This is a 3 part series on cross domain tracking with Google Analytics in non-standard situations:

1. Part 1
2. Part 2
3. Part 3

In this final of our three part series, we’re going to look at adding the Google Analytics query string parameters used to accomplish cross domain tracking to other variables we may be passing.

If we want to append additional query string variables to the end of our destination URL string we might try something along the lines of the following:

<code>

function redirectFunction()

{

window.location.replace(GoogleAnalyticsCookieAppend('http://www.xxx.yyy/
RedirectTarget.html?mookie=pookie'));

}

</code>

If we do this, it’s possible that we might also notice that our cookie passing solution no longer works.

Uh-oh.

If you find yourself in this situation, it might be because of this:

<code>

http://www.xxx.yyy/RedirectTarget.html?mookie=pookie#__utma=
1.283748562613819500.1212185562.1212185562.1212189988.2&__utmb=
-&__utmc=1&__utmx=-&__utmz=1.1212185562.1.1.utmcsr=
(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none)&__utmv=-&__utmk=100666753

</code>

The Google query string parameters were appended at the end of our query string, but with a “#” separator. Not exactly what we were expecting.

A cheap, quick and dirty fix is obvious: replace the “#” with a “&” and be on our way. But keep in mind that a simple replacement may create a problem with existing query string variables if being built dynamically, since we must have a “?” to start the query string parameters and must separate them with a “&” in a URL.

One solution is to extract the existing query string variables first, then call the GA function, then deal with the #/?/& issue,  and then append the old variables at the end.  We update our function to take care of this below:

<code>

function GoogleAnalyticsCookieAppend(uri)

{

//grab existing query string variables

var queryStringIndex = uri.indexOf('?');

var queryString =(queryStringIndex == -1) ? "" : uri.slice(queryStringIndex+1);

var myURI = (queryStringIndex == -1) ? uri : uri.slice(0, queryStringIndex-1);

//Use the Google Analytics function to get GA variables

var c = pageTracker._getLinkerUrl(myURI, window);

//Explicitly check in case GA is using #

c = c.replace("#", "?");

alert(c);

//reappend querystring variables

c += "&"+ queryString;

return c;

}

</code>

And that’s it for this mini-series on exploring the ins and outs of Google Analytics with non-standard tracking across top level domains.  Happy Google Analytics-ing!

Go to Part 1 or Part 2 …

This is a 3 part series on cross domain tracking with Google Analytics in non-standard situations:

1. Part 1
2. Part 2
3. Part 3

When faced with a non-hyperlink and non-form submission crossing of domains, our first thought might be to write a method that simply takes the GA query string variables (generated by our standard solutions) and appends them to the end of our destination URL.

But, Google Analytics is doing a bit more than this in its dedicated functions.  Specifically, it uses a hash function as a checksum in order to make sure that the cookies being passed are from the desired source (this ensures that you cannot maliciously affect someone else’s data using GA cookies). This checksum is calculated on the server side and stored in the _utmk variable.  Having to write your own server side hashing by reverse engineering the algorithm GA uses to do this checksum isn’t our ideal situation.

So what to do?

The first thing we have to do is undersant how the _link() and _linkByPost() functions are working. Looking specifically at some of the ga.js codebase, we see:

<code>

a._link=function(b,e)

{

if(i.I&&b){

a._initData();

a.a[p].href=a._getLinkerUrl(b,e)}

};

a._linkByPost=function(b,e){

if(i.I&&b&&b.action){

a._initData();

b.action=a._getLinkerUrl(b.action,e)

}

};

</code>

One thing we immediately notice is that both functions require a URI to be passed in, and yet take two parameters, the second being “e”…and both then take this and pass it and the target (b for hyperlinks and b.action for forms) along to a _getLinkerUrl() function. Let’s take a closer look:

<code>

a._getLinkerUrl=function(b,e)

