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REDIRECTS AND ALIASES SiteCatalyst and Redirects

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March 2005 by Omniture or its subsidiaries.

Information contained in this document is proprietary to Omniture and may be used or disclosed only with written permission from Omniture. This document, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced without the prior written permission of Omniture. This document refers to numerous products by their trade names. In most, if not all, cases these designations are Trademarks or Registered Trademarks of their respective companies. This document and the related software described in this manual are supplied under license or nondisclosure agreement and may be used or copied only in accordance with the terms of the agreement. The information in this document is subject to change without notice and does not represent a commitment on the part of Omniture. The names of companies and individuals used in examples in the manuals, and in any sample databases provided, are fictitious and are intended to illustrate the use of the software. Any resemblance to actual organizations or individuals, whether past or present, is purely coincidental. This edition applies to version 11 of the licensed program(s).

CONTENTS

Overview .............................................................................................................. 1 1.1 SiteCatalyst and Redirects ................................................................................. 1 1.1.1 Example: Browsing Without Redirects ................................................................ 1 1.1.2 Example: Browsing With Redirects .................................................................... 1 1.2 Implementing Redirects for SiteCatalyst ................................................................ 2 1.2.1 Configure â&#x20AC;&#x153;Referrer Overrideâ&#x20AC;? JavaScript Code .................................................... 2 1.2.2 Modify the Redirect Mechanism ........................................................................ 2 1.2.3 Capture the Original Referrer .......................................................................... 3 1.2.4 Verify Referrer with the SiteCatalyst Debugger..................................................... 3 1.3 Notes ........................................................................................................... 4

PREFACE

PREFACE Redirects occur when a web page or a web server directs a browser to some other URL without any user

interaction. Server-side redirects can affect SiteCatalyst reports, and especially to "Referrer" and Search Engine reporting. This white paper discusses how to ensure that SiteCatalyst properly records data despite the existence of redirects on a particular site.

Product Overview SiteCatalyst™ delivers a powerful, intuitive, and industry-leading user interface, which enables users to quickly access actionable information. SiteCatalyst™ is the only solution that provides access to Traffic, Path, Campaign, Commerce, Segmentation, and Data Warehousing all in one interface. The easy-to-use approach allows Omniture customers of all skill levels to access actionable, real-time reports and dashboards. SiteCatalyst is an enterprisegrade solution designed for rapid user adoption across the organization. SiteCatalyst™ comes with a comprehensive set of out-of-the-box reports that can be further tailored to suit special needs. Unique to SiteCatalyst™ is the ability to move between reports in an interactive fashion, allowing the user to keep the analysis momentum. SiteCatalyst is the only web analytics product that provides a comprehensive view with real-time reporting as well as a full data warehouse. SiteCatalyst provides superior scalability and reliability and is designed to handle massive traffic spikes. SiteCatalyst can report web site analysis data for clients from different business models and/or industries, whether the client has a smaller online client base or a billion page views per month.

Document Conventions To ensure that this document is as easy to read and understand as possible, the following conventions may be used throughout.

NOTE: A Note distinguishes helpful information of which you may not be aware. TIP: A Tip adds insightful information that may help you use the system better. CAUTION: A Caution makes you aware of the results of an action. The results may not necessarily be damaging, but they definitely are important. WARNING!: A Warning highlights an action that may result in damage to your system or an unforeseen loss of data.

Additional References/Resources In addition to this document, Omniture offers white papers for several other topics. The white papers are available in PDF format. In order to view them, you must first have Adobe Reader installed on your system. Reader is a free download from Adobe at http://www.adobe.com. For more information on the available white papers, contact your Omniture Account Manager.

About Omniture Omniture, Inc., headquartered in Orem, Utah, is the pioneer of next-generation online analytics technology that delivers the essential intelligence needed by Web commerce leaders and innovators to drive the business decisions that increase ROI. Omniture is the largest, ASP based, online analytics provider by revenue, and Omniture’s SiteCatalyst is the most mature and comprehensive technology on the market, offering industry leading scalability and flexibility combined with an intuitive user interface. Omniture is the only company in its market to offer a comprehensive view of activity on a company's Web site that includes historical (data warehouse) and real-time

SiteCatalyst and Redirects

PREFACE

analysis and reporting. In addition, Omniture offers knowledgeable professional service teams, experienced in helping customers determine the questions they must ask to arrive at the answers they require. Proof of its worldclass technology and outstanding team, Omniture has the highest level of retained and satisfied customers in the market, including eBay, AOL, Wal-Mart, Gannett, Microsoft, Oracle, Overstock.com, GM and Hewlett-Packard. www.omniture.com.

