Thursday 5 September 2013

Google analytics: cross domain tracking + 301 redirect

Google analytics: cross domain tracking + 301 redirect

I'm right now working on multiple websites from the same company each one
connected to the others with a list of links on the top header.
The visits tracking is done with Google analytics and everything seems to
be working fine. Too bad that they now seem to be unhappy with all the
utm* parameters which get attached at the bottom of the url to obtain
cross domain tracking.
For me the best solution seems to be this: each url which links to another
one of the sites is like 'www.somename.com/en' where 'en' is the desired
language. After clicking the new page opens with an url like
'www.somename.com/en?_utma=xxxxxxxx&_utmb=...'
If i remove from the links the language changing the href to
'www.somename.com' when the page loads, the site makes a 301 redirect from
'www.somename.com/?_utma=xxxxxxxx&_utmb=...' to 'www.somename.com/en'
where 'en' is the standard language, obtaining in this way exactly what
the site owner desires.
Since i don't have access to the G anlaytics account i would like to ask
if this might be the right solution or if we may be losing the cross
domain tracking.
The cookie __utmz seems to contain the right referrer but I'm not sure if
this can be considered enough to check if it is working.
But then i checked the other parameters here
http://helpful.knobs-dials.com/index.php/Utma,_utmb,_utmz_cookies and it
seems to me that all the other values on the cookies that we get after
getting on the new domain don't have to be in any way related to the ones
on the previous page (the site with the links).
What else should i check to be sure that everything is still working fine?
Thanks,

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