reubenyau.com — Google Analytics don't report dynamic referring URLs, which can be frustrating when you check your referrers. The only thing your report shows you is something like /forums/viewtopic.phpThis article shows a method to get around this problem by adding a hack.
Jan 15, 2007 View in Crawl 4
navaneethJan 15, 2007
Way Cool.... I was searching for this in all the experts - so called - blogs and I found it here at last,,,, Thanks a lot...
ulvundJan 15, 2007
i wonder why they don't offer it when primitive counters offer it.come on give us results
d0odxJan 15, 2007
Mano70 thanks a LOT for submitting this. I was JUST about to drop analytics today due to them lacking the full ref.
onlyshawnJan 15, 2007
nogger...thanks for the input. could you dumb that down a little for those of us lower on the scale? I'd like to not have a double count, of course...though, i'm not sure it would matter with the 20 or so visits I get a week. :) I'm much more interested in learning the process.
dmronJan 15, 2007
Check out Clicky Web Statistics, and you'll see all this information up front, without the need for any hacks. Plus a whole lot more. :)<a class="user" href="http://getclicky.com">http://getclicky.com</a>
simondonkersJan 15, 2007
If people would actually read Google's helpfiles they would even go as far as to notice Google even recommands this hack:<a class="user" href="http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=27288">http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=27288</a>I very much doubt Google is going to disable this.
kbrowerJan 16, 2007
@onlyshawn<a class="user" href="http://krisbrower.com/2007/01/15/google-analytics-full-referrer-url/">http://krisbrower.com/2007/01/15/google-analytics-full-referrer-url/</a>
egodemensJan 16, 2007
@bitcloud If people make stupid comments, like yours, they get dugg down, like you did. If they troll every god damn story with the same off-topic crap they get blocked. But at the end of the day it's up to the individual user what they do so don't spin this as some "Digg is teh big brother!!11" bulls**t.
glenfiddichApr 11, 2007
As a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant, I can see the creativity in this method.However, with this hack you're really emulating an extra page view, thereby artificially doubling your traffic.Also, Google Analytics only stores so much of the URI, that's why it's truncated at the querystring parameter for referrers.It is indeed one of the most frustrating aspects of GA, especially when most of your referrers come from forums or blogs.On my wishlist of future features for GA is the addition of extra settable variables, just like Omniture and WebTrends offer.
glenfiddichApr 11, 2007
of course you could always use the following:body onload="javascript:urchinTracker("referrer:"+document.referrer);"and then create a filter to exclude URIs containing the "referrer" string
pittbugApr 21, 2007
I modified the javascript again so it detects whether the page is in http or https mode and pulls the appropriate urchin.js from google (to avoid security errors in the browser). At the same time the code will only write out the urchinTracker(document.referrer) line if it detects that the page was called from an external referrer - this prevents cluttering up the top content report with your own pages listed as a referrer.<a class="user" href="http://www.reubenyau.com/google-analytics-tracking-code-https-and-full-external-referrer-only/">http://www.reubenyau.com/google-analytics-tracking-code-https-and-full-external-referrer-only/</a>