could apply "defer" to it, although this probably isn't necessary if you're using a sufficiently long delay value.
You can filter out all (or only include) "?_ga=" parameters in Google Analytics for reporting purposes. I would also highly recommend adding a canonical to the base URL -- or adding the parameters to Google Webmaster Tools -- to avoid duplicate content.
I am trying to use PHP to fire hits at Google to track newsletter opens and clickthroughs. I want to use the same technique for both clickthroughs and opens since the clickthroughs will go to sites outside of my own control - I want to be able to report on the clickthrough rates of the newsletters regardless of where the clicks go to. I was thinking of trying code.google.com/p/php-ga/ but there is little in the way of example code/support docs to start with so I am hesitant.
Here is my url to __utm.gif broken up over the lines for clarity:
utm.gif?utmac=MO-xxx31982-1">http://www.google-analytics.com/_utm.gif?utmac=MO-xxx31982-1
&utmhn=myfake.com
&utmcc=_utma%3D7042858245.1436153422.1214501708.1340117181.1340117181.1%3B%2B_utmz%3D1.1340117181.1.1.utmcsr%3D%28direct%29%7Cutmccn%3D%28direct%29%7Cutmcmd%3D%28none%29%3B
&utmwv=1
&utmr=click
&utm_source=Emails
&utm_medium=Newsletter
&utm_campaign=tet+2012-06-19+10%3A41%3A30
&utmp=%2FMYZZ%2FNEWSLETTERS
&uservar=16430
Does the utmhn need to be a legit URL or one associated with the account? What about utmr? I was using that to contain 'click' or 'open' so I could differentiate.
When I click a link in the newsletter I get the expected pixel image returned so Google is getting something anyway even if ignoring my querystring. In my Google Analytics account where should I see the data relating the the __utm.gif hits? So far I see none when using this technique.
P.S. I got this technique from here
Follow up:
I changed a few things and my url now looks like so:
utm.gif?utmwv=1">http://www.google-analytics.com/_utm.gif?utmwv=1
&utmn=8391432847
&utmsr=click
&utmsc=-
&utmul=-
&utmje=0
&utmfl=-
&utmdt=-
&utmhn=myfake.com
&utm_source=my_newsletter
&utm_medium=Emails
&utm_campaign=tet 2012-06-19 10:41:30
&utmr=my_newsletter
&utmp=images/google/click
&utmac=MO-xxx31982-1
&utmcc=_utma%3D24820632.1925394567.1340121629.1340121629.1340121629.2%3B%2B_utmb%3D24820632%3B%2B_utmc%3D24820632%3B%2B_utmz%3D24820632.1340121629.2.2.utmccn%3D(direct)%7Cutmcsr%3D(direct)%7Cutmcmd%3D(none)%3B%2B__utmv%3D24820632.6430%3B
and nothing happens except when I paste that link into my browser then Google gets it, so why does it not work when called from the PHP line $handle = fopen ($urchinUrl1, "r");?
ok, nevermind. I changed my app around so the utm.gif is just included in the email and in a redirect page rather than called from the script. Should have done it that way but got caught up in the fancier idea of calling the url from php.
Even though this question is over a year old...the GA measurement protocol can be used to send hits back to GA for newsletter opens and clickthroughs.
To answer your initial question, it looks like you're missing the utmhid and utmn parameters.