{

var j=f(b,"#"),t=b,v=a.qc();

if(v)if(e&&1>=j[w])t+=”#”+v;

else if(!e||1>=j[w])if(1>=j[w])t+=(r(b,”?”)?”&”:”?”)+v;

else t=j[0]+(r(b,”?”)?”&”:”?”)+v+”#”+j[1];

return t

}

</code>

Again, we see the “e”, and in order to figure out what’s happening, it’s important to understand some of the features and quirks of Javascript, like:

• Constructors can return values
• No block scope
• Reserved words can be overriden
• Every function returns a value

As objects are essentially associative arrays, they are dynamically capable of adding properties and methods. The key to understanding “e” is found in the following declaration:

<code>

var _gat=new Object(

{

c:"length",

lb:"4.2",

m:"cookie",

b:undefined,

cb:function(d,a){this.zb=d;this.Nb=a},

r:"__utma=",

W:"__utmb=",

ma:"__utmc=",

Ta:"__utmk=",

na:"__utmv=",

oa:"__utmx=",

Sa:"GASO=",

X:"__utmz=",

lc:"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif",

mc:"https://ssl.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif",

Wa:"utmcid=",

Ya:"utmcsr=",

$a:"utmgclid=",

Ua:"utmccn=",

Xa:"utmcmd=",

Za:"utmctr=",

Va:"utmcct=",

Hb:false,

_gasoDomain:undefined,

_gasoCPath:undefined,

e:window,

a:document,

k:navigator,

t:function(d){

var a=1,c=0,g,o;

if(!_gat.q(d))

{

a=0;

for(g=d[_gat.c]-1;g>=0;g–)

{

o=d.charCodeAt(g);

a=(a<<6&268435455)+o+(o<<14);

c=a&266338304;

a=c!=0?a^c>>21:a

}

}

return a},

</code>

So “e” is actually just the window itself.  Now that we know that by passing in the url and the window object to _getLinkerUrl(), we are able to handle both hyperlinks and forms, we can see if it will work for our DIV container example. Let’s give it a try…

<code>

function GoogleAnalyticsCookieAppend(uri)

{

var c = pageTracker._getLinkerUrl(uri, window);

return c;

}

</code>

We can test this and see that our cookies are indeed being passed.  Now, what if we want to pass info with other query string variables?

Continue to Part 3

This is a 3 part series on cross domain tracking with Google Analytics in non-standard situations:

1. Part 1
2. Part 2
3. Part 3

In figuring out how to use Google Analytics on a site that spans multiple top level domains, (i.e. transfer cookies across multiple domains) there are many good resources out there (books, blogs, helpfiles and more). Given the amount of work done on this topic and the frequency with which it occurs on websites, you might not think this would be a difficult problem, and in most common cases, it isn’t.

But while there are well documented and standard methods that specifically deal with hyperlinks and HTML forms, you may find yourself in some unfamiliar territory if your site uses other types of navigation methods (scripted redirects, server side, etc…).

Take, for example, the simple snippet below:

<code>

<a href="" onclick="redirectFunction()">Link across top level domains</a>

function redirectFunction()

{

window.location.replace('http://www.xxx.yyy/RedirectTarget.html');

}

</code>

To address this one, you might write a wrapper function that encapsulates the redirect and inserts a call to the pageTracker._link(<urlToRedirectTo>) function, so we’d do something like the following:

<code>

function redirectFunction()

{

window.location.replace(GoogleAnalyticsCookieAppend('http://www.xxx.yyy/
RedirectTarget.html'));

}

function GoogleAnalyticsCookieAppend(uri)

{

pageTracker._link(uri);

return uri;

}

</code>

Note: You’ll want to make sure to include the “return false” at the end of your call here.

This will work for cases where we have a hyperlink (anchor tag) doing this direct javascript call, as follows:

<code>

<a href="" onclick="GoogleAnalyticsCookieAppend('http://www.xxx.yyy/
RedirectTarget.html');return false;“> This one tries indirectly  </a>

</code>

But what about something that’s not a hyperlink, like a div container?

