AMA Webinar Question #8 – How to track conversions across multiple domains in Google Analytics?

Q: Our company operates two servers – one at a local level, and one at a global level. The local server hosts regional campaigns – the global server hosts the main website. Can we measure localised campaigns when transactions occur on another server?

A: So, you run campaigns that direct users to a localised site. Users then navigate from the localised site to the global site/server to make purchases.

In GA, you can setup a profile that tracks both of these sites in one profile.
Google uses first party cookies and will normally set the cookie on the full domain that you are accessing. If the sites are all sub-domains of the same domain, you can set the cookie to be set on the root domain using the _setDomainName() function.

For information on how to do this, you can refer to the Google help at:
http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55524&topic=11009

If the sites are completely separate domains, both the Google code will need to be updated and all links and forms that go across domains need to have some Google code added to them to pass the cookies on to the new domain.

In the tracking code, you'll need to add:

And on each link and form that cross-over domains you'll need to add the code to pass the cookie information. For links you'll use pageTracker._link() and for forms you'll use pageTracker._linkByPost()

For links, you'll add an onclick event:

click me ]]>

OR

click me ]]>

For forms you'll add an onsubmit event:

… form data… ]]>

For more information on how to do this you can refer to the Google help at:
http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55503&topic=11009

The above examples are all done with the new GA.JS code. If you need help doing this with URCHIN.JS, you can follow the above links to the help files and you'll be able to click through to similar help topics related to the URCHIN.JS implementation.