{"id":4065,"date":"2020-05-12T09:48:52","date_gmt":"2020-05-12T09:48:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chef-dev.creativegeek.co.il\/?p=4065"},"modified":"2022-11-08T11:06:31","modified_gmt":"2022-11-08T08:06:31","slug":"the-curious-case-of-google-analytics-cross-domain-tracking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/google-analytics\/the-curious-case-of-google-analytics-cross-domain-tracking\/","title":{"rendered":"The Curious case of Google Analytics Cross-Domain Tracking"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>A recent call from a past client reminded me of an interesting use case worth sharing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"2ee5\">Act One\u200a\u2014\u200aAnticipation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"ee03\">The story began back in October 2017.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>I had just left the ad agency I was working at and switched over to the relaxed client-side life as an in-house Digital Marketing manager.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One day while I\u2019m at the office, I received a phone call from an unknown number.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-style-large is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve got your number from a mutual friend\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>said the man on the other side of the line<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-style-large is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>\u201cWe have a tracking issue we can\u2019t solve. I can\u2019t tell where my conversions are coming from!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>The client was a luxury hotel chain managing several web properties. Each of their two brands had a dedicated website, split across two domains, one for each language (Hebrew &amp; English). So overall they had four internal domains to manage:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>hotel-a.com<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>hotel-a.co.il<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>hotel-b.com<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>hotel-b.co.il<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>Aside from the multiple client domains, the reservations were handled on a third-party site, so the conversions were ultimately happening there. For sake of simplicity, let\u2019s call it reservation-site.com<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Classic cross-domain setup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-style-large is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>\u201cLet\u2019s rock and roll\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<iframe src=\"https:\/\/giphy.com\/embed\/2uypD9OMopqQ3rfSEY\" width=\"480\" height=\"361\" frameBorder=\"0\" class=\"giphy-embed\" allowFullScreen><\/iframe><p><a href=\"https:\/\/giphy.com\/gifs\/unreelco-don-adams-edouard-david-2uypD9OMopqQ3rfSEY\">via GIPHY<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"d516\">Act Two\u200a\u2014\u200aDream<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Implementing Cross Domain tracking is a pretty straightforward procedure. Just follow the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/support.google.com\/tagmanager\/answer\/6164469?hl=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">technical steps<\/a>&nbsp;and you should be finished in a few minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since the client had several different sites that weren\u2019t part of a single user journey, we started out by mapping how users are expected to travel across domains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The logical map was:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>hotel-a.com -&gt; hotel-a.co.il -&gt; reservation-site.com<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(for users switching across languages)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A similar mapping was also relevant for Hotel B.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Conveniently enough, the client had Google Tag Manager (GTM) implemented across all his properties (including the reservation site), which made everything faster to deploy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>All three domains were added to the GA Pageview tag as &#8216;Auto Link Domains\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"469\" height=\"168\" src=\"https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/1_HgPywzbfEfR5zbk89wOBtQ.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4102\" srcset=\"https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/1_HgPywzbfEfR5zbk89wOBtQ.png 469w, https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/1_HgPywzbfEfR5zbk89wOBtQ-300x107.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 469px) 100vw, 469px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Adding the domains in GTM<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Also in GTM, the allowLinker field was set as \u2018true\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"183\" src=\"https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/1_qrCANckrSa73NoJ2nH76rg-1024x183.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4101\" srcset=\"https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/1_qrCANckrSa73NoJ2nH76rg-1024x183.png 1024w, https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/1_qrCANckrSa73NoJ2nH76rg-300x54.png 300w, https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/1_qrCANckrSa73NoJ2nH76rg-768x138.png 768w, https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/1_qrCANckrSa73NoJ2nH76rg.png 1128w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Instructing the tracker to respect incoming decorated links<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Additionally, all three sites were added to the Referral Exclusion list in GA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"619\" height=\"297\" src=\"https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/1_rc5Tqmt3jaFVPFSPuta7Ew.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4100\" srcset=\"https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/1_rc5Tqmt3jaFVPFSPuta7Ew.png 619w, https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/1_rc5Tqmt3jaFVPFSPuta7Ew-300x144.