How do I analyze vague Google Analytics data re traffic from Facebook?

Question

We have one Facebook fan page and two personal profiles that could be sending traffic and then there are the many facebook pages of friends etc. I am also running an ad campaign from my FB account for my husband's business which has a link from his personal FB profile and his fan page.

On Google analytics for his business we get the following referring sites from Facebook:

/ajax/emu/end.php which is listed under facebook.com / referral

/l.php (which is a not-found page at FB

/ajax/emu/end.php which is listed under apps.facebook.com

Both of the working links send me to the home page of my profile, which is the account I am working from to create and review the FB ad campaign that we are running.

Is this info telling me any useful information at all? Is there a best practice for tracking and analyzing Facebook traffic that is a lot more granular?

thanks!

Answer 1

The /l.php URI is Facebook's exit/redirect page (Google strips the query string Facebook uses to redirect from links in messages, statuses, comments, etc) and the /ajax/emu/end.php referrer is your Facebook advertisement clicks.

The best practice for tracking link sources (particularly for advertising) is the use of Google Analytics' campaign tracking to embed campaign information in all URL's which you post or advertise.

The campaign link tagging suggestions should help you determine how you want to organize your campaigns and you could ostensibly create a new campaign name for every link you post.

Answer 2

Actually, Google doesn't strip the info - that's why Facebook use the redirect functionality, thus less data is obtained. Unless of course, you use UTM tagging as suggested above, but it's not going to help on organic uplift.