How to Obtain the Full Referring URL in Google Analytics
There is a bug feature in Google Analytics so that it doesn’t report dynamic referring URLs in full, meaning you usually get referers looking like /forums/viewtopic.php instead of the URL of the actual forum thread. Solution? Reuben Yau has come up with a Google Analytics hack to fix this problem. It uses a very simple feature (yes, not a bug) in Analytics, and the results are proper analytics.
Interestingly, Google already knows about this problem. One blog post hints at this:
This will take you to a new data table that shows you the rest of the referring URL — not including any dynamic query parameters (anything after a question mark, for instance).
So, why do we have to resort to such hacks? I’m glad we have a solution now, but it really should be fixed by Google.
If you have any questions or ideas, join the thread over at SEO Refugee.
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