Regular Expressions in Google Analytics

[Cabbagefeet]

Hi All

I've been struggling to create a regular expression for a Google Analytics goal step that would match the following:

^/specifictextstring/anytextstring/anytextstring/
^/specifictextstring/anytextstring/

However I don't want it to match any URLs that end with:

/anytextstring**_**phonecall or /phonecall, for example:

/specifictextstring/anytextstring/anytextstring/anytextstring**phonecall
/specifictextstring/anytextstring/anytextstring**phonecall
/specifictextstring/anytextstring/anytextstring/phonecall
/specifictextstring/anytextstring/phonecall

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks in advance for all contributions.

[katemorris]

You have a few choices, none of them include setting a goal like you want. I can't see any way to do it they way you want.

Option 1: Create profile that disallows the phonecall URLs and set the goal in that profile.

Option 2: Create a custom segment that removes the phonecall URLs from your dataset.

[kwoolf]

I'm no GA guru, but how about just using advanced filters? You can use a custom filter to exclude the requested uri pattern.

[Cabbagefeet]

If you could use negative lookahead the below would work for the goal step regular expression:

/(something|somethings)/(?!.phonecall).

[Cabbagefeet]

Thanks for the response Kevin. The issue I am having is that Google Analytics does not allow negative lookahead to be used which would be the easiest approach to ensuring none of the following our matched:

/specifictextstring/anytextstring/anytextstring/anytextstring**phonecall
/specifictextstring/anytextstring/anytextstring**phonecall
/specifictextstring/anytextstring/anytextstring/phonecall
/specifictextstring/anytextstring/phonecall

Thanks

[kwoolf]

I'm sure you've found this already but I'll post for reference: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1034324?hl=en

And you can check out some examples here: http://www.cheatography.com/jay-taylor/cheat-sheets/google-analytics-regular-expressions/

So try ^/specifictextstring/(.*)  for your  ^/specifictextstring/anytextstring/anytextstring/