CODEWITHSUNDEEP
google-analytics
mmundiff
mmundiff

Reputation: 3951

Google Analytics: Profile Workaround

I currently have more than 50 microsites on my main websites. That is I have one main top level domain and I have more than 50 microsites (and growing) in subfolders on that domain.

Previously I used separate GA web properties for the separate microsites (different GA tracking ID's), which worked fine and I was able to track each sites' activity well. However, I talked to a GA staffer over email and he told me I should switch to using a singular GA web property and use multiple profiles to segment the data by subfolder/microsite. That seemed logical for a lot of reasons, tracking users over the entirety of the website in one GA session being the main one.

Anyway, I have one subfolder which houses an array of microsites, numbering almost 40 right now. I don't necessarily need to have a profile for each one of these sites but there are a couple of important ones that I need to report on individually and on a regular basis I'd like to see how traffic to the other individual sites are doing.

So my question: Is there a way in a single profile to segment data to 40+ (and growing) microsites and see month to month stats on each site? Is there a way I can load a profile dashboard with the stats (Visits/pageviews) from each microsite? Is segmenting the data even what I should be looking at? How would you, a more advanced GA user, tackle this problem?

Many thanks for your input!

Upvotes: 2

Views: 404

Answers (1)

Eike Pierstorff
Eike Pierstorff

Reputation: 32760

jimdo (http://www.jimdo.com) offers a Google Analytics based statistics tool for their DIY website creator. They put hundreds of the (usually low traffic) sites in one profile, set a custom var with a unique ID per site and query the results via the Google API, segmented by site id (at least that is what one of their founders told during a web analytics conference a few months ago). Given that the solution works for a couple of million of client sites (their claim is to host 7 million websites for their clients) segmentation based on a unique site id seems a pretty solid idea.

Updated: As custom vars are deprecated with Universal Analytics you'd now use a custom dimension instead if a custom var. Apart from that the approach should still work.

Upvotes: 3

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