Google Analytics Campaign Tracking Pt. 0: An Overview
November 10, 2006 by Justin CutroniOne of the most useful features in Google Analytics is its ability to track your online marketing campaigns. We all know that GA works great with AdWords, but it can also be used to track your banner ads, CPC ads and even your off line ads (which I’ve posted about before). If you’re doing any online advertising you should be tracking its performance at the most granular level possible.
With that said, I’ve put together a series of posts that will dive into Google Analytics Campaign Tracking. I wanted to preface the series with a ’summary’ post so people know where I’m going.
I explain the technology behind Google Analytics link tagging. Don’t worry, this isn’t too technical and it is really important stuff to know.
Part 2: EpikOne Link Tagging Tool
I’ll give you guys access to an internal tool that we use to manage our link tagging effort. Hopefully this tool will save everyone some time.
We put our knowledge to work and start looking at some reports.
Part 4: Tips & Best Practices
This is a brain dump. Everything I’ve learned in the past 2 years about tracking online campaigns with Google Analytics.
So sit back, relax and get ready.
11 Responses to “Google Analytics Campaign Tracking Pt. 0: An Overview”
just a quick question. I know we can use GA to be able to allow you to track click on outbound links using the following:
My question is will this count towards the number of actual pageviews??
If it does then I will always have to factor those hits out when looking at my total pageviews, which can get annoying!
By Rob on Dec 4, 2006
Will you use link tagging to track internal campaigns??
I believe the information from external and internal campaigns will be corrupt, then.
BTW, very nice and usefull blog, congratulation.
By kakoky on Jun 20, 2007
Hi kakoky,
Personally, I would not use link tagging to track internal campaigns. The reason is that the data will overwrite the external campaign information.
If you don’t care about the external referral information then you could use it, but it really depends on your specific needs.
Justin
By Justin on Jun 22, 2007
In your opinion, how do you think I should be tracking internal campaigns or promotions?
By kakoky on Oct 30, 2007
Hi Kakoky,
It really depends what’s important to you and your analysis needs. Many people use GA’s campaign tracking to track internal campaigns. The down side is you loose the original referrer information. You can also use GA custom segmentation feature, but this would require some custom coding to make sure you’re setting and updating the custom segment value at the correct time.
Sorry I couldn’t be more helpful, but the solution will depend on your needs.
Thanks for reading and thanks for the comment.
Justin
By Justin on Nov 16, 2007
Can u tell me how to exclude traffic from our machine in Google Analytics. I know how to do with IP. Can u tell me any other way using JS file or…..
By Alder on Nov 23, 2007
Can u tell me how to trach pdf document and media file in GA
By Alder on Nov 23, 2007
Hi Alder,
Check out this series of posts about tracking visitor clicks. That’s what you need to do to track PDF files and other non-HTML files.
As for excluding traffic from GA, the best way to do it is using a filter based on IP address. If you can’t do that then try this technique.
Thanks for reading and thanks for the questions,
Justin
By Justin Cutroni on Nov 26, 2007