Business Benefits of

Cross Domain Tracking

Using Google Analytics
• As an effective web
analytics tool, Google
Analytics is mostly used
to tracking data
originating from a single
business domain.
• Business enterprises also
want to delve deeper
into understanding their
customer behavior and
their digital footprint
across multiple domains.
As a result of this
business requirement,
cross-domain tracking
has emerged as a
reliable tool for tracking
online users across
multiple domains using
Google Analytics.
An example of a
customer interacting
across multiple
domains is that of an
online shopper using an
eCommerce store (for
shopping) and a third-
party site (for making
the payment).
What is Cross-Domain Analysis?

Also referred to as site linking, cross-domain tracking (or analysis) using

Google Analytics is defined as the mechanism of linking two (or more
websites) and viewing them holistically through Google Analytics
reports.
Does every business
website require cross-
domain tracking as part
of its data analytics
strategy? The answer is
a “no.” A majority of
business and blogging
website analytics can
suffice by tracking just
one website domain at
a time.
Cross-domain analysis is
primarily used for functions like
E-commerce tracking or
conversion tracking that
happens across multiple
domains. For example (as
mentioned before), you have an
eCommerce shop hosted on
<myshoppingstore.com> and a
third-party shopping cart that is
hosted on
<shoppingcart.com/myshoppin
gstore>, then it becomes
imperative to execute enhanced
eCommerce tracking for cross-
domain analysis.
How to Set Up Cross- For convenience, you can
easily set up cross-domain
tracking using GTM (short

Domain Tracking for “Google Tag Manager”).

As the name suggests, GTM
is a tag management tool
from Google where you can
easily configure and deploy
analytics-related tags for a
website or a smartphone
app
• For each website that it tracks, Google
Analytics retrieves a unique Client ID
that is stored in the form of website
cookies. No website can retrieve or
access the Client ID or cookies stored
on another website.
• However, in the case of cross-domain
tracking, Google Analytics must be
able to transfer the Client IDs across
multiple domains that it is tracking.
This is achieved through the Google
Analytics linking feature by which the
Client ID (of a source domain) is placed
in the URL link that can be accessed by
the destination domain.
• If you are using gtag.js, cross-domain
tracking can be enabled by adding the
link parameter (with the Client ID and
other metadata information) to the
URL pointing to the destination
domain.
Here is how you can set up or check for cross-domain tracking in Google Analytics. For
easier understanding, let’s take an example where you are implementing cross-domain
tracking for two websites (“site1.com” and “site2.com”).
• Login to your Google Analytics account and configure a single property. Use the
same Client ID and tracking code for both domains (“site1” and “site2”).
• Edit your tracking code (for “site1” domain) with the following changes (highlighted
in bold).
ga(‘create’, ‘UA-XXXXXXX-X’, ‘auto’, {‘allowLinker’: true});
ga(‘require’, ‘linker’);
ga(‘linker:autoLink’, [‘site2.com’] );
• Similarly, edit the tracking code (for “site2” domain) with the same changes (shown
above). The only difference is adding “site1.com” in place of “site2.com.”
After completing these steps,
you need to next set up the
referral exclusions using the
Google Tag Manager tool:
• Create a new variable in the
GTM tool.
• Select the new variable and
add all the domains that you
wish to link up.
• Add the new variable to the
Google Analytics Pageview
tag.
• Navigate to the
“Cross Domain
Tracking” menu
options under “More
Settings.”
• Add your new
variable in the “Auto
Links Domain” field.
• Additionally, set the “allowLinker” box to “true.”
• Next, you need to configure the Referral Exclusion list in
order to avoid any self-referrals.
• Navigate to the “Referral Exclusion List” section under
“Tracking Info.”
• Add the applicable domains (in our case, “site1.com” and
“site2.com”) to the exclusion list.
• Finally, save the settings and test the setup for efficient
cross-domain tracking.
Benefits of a Cross-
Domain Analysis
Dashboard

Based on the data collected from cross-domain

tracking, a cross-domain analysis dashboard is a
virtualization tool that can help you understand
your customer behavior across multiple domains
and for other business goal tracking.
Here are some of the benefits of
designing a cross-domain analysis
dashboard for your business:
Track the Conversion Path
Google Analytics data across multiple
domains enables any business to track
users across the entire conversion
path. Conversion tracking provides
business insights into focus areas like:
• How the customers found the
business website in the first place.
• Whether the incoming traffic
originated from a Google organic
search result page (or through a
paid search) or from other referral
websites or social media pages.
Set up a Google Analytics sales
funnel across websites
• Using cross-domain tracking,
you can execute a sales funnel
creation that traverses across
multiple websites. For instance,
a sales funnel for an eCommerce
store can include the product
detail pages, shopping cart
page, product shipping page,
and payment page (even when
they are hosted on different
web domains).
Track site events

In addition to domain
tracking, Google
Analytics can also be
used for event tracking
across website domains.
This enables any business
to determine what their
users are doing before
and after landing on
their websites.
Key Parameters for Cross-Domain Analysis

TRACKING ID REFERRAL EXCLUSION URL LINKER ALLOWLINKER

DOMAINS
 Conclusion

Through this article, we have discussed how cross-domain tracking using

Google Analytics can enable the business to understand customer behavior
across multiple domains. As a data analytics and business intelligence
company, Countants have powered the benefits of Google Analytics and Cloud
analytics for its global customers.
For More Such Information Visit
www.countants.com