How do I deal with internal redirects in Google Analytics?

April 14, 2008 5:13 PM

How do I deal with internal redirects in Google Analytics?

Our site uses Browserhawk to serve up different content for different audiences. This means whenever a visitor comes to our
site, on the first page they land on, however they get there, they're redirected from page.asp to page.asp?bhcp=1 at the top of the page, and well before the Google Analytics code is reached.

This currently means that Google Analytics does not have a referrer for all new visitors, instead treating them as having come direct.

Now, from Browserhawk I can get that initial referrer on page.asp?bhcp=1, but how do I pass that to Google? Is there a way of overwriting the value that Google uses? Or can I set it up as a custom report and just ignore the default referral report?

posted by Hartster to computers & internet (2 comments total)

(Just to say, I am aware of Google's answer, but for us that would entail running the Google Analytics code at the top of every page, so users would have to cope with that before the Browserhawk redirect, which gives an perceptible browser page refresh effect, and affects site load for all subsequent pages. Plus I'm not 100% sure that would capture all referrers before the redirect kicks in.)
posted by Hartster at 5:17 PM on April 14, 2008

If you have access to the webserver box, you can set up AWStats. It parses the raw logs for all major webservers very accurately with pretty much all the features of Google Analytics, and will pick up a referral, pre-redirect.
posted by Mach5 at 6:14 PM on April 14, 2008