Print Advertisement Visit Tracking through Analytics

[Motava]

We put 2 different classified advertisements in printed publications and would like to track the visits to our website from each of the ads.

For the ads, we used custom pages:

www.domain.com/ad1
www.domain.com/ad2

We used a 301 redirect from these URLs to the homepage but it didn't record the visits to the custom URLs in google analytics and clicky (other analytics software).

How do we set this up?

[akaigotchi]

Hi this one's tricky Your result most probably didn't show up in Google Analytics (GA) because the 301 is performed by your server BEFORE the GA tracking code is displayed. What I'd do for starters (very basic concept):

1. Create a HTML page on your "redirection URL" www.domain.com/ad1 that has the tracking code properly embedded (check with GA)

2. Have the page say something like "Taking you to your desired page" and have a meta refresh on that page. As you don't want that page to appear in SERPs I'd set that page to noindex aswell. This way using meta refresh doesn't matter

3. Make sure you have a link to the proper page on your redirection page, just in case the meta refresh isn't performed

4. Tada, that's it your page should show up in GA

If I come up with another solution this afternoon I'll add a post...

[Bevelwise]

Thorsten is correct about the GA analysis.  I thought I would add in a couple thoughts just in regards to these offline marketing landing pages that will hopefully help.  I would recommend in the future not choosing a url of /ad1 or /ad2.  I would try to come up with something that is easy to remember for users and has relevance to either the publication or what you are promotion.  For example /deal or /offer.  Another way to go would be to make something relevant to the publication like /grpress (Grand Rapids Press is a local newspaper where we're at)

The other comment would be to design this page as relevant to the ad, offer or just make it a true landing page and not do the redirection technique.  Make this page reference the ad and include a call to action related to what you may have placed in the printed publication.

[JacobFunnell]

I agree, unless you give people an obvious reason to type the ad-specific address, I imagine quite a few people will just type the domain and strip off the /ad (or whatever.)

[Motava]

thanks guys. all very helpful feedback