How do shortened links show up in Google Analytics?
-
Hey, How do shortened links show up in GA? So if I tweet about something and use bitly, does twitter get the referral? I am thinking not. I have never seen bitly show up as a referrer, but we gets lots of clicks from those links. Hmmmm. Anyone?
E
-
Campaign tagging is always the failsafe method to essentially 'hardcode' the campaign attribution into your links. If the link is shared using some widget you have on your site and you have control over the code, just have these share links use campaign tagged URLs.
If somebody visits one of your page and just decides to copy and paste the URL from their browser address bar, then you'll get some directs or misc. web-based referrers. Not too many ways to combat that. You can create some JavaScript that 'could' catch some of the web-based referrers and force some campaign attribution, but it won't catch the non-browser based clicks so it's not a perfect solution anyway.
-
Next question.
-- Person shares a link from our site. Someone else sees it in their feed in tweedeck and clicks. That click through is recorded as a direct.
Anyway to combat that issue?
-
Well, we have not done a comprehensive job of using tracking parameters, so I am assuming that's part of the slippage. Also, we have share links on millions of pages that our visitors use. So folks clicking through from tweetdeck and the like from those links would show up as directs.
-
-
Thanks. We do use parameters, so we're covered there, but we are seeing an increasing number of directs in sources, which I assume is from tweedeck, et al. Thanks for the clarification!
-
bit.ly and many other link shortener services will perform a 301 redirect to the destination page and will pass the referrer (if available). If somebody clicks your bit.ly link from their twitter feed on the twitter.com web site, then twitter.com/referrer will be the source/medium. But if somebody clicks a bit.ly link from a non-browser interface (i.e. desktop Tweetdeck or Outlook Express email) then no referrer info is passed in the headers, resulting in a 'direct/(none)' for the source/medium since GA couldn't identify a specific source.
As lhutt mentioned, you can use GA campaign tagging to specify campaign information. You can use Google's URL Builder to create campaign tagged URLs for GA:
http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55578
-
I believe the source not bit.ly will show up as the referrer. IMHO, the best way to track shortened links back to your site is to use the Google Parameters. Not sure if bit.ly offers a way to do this easily (Hootsuite's shortner Owl.y does)
Even so, you can add the params yourself.
So if I tweet out about a blog post on my site, I'll put this kind of link into the shortner:
Then I am sure to be able to see my "campaign" info in a variety of ways inside of GA.
Hope that helps.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Does referral exclusions remove the ecommerce value from Google Analytics?
Quick question on Referral exclusions. We have a client that just rebuilt their Magento website, referral data from Paypal was never an issue, the site properly attributed to source. New web devs finished the site and all purchases through Google Analytics from PayPal Is now showing as referral traffic. Doing research on the issue the suggestion was to create a referral exclusion in GA from PayPal. My question on that, will the ecommerce value default to the previous referral or will it delete the e-commerce value completely from what is gathered?
Reporting & Analytics | | BCutrer0 -
Google Analytics View Filters
Using the same GA property, I would like to set up three filtered views: 1. Tracking across one subdomain and one primary domain (example: shop.example.com & example.com) 2. Track only primary domain (example.com) 3. Track only subdomain (shop.example.com) Can this be achieved by using view filters? If so, how do they need to be set? Also, according to this article: https://moz.com/blog/cross-domain-subdomain-tracking-in-google-analytics, with cross domain tracking, I need to ignore self-referrals, which can only be done at the property level. If set up to ignore example.com referrals, will this cause problems with filter 2 and 3?
Reporting & Analytics | | Evan340 -
Tracking time spent on a section of a website in Google Analytics
Hi, I've been asked by a client to track time spent or number of pages visited on a specific section of their website using Google Analytics but can't see how to do this. For example, they have a "golf" section within their site and want to measure how many people either visit 5 page or more within the golf section or spend at least 6 minutes browsing the various golf section pages. Can anyone advise how if this can be done, and if so, how I go about it. Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | geckonm0 -
Google Analytics - Next Page Path is the Same URL?
Hey Everyone, I have a Google analytics question. I'm looking through a client's site and when I look at the next page path, I get the same URL as the next path. For example, on the homepage, the next page path I get is the homepage again? This happens for all URL's, is this an implementation error? Is there a way to fix this? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | EvansHunt0 -
Is it possible to link two Analytics accounts to one AdWords account
Hi Is it possible to link two Analytics accounts that I have admin access to to the one AdWords account in my MCC. Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | BeattieGroup0 -
Using Regex for Goals in Google Analytics
I’ve got a website with 20 different forms; and I’d like to track all 20 form completions with one Goal in Google Analytics. The completion-page URLs follow the pattern below (the website uses Drupal CMS) Form One: www.acme.com/node/2990/done?sid=651 Form Two: www.acme.com /node/2991/done?sid=785 Form Three: www.acme.com /node/2992/done?sid=1021 Form Four: www.acme.com /node/2993/done?sid=459 I believe that there is a way I can use regex so Google Analytics will track if any of these completion URLs appears. Looking for guidance how to format the regex statement.
Reporting & Analytics | | TopFloor0 -
Analytics package beside google analytics
Hi, What analytics package can i use to track ecommerce transaction besides gogole analytics that is free of charge? Thanks Arthur
Reporting & Analytics | | VivaArturo0 -
Google Analytics: how many visits from country Google domains?
Hello, I manage a site with visitors from many different countries. With Google Analytics, it is normal to see the number of visitors from each search engine. However, I would like to identify the number of visitors from each Google-search contry domain. How many visitors from Google.com? How many from Google.co.uk. And from Google.co.zm? And so on. Anybody knows if this is possible and if yes, how can it be done? Thank you in advance, Dario
Reporting & Analytics | | Darioz0