Subdomain Tracking In Google Analytics as a Referral


My unbounce page is a subdomain of my main domain. I am using it in Google Adwords. The leads coming through into Google Analytics are being tracked as a referral and not as coming through Adwords. For example:

My unbounce page is loans.mysite.com
Source in GA is loans.mysite.com / referral but it should be google / cpc.

Can anyone please shed some light?

Thanks


15 replies

I’m having the same problem. Unbounce support, please help!

I also have this issue. Unbounce support please help.

Hey Steven and John - this isn’t something I know how to troubleshoot offhand. Have you posted your questions to Google’s forum by any chance?

https://productforums.google.com/foru…

They’ve got a community of Analytics experts to participate and help troubleshoot issues like this. If you do find the answer in that forum though, I’d love to hear the solution so we can help other customers down the road.

Hey Steven - and to clarify, is the issue that the referral source is messed up when folks go Ad --> Unbounce LP --> Website? or is it just Ad --> Unbounce LP where the source is misattributed?

I was able to solve this by removing the leading period in _setDomainName in the GA code.

That’s super helpful - thank you for letting us know Steven

I’m having the same issue, except we’re using Google Tag Manager to insert the GA code, so we can’t edit the GA code.

Add the page domain to to referral exclusion list in GA (go to admin > property - tracking info > referral exclusions > add the domain or subdomain that you don’t want to behave as a referral e.g. examplewebsite.com

Userlevel 7
Badge +4

Hey Jason,

I would use the Google Analytics Unbounce Integration - I’ve never had an issue with data firing/tracking incorrectly.

Also, make sure that in AdWords auto-tagging is enabled.

Let me know if that does the trick!  

Hi, I tried this but after completing the script thing in Unbounce, it is not showing up the sessions that are online in Analytics. After placing the unbounce script thing is there anything else I need to do?

Userlevel 7
Badge +4

Hey there!

You’re not seeing stats in analytics for your landing pages? Have you followed these steps?

Hi Stefano,

Yes I did those steps, but I only see a slash instead of the subdomains, which makes it difficult to follow up individual landing pages.

Userlevel 7
Badge +4

Hi there! To view the subdomain, simply add a secondary dimension “Hostname”.

This will add an additional column displaying the hostname (subdomain) linked to the landing page URL.

Give it a shot and let me know if that works for you!

That worked buddy, thanks a lot !!
What does the " /a " means at the end of each landing page that analytics shows?

Userlevel 7
Badge +4

Hi there! Glad it works.

The /a is variant “A”. If you are running multiple a/b tests, you’ll see /a for variant a, /b for variant b and so on!

Reply