<code>

<div id="mydiv" onclick="redirectFunction();return false;">

Content for this container

</div>

</code>

This is neither a hyperlink nor a form, and our attempts at solving this problem with pageTracker._link() and pageTracker._linkByPost() just don’t seem to work…

Continue to Part 2 …

In these days of viral videos, there is some pretty entertaining content out there. There are millions of videos on YouTube alone, and there are plenty of other sites out there like Break.com and Newgrounds with millions of videos all their own. Even non-traditionally video oriented sites like CNN.com and Disney are posting videos for user entertainment. With so much content spanning so many sites, it is easy to spend hours searching for “that one video I saw on that one site”…enter Truveo into this new landscape of video search.

Truveo is a video search engine that indexes many popular websites for videos. It offers users a one-stop shop for search and viewing of their favorite virals. Since it pulls content from partner sites, it offers unique opportunities for search engine marketing, giving aspiring marketers another avenue to have their content reached. An effective marketing strategy can open a completely new world of millions of possible leads.

Although they were at first regarded as a way of reaching primarily younger audiences, viral videos are quickly becoming a medium for populations for many different demographics and backgrounds to come together over their mutual interests. Many companies have already leveraged these mediums effectively to create positive public buzz, and one example is Dos Equi’s Most Interesting Man in the world, which has created buzz all over the blogosphere (like this, this, and this).

Truveo’s true potential lies in its international audience, which grows daily and has reported to constitute over 70% of their traffic. Many of their most popular videos are from young emerging markets like India and China, which creates an excellent opportunity for marketers to gain a visible presence in commercially exciting areas of growth. Marketers looking to go international may be able to leverage it as a viable option for creating buzz in different markets, and it is definitely worthy of a follow-up.

We’ve all seen the movies where the robots are coming for us, including classics such as The Terminator and The Matrix. What people may not know is that they already came for us - and got all of our information… In fact, the most widely used website in the world is built upon one of these robots: The GoogleBot.

Indeed, not all robots are here to subjugate humanity and turn us into subservient slaves. They are actually quite helpful, indexing web sites on popular search engines so that visitors may come and indulge in the pages of our websites. Without these robots, most of the information revolution we’ve seen in the past 20 years would not have been possible.

But what if you have some information on your website you’d rather not have the whole world take a look at? Perhaps a baby picture from when you were small that you only share with family friends, internal pages that you may want to keep out of the search results page from a business perspective.  There are many valid reasons for “banning” the bots from certain pages, and there are some good ways to do this.

One answer is a robots.txt file. Essentially this is a text file (which can be written in any text editor) that issues commands to robots to visit only the portions of a website that you allow. The basic syntax is fairly simple, and a good overview is available here. We want to be very careful when employing these files, however, and make absolutely sure that we know what effects our actions will have.  For this reasons, many webmasters are uncomfortable with editing this themselves, as one small mistake could render your site entirely invisible (or entirely visible) to any robot.

Luckily, Google now offers a tool that will automatically generate a robots.txt file for you, saving some time and perhaps avoiding an unintentional disaster.

Using this tool can help you control the pages of your website, and we can make sure our robots keep coming back on our terms, without terminating us.

The internet is the largest and most varied medium of information in all of human history, housing literally billions of web pages ranging in topics from the mundane to the esoteric. Many companies struggle with determining how to make their websites visible and heavily trafficked on the Internet, and Google is helping out website owners, search marketing managers and webmasters with tools that include Content Analysis, Sitemaps, and more.

These tools are incredibly useful vehicles to develop and manage sites that a search engine can navigate and use, which any Search Engine Marketer will tell you is fundamentally important for the success and visibility of a site on the web. One aspect of this topic includes the importance of page elements and how to effectively leverage rich content like flash, AJAX, video, and more.

One thing to remember is the importance of using textual alternatives for content that is primarily audio/visual for the benefit of searching technologies. While humans have the ability to comprehend the “message” behind this rich content, search engines cannot.  While we as humans can look at a picture of a car and understand and interpret what we’re looking at conceptually and even specifically, a search engine spider is left with nothing more than an array of pixels.  One way to “tell” a search engine what’s behind this content is to use alt attributes for images and noscript/alternative content for browsers without JavaScript/Flash.

