Comments on: How Google Analytics Tracks Third-Party Domains

By: Justin Cutroni

Justin Cutroni — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 01:52:46 +0000

@ Jonathan: What you need to do is create a virtual pageview when someone clicks on the outbound link and then use that for a goal. Check out this post. It's a bit old, but should give you some direction. Thanks for the question!

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:48:25 +0000

Hi Justin,

I’m trying to set up a goal that will tell me if a visitor to my site clicks on a link to a third-party site (my on-line catalogue). That’s the extent of the feedback I require but I can’t seem to find a way to do it as I don’t have access to the coding of the third-party site. Any help would be appreciated. With thanks.

Regards, Jonathan

By: Justin Cutroni

Justin Cutroni — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 20:00:26 +0000

VC,

GA always uses first part cookies. The reason why the cookies remain first party cookies, even on the third party domain, is the GA JS is also on the third party domain. The JS always creates a first party cookie, relative to the domain it is on.

So, if I place the GA tracking code on 100 sites, it will create 100 first party cookies, one for each of the 100 sites.

Hope that helps.

Justin

By: VC

VC — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 14:13:04 +0000

“the GA tracking cookies on the third-party site will be first party cookies”. I do not understand why the cookie created by the Javascript from the third-party domain can be considered as a first-party cookie, even if it contains the same data. Please can you explain?

By: Justin Cutroni

Justin Cutroni — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 13:32:19 +0000

Hi Tim,

Thanks for the comment. You’re absolutely correct, you can use AdWords conversion tracking to facilitate cross domain tracking. But I think there are 2 advantages to GA:

1. Site data. AdWords only tracks conversions while GA will tell you about what people actually did on your site.

2. First party cookies. Third party cookies are really becoming a thing of the past. With most browsers configured to block third party cookies it’s getting harder and harder to track sites with a third party tracking system.

Thanks again for sharing your thoughts.

Justin

By: Tim

Tim — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:19:43 +0000

Hi Justin,

It is possible to track AdWords conversions on a 3rd party domain without making any adjustments to the conversion tracking code. Just place the AdWords conversion tracker on the 3rd party domain and when a conversion is made it wil track automatically (3rd party cookie in as opposed to first party cookie with Google Analytics)

By: Justin Cutroni

Justin Cutroni — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 19:50:27 +0000

Hi electric,

By default, PayPal will strip off the query string parameters, so you can not use cross domain tracking with PayPayl.

Thanks for the question,

Justin

By: electric

electric — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 05:16:51 +0000

Will these query strings attach themselves to the cookies on a Paypal site. Have you had success tracking visitors from 1st domain to Paypal domain and back to thank-you page on 1st domain?

By: Justin Cutroni

Justin Cutroni — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 05:09:54 +0000

Hi Casey,

Unfortunately no. The data has to be passed via the query string.

Sorry about that…

Justin

By: Casey

Casey — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 21:56:32 +0000

Is there anyway to pass the session data to the ecommerce site via POST instead of GET / Query String. My ecommerce solution is Volusion. They don’t allow non alphanumerics to be present in the query string variables. That screws things up.