This post is in response to some discussions about tracking referrals to a hostel website from an HTTPS website.
If a website that uses HTTPS in the URL links to a website that uses HTTP in the URL, the referral won't show up in your Google Analytics (or other logs/trackers).
There are some ways to fix this.
A web address that starts with HTTPS won't send referrers to an HTTP site, but it will send referrers to another HTTPS page. If you run your website over a secure connection (HTTPS), you should be able to see the referrers.
Changing your site to HTTPS involves some technical work, but it might be made easier with Cloudflare's new SSL feature:
https://www.cloudflare.com/ssl
Most analytics software, including Google Analytics and Clicky, can track the source of a visit if the URL include special tracking parameters.
This URL is an example of a URL that would track visits from Hostel Rocket to your hostel website (though I'm not sure if they allow these kinds of URLs):
http://example.com/?utm_source=HostelRocket&utm_medium=hostelpage&utm_ca...
You can change "example.com" to your domain name and it should work.
Here is a form that you can use to generate customer campaign URLs.
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867?hl=en#url_builder_form
Then, when you login to Google Analytics (or similar software), you'll be able to see the number of visits that came through that link. You can find the number of referrrals in Google Analytics by going to Acquisitions > Campaigns > All Campaigns.
If you do include these tracking parameters in URLs, you should also be sure that you use canonical URL meta tags:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonica...
Content management systems like WordPress and Drupal have optional plugins that automatically handle canonical URL tags for you.
If that doesn't make sense, post a comment below and I'll explain in more detail.
9 years
Thanks Josh!
An example of this could be tracking the amount of traffic that comes from a site like Hostel Rocket. I believe this was the discussion that initially prompted the information above, right?
It's always good to know where your website traffic is coming from. When Google Analytics fail, Josh steps up to the plate ;)
9 years
Yes... this could be for a site like HostelRocket, if they allow those kinds of links. The Google Analytics campaign URLs can be used for any kind of advertisement links.
They can even be used for gathering data about internal links. You can see these kinds of links on Facebook -- for example when I hover over the link to the HM group in my Facebook sidebar, I can see a "ref" parameter that Facebook uses to track the number of people who visit groups via their sidebar bookmarks:
facebook.com/groups/130063543764569/?ref=bookmarks
There are other ways to track internal links with Google Analytics and Clicky (by using simple JavaScript tags), but that's another topic. For example: you can track how many visitors click the "book now" link from a certain landing page. If someone wants the details, I could write a short tutorial.
Basically just use these instructions for Google Analytics:
https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs...
or these ones for Clicky:
http://clicky.com/help/custom/manual
9 years
I just looked at Cloudflare's free SSL feature and it doesn't work on all browsers, so I wouldn't recommend it. It's better to pay for SSL if going that route.
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