This has twofold importance. For one, this makes a site much more accessible to the visually impaired (who may use programs such as JAWS, a text/speech tool for visualization), and second, it helps search engine spiders index a site. Failure to use such options effectively leaves large portions of the internet essentially blind to your content, resulting in fewer page visits and less overall user engagement.  In order to be more than just another fish in the sea, webmasters should leverage these tools and techniques to free their information, bringing it into the light for all to see.

If you’re not using Google’s Webmaster Central, get an account today and get instant visibility into the pages of your site.

If you do your own pay per click (PPC) management account, you most likely use the performance reports provided by Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, MSN adCenter, or the other advertising service. These reports can be extremely powerful in giving you a very quick overview on the progress of your campaigns for a particular time period. However, there is an important thing that you should understand about where the numbers in these reports come from to truly understand the data. The number of conversions could change over time based on the expiration of the advertisements cookie on a user’s browser.

Google AdWords’ cookie expires after 30 days. This means that if a user clicks on an ad during a Google search a cookie is set on their browser. Even if they leave the website that the ad led them to by going to another website or shutting off their computer/browser, the cookie will track them should they come back to that website and complete a conversion at any time during the next 30 days. So if they come back 15 days later by typing in the website’s URL directly and complete a conversion, in these reports that conversion would be attributed to the PPC ad. However, if they come back 31 days later from a source other than Adwords and complete a conversion, it would not be tracked in Google’s AdWords reports as a conversion. Yahoo! Search Marketing’s cookie lasts for 45 days. You also want to keep in mind that if the user specifically deletes or removes cookies from their browser these expirations do not apply.

Besides the lifespan of their cookies, Google and Yahoo! also differ in how a conversion is attributed in their reports. Google AdWords attributes a conversion to the day the click occurs. Meaning if a visitor clicks on an ad on March 1st but doesn’t complete a conversion until March 7th, the report in Google will show the conversion occurred on March 1st as this is when my initial click happened. Of course, if the visitor returns to the website via another PPC ad, the cookie is reset. Yahoo! Search Marketing attributes the conversion in their report to the actual day the conversion happens. Using the previous example, a Yahoo! report will show the conversion on March 7th, which is the day of the conversion, not the initial ad click. Therefore the number of conversions reported via the Google reports can change for up to 30 days. A report created on March 1st for the February 15-29 date range will likely have fewer conversions than a report created on March 15th for the same February 15-29 date range because these conversions can show up in the past for up to 30 days. In Yahoo! Search Marketing reports, you may see new conversions appear for up to 45 days after the click.

Next time you’re reviewing your pay per click marketing performance reports, be sure to take into account the cookie lifespan of the advertising provider and make sure to understand how conversions are attributed in these reports. These subtle differences may have an effect on how you manage where your PPC marketing dollars go tomorrow!

WebShare is a Yahoo! Search Marketing Ambassador and Google AdWords Qualified Company, and can help you with your Google AdWords Management as well as your Yahoo! Search Marketing, Microsoft adCenter, and Ask.com paid search accounts. We help clients maximize their advertising budgets with solutions that range from training to active daily management. We look forward to helping bring you to the next level.

Ready to set up goals on your website? This 7 minute video walks through the steps required to create conversion goals in Google Analytics. You’ll learn about different types of goals, how to calculate goal values, when and where to use different match types and more. With goals configured in your Analytics profiles you’ll be on your way to understanding how your visitors interact with your site from the perspective of conversions:

Today Google announced the release of some interesting additions to Google Analytics, the free website analytics offering from the search giant. Almost as many times as the topic of Google Analytics comes up, we’re asked whether or not Google is poring over your private data and sharing it among its secret circles in dark caverns. While the answer to this question has always been a resounding “no”, today’s beta releases provide a case for the positives of data-sharing within Google Analytics.

Ever wanted to know if other online stores selling the same products as you also saw a record February? What days of the week other sites like yours experience traffic spikes? How about knowing if people stay on your pages longer than they stay on your competitors’ sites? With the industry benchmarking feature, you can answer these questions and more.