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 619px) 100vw, 619px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Adding the domains to be excluded in GA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-style-large is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>\u201cPiece of cake \ud83d\ude0e\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"8632\">Act Three\u200a\u2014\u200aFrustration<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Although I\u2019ve done this procedure numerous times, I still like to refer to&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/u\/5a344527ab12?source=post_page-----4fb838e3a22c----------------------\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Simo&nbsp;<\/a>Ahava\u2019s checklist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"586\" src=\"https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/1_d2LY6IvkHquX0xBRZVZB3A-1024x586.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4099\" srcset=\"https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/1_d2LY6IvkHquX0xBRZVZB3A-1024x586.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/1_d2LY6IvkHquX0xBRZVZB3A-300x172.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/1_d2LY6IvkHquX0xBRZVZB3A-768x439.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/1_d2LY6IvkHquX0xBRZVZB3A-1536x879.jpeg 1536w, https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/1_d2LY6IvkHquX0xBRZVZB3A.jpeg 1612w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Credit: Simo Ahava<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>You can find his&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.simoahava.com\/analytics\/troubleshooting-cross-domain-tracking-in-google-analytics\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">full blog post here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Checking the implementation, I noticed that when switching across hotel-a.com &amp; hotel-a.co.il was working as expected, but switching from either of them to reservation-site.com wasn\u2019t passing the _ga parameter in the URL.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>\u201cHouston, we have a problem!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>After running several validations to make sure the setup was done correctly, I still couldn\u2019t find the reason it wasn\u2019t working.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So it was back to the&nbsp;drawing board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<iframe src=\"https:\/\/giphy.com\/embed\/14mgxYFJHXGmoo\" width=\"480\" height=\"360\" frameBorder=\"0\" class=\"giphy-embed\" allowFullScreen><\/iframe><p><a href=\"https:\/\/giphy.com\/gifs\/80s-cartoon-inspector-gadget-14mgxYFJHXGmoo\">via GIPHY<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The basic gist of Cross Domain tracking is taking the existing Client ID (CID) value from the current domain\u2019s cookie and concatenating it to outbound links using a simple JS function.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>GTM and GA can both run this function out of the box which is why I was surprised to see that it wasn\u2019t working as expected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I examined the client\u2019s website again in search of the culprit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>\u201cEureka!\u2019\u201d (and facepalm \ud83e\udd26\ud83c\udffb\u200d\u2642\ufe0f)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>The outbound links leading to reservation-site.com were generated dynamically. This is due to the fact that the user had to be sent across to the reservation site with certain parameters, i.e. number of adults, date range, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This meant that the links didn\u2019t exist in the HTML document, to begin with. And even if they did, they would have been replaced with a new one once a user refines the date range or other parameters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"1b4c\">Act Four\u200a\u2014\u200aResolution<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The solution to this issue was relatively simple but required some development from the client\u2019s team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Basically, we had to imitate the autolinker\u2019s behavior by extracting the CID from the cookie and adding it to the outbound URL.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since the client was using GTM, we couldn\u2019t use GA\u2019s built-in method to extract the CID but rather had to pull it out manually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This isn\u2019t a complex task using JavaScript but does require some attention as the CID is stored in the cookie along with some unnecessary parameters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<iframe src=\"https:\/\/giphy.com\/embed\/iWSKAbdZ6O1Fu\" width=\"480\" height=\"369\" frameBorder=\"0\" class=\"giphy-embed\" allowFullScreen><\/iframe><p><a href=\"https:\/\/giphy.com\/gifs\/inspector-gadget-iWSKAbdZ6O1Fu\">via GIPHY<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"524e\">Sequel<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"ca70\">March 2019<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>The marketing manager that I\u2019ve worked with has already left and his replacer was launching a new website, trying carefully not to break anything in the process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She called me up to see if I still have the technical documents I\u2019ve previously shared with their Dev team. Lucky for her that I\u2019m a very organized person. Documents were sent and peace was restored.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"fe17\">Notes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The meta-plot outline is based on&nbsp;<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Seven_Basic_Plots\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cThe Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories\u201d<\/a>&nbsp;by Christopher Booker<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Originally published on my blog on Medium<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A recent call from a past client reminded me of an interesting use case worth sharing. Act One\u200a\u2014\u200aAnticipation The story began back in October 2017. I had just left the ad agency I was working at and switched over to the relaxed client-side life as an in-house Digital Marketing manager. One day while I\u2019m at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4088,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,2],"tags":[38],"class_list":["post-4065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-google-analytics","tag-google-analytics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4065"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5458,"href":"https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4065\/revisions\/5458"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}