Tracking 301'd Domains

[treefrogseo]

'ello SEOMozers

I've been implementing some awesomely search engine friendly 301'd domains for clients and they work great but I seem to have missed the point where I track said domains in some fashion and come here to ask the question --> how are you all tracking refers from 301'd domains that are pointed to your main hubs?

Currently our practice in-house is to alias them in our servers then use .htaccess rules to 301 them to the 1 domain to-rule-them-all but Google Analytics doesn't recognize them as different domains with that plan of action and there goes my refer tracking.

Is there a super-star way to use the Google URL Builder and combine that with the above plan of action or a better plan? Has anyone else implemented something else more awesome-er that could help a girl out?

Much thanks and Happy Thursday!

[treefrogseo]

Hey Ryan! 
Thanks for the reply, really appreciate the input.

It's not exactly the ideal win of having the 301s and tracking but if that's how we're rocking around today that's how it's going on. I'll relay the findings to the appropriate parties and hey I've learned this for the future now too.

Thanks again!

[AdoptionHelp]

You're kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place here. The issue with 301 redirects is that it happens on the server before any page is served up. Google Analytics doesn't track anything until its called on the page (which is why they suggest you put their code at the bottom of your page, in case their script takes too long to load or can't, your page still loads).

This means that in order for you to track these visits with GA, you'll need to redirect on the page level, using a meta refresh or other client side tricks. The problem with that method is that it doesn't pass the link juice like a 301 does. However, if these domains don't have a ton of inbound links then this isn't such a big deal.