2

I would like to know which source / affiliate link are responsible for a goal conversion. In Google Analytics, I tried Conversions > Goals > Reverse goal path.

But unfortunately, all I see is that people who have a goal conversion (= visiting successful payment page example.com/payment) come on my site with this URL:

/

This doesn't inform me if they come from /?src=blog1 or /?src=blog23, etc.

How to find this more precise information in the reverse goal path?

enter image description here

Improve this question
3
  • I am just curious, did I answer the question properly?
    – Raul Reyes
    Aug 10, 2017 at 10:49
  • Thanks for the answer. I'll try this when I have access to computer this evening or tomorrow.
    – Basj
    Aug 10, 2017 at 11:01
  • Hi, how did you go?
    – Raul Reyes
    Aug 18, 2017 at 23:42

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
1

In Google Analytics Reports there are many ways to find out where a visitor/conversion has come from.

Reports

1) Conversions > Goals > Overview > Source/Medium

Here Source/Medium represents your Blog-1/Referral conversions. You can check each goal or conversion individually using the dropdown menu at the top.

enter image description here

2) Acquisition > All Traffic > Referrals

You will be able to see all the referrals in this report in a table listed, and you can also select the goal-conversion you wish to track

enter image description here

Custom Campaigns

This is a great way to track your visitors/referrals, you can be more specific as to from where does the visitor visited your website, what link the visitor clicked on and from what page. Mage sure to use the parameters wisely and use the name of your BLOGs as the utm_source to keep it tidy. Note: Of course, the only condition here is that you have to have access to all the referral blogs to edit the links.

Here is the link to get you started, there are plenty of tutorials online.

Advance Segments

You can also follow this tutorial to create advance segments for measuring your referral traffic coming from specific domains/blogs. Then use this segment across all your GA reports and goal/conversion reports to compare the referrals campaign impact vs all the website traffic or other segments.

Please note that the tutorial will walk you through how to create an advance segment with social media channels, apply the same procedure with your domains/blogs you wish to track.

Custom Dimensions and metrics

Adwords campaigns allow you to setup custom URL parameters. In Google analytics, as far as I know, you should be using the standard implementation using "Custom Campaigns" if you have the access to edit the links.

However you could use custom dimensions and pre-process those URLs in your website and generate a javascript that will send your custom events or set your custom dimensions. So for example, a visitor lands in your website/page/?source you website process document.location and push the notification to GA via custom dimensions/metrics. Or (I never tried this) read the visitor browser history using window.history redirect to the proper page and push the custom GA event/dimension.

Improve this answer
4
  • Just an additional note: for the current affiliation links, I haven't used the standard ?utm_source parameters but just ?source=... (Ill use the utm standard in the future!) Do the techniques explained in this answer also apply to this case?
    – Basj
    Aug 10, 2017 at 11:04
  • @Basj yes of course they apply, I listed the options that GA provides. There is not much to do out of the standard, at the end of the day Google Analytics need to understand your URLs. I thought that you may have some hope with custom variables but using them is an advance implementation. I will edit my answer to explain how you could.
    – Raul Reyes
    Aug 10, 2017 at 11:40
  • Thanks. I tried 1) and 2) but it doesn't really work for now because I didn't use the standard UTM paramters (?utm_source=..., etc.), shame on me! Because I used ?source=... nothing is displayed in source/medium. I'll do better for next links, I'll respect the standard!
    – Basj
    Aug 12, 2017 at 0:17
  • @Basj mate you should be able to see the list of websites that are bringing visitors to your website through the referral reports regardless. The only reason you use the utm_ standard is to tag "campaigns". Yes is a way to tag referral traffic but in an organised way. Check the view you are looking at the account level (admin) and/or the date range you are setting in the reports.
    – Raul Reyes
    Aug 12, 2017 at 4:31
0

In addition to the accepted answer, here is the idea: if you want to use Google Analytics, don't use ?source= or such home-customised parameters, but just use the Google standard ?utm_source=... It finally makes life easier when using Analytics because everything is detected correctly out of the box.

As some of external referral links to my website didn't use this standard, I finally used some Javascript code to detect ?source= in the URL and then trigger a pageview with the right source / medium / campaign with this : https://stackoverflow.com/questions/45645656/how-to-send-medium-and-source-with-gasend-pageview

Improve this answer

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge that you have read and understand our privacy policy and code of conduct.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.