Comments on: Roll up reporting in Google Analytics

By: Brian Clifton

Brian Clifton — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 09:52:08 +0000

Ryan: The use of _setDomainName and _setAllowLinker are for tracking visitors that cross over between domains i.e. support.mysite.com and blog.mysite.com. If that is your scenario then this method of roll-up reporting is not for you (aimed at semi autonomous offices with separate sites). E-nor posted a GATC method for doing this: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2009/09/advanced-structure-your-account-with.html

By: Ryan

Ryan — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 18:43:34 +0000

Hi Brian, really helpful post. I’m utilizing the code you’ve supplied for tracking a country and a global account with the modification that can be used to simplify reports. When tracking multiple top level domains, Google recommends adding the following code snippets. Should we add the following code beneath var Firsttracker and var secondtracker?

pageTracker._setDomainName(“none”);
pageTracker._setAllowLinker(true);

By: Brian Clifton

Brian Clifton — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 10:41:08 +0000

Parthi: I don’t think your question relates to this post on roll-up reporting. It sounds like you with to group your ‘actions’ into ‘categories’. Event tracking can do this for you. You will need to plan the hierarchy of your events and then use the category label of the _trackEvent call.

The current book is a little out of date now on Event Tracking as it was only just in beta when written. The new edition is much more clear on this. Stay tuned…

By: Brian Clifton

Brian Clifton — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 10:36:29 +0000

Jon: The method for roll-up reporting I describe is not suitable for your situation – it is aimed at organisations that have autonomous offices/websites.

For visitors that can traverse different websites, you need to use the methods described in Ch7 of the book, Advanced Implementation. Essentially you hand over cookies from one domain to another (using _link or _linkByPost functions) so that the session information is preserved. That way, the uniqueness is also preserved.

BTW, this post from me is also relevant for you: http://www.advanced-web-metrics.com/blog/2009/02/11/why-counting-uniques-is-meaningless. It doesn’t mean don’t use ‘uniques’ in your KPI mix, rather use them in context i.e. don’t give a lot of weight to them.

By: Jon

Jon — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:24:18 +0000

Thanks Brian, great post! I’ve implemented this across a few sites, and I’m a little unsure as to how to interpret the Absolute Unique Visitor data.

Will the roll up be able to de-dupe visitors across the different domains included within it?
e.g. If one visitor browses 4 of our sites in a day, will they be counted as 4 unique visitors, or 1 unique visitor in the roll up?

Is there an issue with cookies preventing this from happening?

Any info would be greatly appreciated!