Ok yes I am being a baby because I’m not used to the weather, but its really hot for once in Seattle, so I feel uber lethargic. I think I’m typing at about 40 wpm, that’s how lethargic I am. Pyramid beer probably did not help. Below is a picture of the weird clouds hanging out now that we have crazy hot weather, courtesy of Cydne.
Today at work finally gained some momentum on a project, got to do some event tracking, and figured out how to get rid of those pesky parameters appended to the end of URLs in Google Analytics like: “sarahdeatley.com/index.php?id=13c4eb92kp“. Sometimes they are useful for tracking different content within a site or for campaigns, but other times its the same content, and yet you’re seeing 20 different URLs that all are the same page.
I thought that you’d need to create complicated filters to accomplish this, but turns out its a really simple fix in the profile settings. Its easy:
- Click “Edit” when viewing profile settings.
- Click “Edit” in the first box that says “Main Website Profile Information”
- Enter the offending URL Query Parameter in the form. So in the example above you would enter in “id.”
Yay for simple solutions, but if you have more complex needs, see this post by Justin Cutroni. Or if you need web analytics inspiration in general, read Avinash Kaushik’s latest post.
In other news I discussed my page tagging ideas with someone at work, and found out that the excessively complex page tagging is mainly in Omniture, and not so much WebTrends. Basically we decided that controlling too much of the tagging limits creativity, but lack of documentation/control can lead to a chaotic mess. We also talked about the advantages and disadvantages of automation in extracting data from reporting tools. We both find the idea scary, but I know there are others who think its key to having more time to focus on analysis. I’m too hot to figure out an answer. Someone else should do it for me please.
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sarahd23 on Twitter
Great read – I know how you feel about those pesky ID’s and CID’s they can sometime be a lot, but definitely a must when running multiple campaigns (onsite or off)
You mentioned page tagging in Webtrends, have you seen Tag Builder yet? The site is tagbuilder.webtrends.com and there’s a great blog post too http://blog.webtrends.com/2009/03/31/a-new-user-experience-part-1-of-5-introduction-to-tag-builder-30/
Love to know what you think of it.
Hi Michele,
I have not tried Tag Builder, though I have heard of it. I will have to try it out for sure and write about my experience. I’m excited to see the UX movement within WebTrends and how much its reaching out to “analytics ninjas”!
Sarah