Cross Domain Tracking for multiple sub-domains with multi-lingual and culture versions

[Nobody1565908128979]

Hi,

I have a question regarding cross-domain tracking that I haven't seen answered completely elsewhere.

A client has a main domain, we'll say www.example.com and 4 or 5 sub-domains e.g. shop.example.com, support.example.com, account.example.com and service.example.com. The different sub-domains are managed by different third parties, with just www.example.com and account.example.com under our control.

To add a further dimension, these sites all have multi-lingual versions as folders and in some cases multi-cultural versions e.g. www.example.com/de/ for Germany and www.example.com/ch-de/ for German-speaking Swiss.

Not every language/culture has an equivalent site in place for each of the sub-domains e.g. the UK support site serves Denmark and Swiss-German users will use the German site:

www.example.com/dk/ links to support.example.com/uk/ for support-based content
www.example.com/ch-de/ links to support.example.com/de/

At present, they use different analytics tracking codes and accounts. Moving forward, they would like to consolidate the data together to be able to see the collective and separate performances. They would also like to be able to see goal completions from referrals when someone clicks from the main domain to the sub-domain or across sub-domains or potentially across language and culture too.

I have several questions I would really appreciate some guidance on:

1. What will be the best way to configure Google Analytics to achieve this?
2. Will we need to decorate the HTML links in between each of the sites?
3. Will we need to use a new Google Analytics property?

It may not be easy to answer this based on the information above, so I'm happy to provide additional information if required.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[Nobody1565908128979]

Many thanks, I will have a little look at the link you sent.

[gfiorelli1]

Hi!

I saw you asked - without success - this question also in Google Forums and Stack Exchange.

Sincerely, my first answer should be that should exist only one GA tracking code enabled for tracking subdomains, and that all the parties working with the client will need to have access to the same Analytics profile.

That would be the best for the client too, because so it will have just one GA profile, even if under it different views (one for subdomain and, eventually, one for each one of their multilingual/country facet).

This post explains quite well how to do that.

If you are wondering how and who should do it, then, we are entering more in a organization issue more than implementation one.

Logic says that - once the client has been informed about the importance of creating a consistent view of the analytics data from you - it should be the client telling to all the providers to coordinate between themselves for optimizing the GA implementation. If the order comes from the Client, and not being you asking the other providers to use just one GA code for subdomains, nobody could say no.

I'm sorry, but I cannot offer you a better answer than this one.