Understanding how your website performs against other websites in your vertical can shed some bright light on your online marketing plans, and even looking at data across other verticals can provide valuable insights that you can turn into action items for your online success.

So how does Google Analytics get all this data on your vertical? Well, the bottom line is that for this to be an effective tool, we all have to share it. The second feature released today is the beta of the “data-sharing settings” page, where Google Analytics users can opt in to sharing their data. To dispel the paranoia that is sure to result from this option, Google is NOT making your individual data available to your market (and your competitors). When you opt-in to data sharing, your Analytics data is aggregated with everyone else in your industry vertical anonymously.

So why stop there? Google is also letting you opt into sharing your Analytics data across other Google services you may be using. Have you tried the Conversion Optimizer from Adwords yet? If so, you’re probably frustrated that you have to set up separate conversion tracking for this feature when all that data is right there in your Analytics account. Cross Google services data sharing is the first step to allowing us to solve problems like this, and we at WebShare are excited to see where this leads.

Webshare is a Google Analytics Authorized consultancy and can help you make the most of this new feature and the wealth of data available to you via website analytics. From website analytics training to Google Analytics consulting, WebShare can help you with all your website analytics needs.

First time Adwords advertisers often don’t understand that the position of your ad is not determined soley by bid price—that is just one of several factors. Google instead tells us that ad rank is a combination of bid price and something called a “Quality Score”. On top of that, a poor Quality Score could cause your minimum bid price to jump by 19,000%!
So the next logical question would be “What’s my quality score?” Until recently, this has been a guarded secret, much to the frustration of advertisers worldwide. Google will reveal that it is determined by your keyword’s click through rate (CTR), relevance of ad text, historical keyword performance, and other relevancy factor. Google still isn’t going to tell us the formula or even the exact score, but they are now giving advertisers a general idea of the quality score for each keyword. If you want to make the most of your search marketing campaigns, you need to check out your quality score today.
First, I want to clarify that there are actually two quality scores for your keywords, each computed in a slightly different way. One is for determining the minimum bid price the other is for determining ad position. The two are similar in the fact that they both look at CTR, your accounts historical performance and other relevance factors. Where they differ is that the bid price quality score considers landing page quality and the relevance of the keyword to its ad group. Whereas, the ad position quality score considers the relevance of the keyword and ad to the search term. For more on the definition of quality score, see the Google help file.
You can view your quality score through your AdWords account. Choose the Campaign then AdGroup of interest. Click the “Keyword” tab. Look for the “Show/Hide Columns” drop down menu. Choose “Show Quality Score”.

Your quality score is listed next to every Keyword along with the minimum bid for that keyword. If you click on the question mark next to the quality score title, Google provides you with a list of possible quality score, information about each one, and links to FAQs.

Remember, if you have a high quality score, your bid price will be lower which means you can pay less for a higher ad position. However, you shouldn’t just be looking at quality score as a way to get a lower bid price. Ultimately you want a successful ad. This score is an indication of how relevant your ad is in Google’s eyes. A relevant ad will be a more successful ad.
If you have a “poor” or “ok” quality score, there are several reasons why this could be happening. Here are some questions to ask yourself: Are you sending people to the correct landing page (more than likely not your home page)? Does the ad text contain the keyword? Is the list of keywords for this Ad group too broad? Is the keyword itself too broad? If you have a poor quality score, you should have answered no to at least one of the above questions. This is where you should start making improvements. The best pay per click campaigns are the ones that are constantly monitored and improved. Now that Google provides us with the quality score the job of improving our campaigns just got easier. So check yours out today!
If you’re interested in learning more, we go further in depth about how to improve and use Quality Score to your advantage in our Adwords/Paid Search Bootcamp—contact us today for more details.

WebShare is an AdWords Qualified Company. We are recognized as a premier pay-per-click management company in the search marketing industry, and offer a wide range of PPC services that can help you increase the performance of your PPC campaigns.