SiteCatalyst and Redirects

CHAPTER 1

1 Overview Redirects point the browser to a new location without user interaction. They are executed at either the web browser (client-side redirect) or at the web server (server-side redirect). Because redirects do not require any user interaction, redirects are often executed without the user ever noticing. The only thing that indicates a redirect has occurred is the browser's address bar. The address bar displays a URL that is different from the link the browser initially requested. Although there are only two types of redirects, they can be implemented in numerous ways. For example, client-side redirects can occur because the web page to which a user has pointed his or her browser contains scripting or special HTML code that redirects the browser to another URL. Server-side redirects can occur because the page contains server-side scripting or because the web server has been configured to point the user to another URL.

1.1 SiteCatalyst and Redirects SiteCatalyst gathers some of its data from the browser, and relies upon certain browser properties. Two of those properties, the "Referring URL" (or "referrer") and the "Current URL" are affected by a server-side redirect. Since the browser is aware that one URL has been requested, but a different URL has been returned, it clears the Referring URL. Since SiteCatalyst is not aware that a redirect has occurred, the Referring URL is reported as "Typed or Bookmarked" because the referring URL is blank.

1.1.1 Example: Browsing Without Redirects Consider the following hypothetical scenario in which the user does not encounter a redirect: 1.

User points her browser to www.google.com, and types, “discount airline tickets” into the search field, and then clicks the Search button.

The browser displays the search results including a link to your site, http://www.flywithus.com/. After displaying the search results, the browser's address bar displays the search terms that the user entered in the search field (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=discount+airline+tickets ). Notice that the search terms are included in the URL query string parameters that follow "http://www.google.com/search?".

The user clicks on the link to your hypothetical site http://www.flywithus.com/. When the user clicks on this link and lands on the flywithus.com web site, SiteCatalyst uses JavaScript to collect the referring URL (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=discount+airline+tickets) as well as the current URL (http://www.flywithus.com/).

SiteCatalyst reports the information collected during this interaction in various reports, such as Referring Domains, Search Engines, and Search Keywords.

1.1.2 Example: Browsing With Redirects Redirects cause the browser to return an incorrect referring URL (a blank referring URL, the same referring URL that indicates the user has used either a bookmark/favorite, or has typed in the web site address). Consider the following scenario: 1.

User points her browser to www.google.com, and types, “discount airline tickets” into the search field, and then clicks the Search button.

The browser window’s address bar displays the search terms that the user typed into the search field (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=discount+airline+tickets). Notice that the search terms are included in the URL query string parameters that follow "http://www.google.com/search?". The browser also displays a page that contains the search results including a link to one of your domain names: http://www.flytohawaiiforfree.com/. This vanity domain is configured to redirect the user to http://www.flywithus.com/.

The user clicks on the link http://www.flytohawaiiforfree.com/ and is redirected to the server to your main site, http://www.flywithus.com. When the redirection occurs, the data that is important to SiteCatalyst data collection is

SiteCatalyst and Redirects

OVERVIEW lost because the browser clears the referring URL. Thus, the original search information used in the SiteCatalyst reports (i.e., Referring Domains, Search Engines, Search Keywords) is lost. Implementing Redirects for SiteCatalyst in this document discusses how to leverage SiteCatalyst variables to capture the data lost in the re-direct. Specifically, the section discusses how to fix the "discount airline tickets" situation described above.

1.2 Implementing Redirects for SiteCatalyst In order to capture SiteCatalyst data from redirects, four minor alterations need to be made to the code that creates the redirect and the SiteCatalyst .JS file. The following steps will persist the information that the original referrer (e.g. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=discount+airline+tickets in the scenario above) passes to your site.

1.2.1 Configure â&#x20AC;&#x153;Referrer Overrideâ&#x20AC;? JavaScript Code Your Omniture Implementation Engineer can provide you with a JavaScript file that contains code that will override the native functionality SiteCatalyst uses to capture the referrer from the HTTP header. The code snippet below shows two JavaScript variables, s_referrer and s_pageURL. This code is placed on the ultimate landing page of the redirect. <script language="JavaScript"><!-/* You may give each page an identifying name, server, and channel on the next lines. */ var s_pageName="" var s_server="" var s_campaign="" var s_referrer="" var s_pageURL=""

1.2.2 Modify the Redirect Mechanism Because the browser strips referring URL, you must configure the mechanism that handles the redirect (e.g. the web server, server-side code, client-side code) to pass along the original referrer information. If you would also like to record the alias link URL, this must also be passed along to the ultimate landing page. Use the s_pageURL variable to capture the alias link URL. Since there are many ways to implement a redirect, you may need to check with your web operations group to identify the specific mechanisms that execute redirects on your web site. The example below shows how one might use a client-side mechanism to pass along the original referrer and alias link information to the ultimate landing page: <body onload="window.location = 'http://www.flywithus.com?origref=' + document.referrer + '&alias=' + document.URL;">

SiteCatalyst and Redirects

OVERVIEW Considering the redirect scenario redirect the browser to the

listed

earlier,

this

redirect

mechanism

would

following URL: http://www.flywithus.com?origref=http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF8&q=discount+airline+tickets&alias=http://www.flytohawaiiforfree.com

1.2.3 Capture the Original Referrer Normally, SiteCatalyst will obtain the referring URL from the browser's document.referrer property, and the current URL from the document.location property. By passing values to s_referrer and s_pageURL variables, you can override the default processing. By passing a value to the s_referrer variable, you are telling SiteCatalyst to ignore the referrer information in the document.referrer property. Therefore, the final version of the landing page would need to contain the following code to correct the issues introduced in the "discount airline tickets" scenario. Note that we are assuming a server-side script has populated these values in the HTML that is output to the page. <script language="JavaScript"><!-/* You may give each page an identifying name, server, and channel on the next lines. */ var s_pageName="" var s_server="" var s_campaign="" var s_referrer="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF8&q=discount+airline+tickets" // Setting the s_pageURL variable is optional. var s_pageURL="http://www.flytohawaiiforfree.com"

1.2.4 Verify Referrer with the SiteCatalyst Debugger Run a test to verify that the referrer, originating URL (s_server) and campaign variables are being captured. These variables will be represented as the following parameters in the SiteCatalyst Debugger.

Original Referrer

URL or Query String Value

Value as Shown in the SiteCatalyst Debugger

http://www.google.com/search%3F

r=http:/ref=www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF

hl%3Den

-8&q=discount+airline+tickets

%26ie%3DUTF826q%3

SiteCatalyst and Redirects

OVERVIEW Ddiscount%2Bairline%2Btickets Page URL

http://www.flytohawaiiforfree.com

g=http://www.flytohawaiiforfree.com This value will appear in the SiteCatalyst debugger if the

s_pageURL variable is used Ultimate Landing Page URL

http://www.flywithus.com

This value will NOT appear in the SiteCatalyst debugger if the s_pageURL variable is used

The text that the debugger displays should correspond to the following example: Image

http://flywithuscom.112.2o7.net/b/ss/flywithuscom/1/G.7-Pd-R/s61944015791667?[AQB] ndh=1 t=11/5/2004 12:4:57 5 360 pageName=Welcome to FlyWithUs.com r= http:/ref=www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=discount+airline+tickets cc=USD g= www.flytohawaiiforfree.com s=1280x1024 c=32 j=1.3 v=Y k=Y bw=1029 bh=716 ct=lan hp=N [AQE] After verifying that the SiteCatalyst debugger displays these variables, it is always helpful to confirm that the search terms and the original referring domain (prior to the redirect) are registering traffic in the SiteCatalyst interface.

1.3 Notes You might be tempted to use SiteCatalyst's getCGI plug-in to populate the s_referrer variable and the s_pageURL variables with the original referrer and the alias link. While the getCGI plug-in is an easy way to populate SiteCatalyst variables with query string values, it must be implemented in connection with a temporary variable so that legitimate

SiteCatalyst and Redirects

OVERVIEW referrers are not overwritten when the query string is empty. The best way to use getCGI is in connection with the getValue plug in as outlined with the following pseudo-code, which should be added to the "s_doPlugins()" function within the "s_code_remote.js" or "s_code.js" file as shown below. /* Add calls to plugins here */ s_vp_getCGI('tempVar','origref') if(s_vp_getValue('tempVar')) s_vp_getCGI('s_referrer',"origref');

SiteCatalyst and Redirects

INDEX

Index

Current URL .......................................... 1 Implementing Redirects ............................ 2 Original Referrer..................................... 3 Preface .................................................i

Redirect Mechanism................................. 2 Referrer Override ................................... 2 Referring URL ........................................ 1

SiteCatalyst and Redirects

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