IFrame Subdomain tracking with Google Analytics

Question

I have a website that I created for the company I work at. This site is on a subdomain and is brought in as an iframe within another company's retail site, as we offer services under them. Is there a good way to track this with google analytics? I've never tracked a subdomain before, let alone in an iframe.

I've created a test analytics account, and added the top level domain, but I only put the tracking code on the pages for the subdomain that I created the site on. Will this even give me any information? and if that part of it works, is the information from an iframe setup accurate? I know from a design standpoint an iframe is kind of off in it's own world within a world, but does anyone have any experience on how google sees a site like that?

I've searched the forums and anywhere else i could think of, and they have bits of info on subdomains, practically nothing on iframes, and nothing combining the two. I have no access to adding any tracking code to the partner company's retail site either.

Answer 1

If your iframe hosted content is not on the same domain as the parent page (which I'm going to assume is not, based on the context of your question), then google will report the page name as the URL of the iframe, not the parent page.

GA code has a way to override the default page name, however, you cannot retrieve the parent URL in this case, because this is considered cross-site scripting (XSS).

The only way to get info about the parent page in this case is for whoever has control over the parent page that has the iframe tag, to pass the parent URL to the iframe by adding a query string parameter to the iframe src="..." attribute (also, same thing for any other info you want to pass to the iframe page). Then you can write some javascript to retrieve those values from the URL and pop whatever you want, including overriding the default reported page name (which you would do by setting the optional 2nd param to your _trackPageview call).

If the iframe content IS on the same domain (even if it is a subdomain of the parent page), then you can access the parent page properties using parent.window.whatever instead window.whatever.

Answer 2

Well, from what I understand, you have a page that will be inserted inside an iframe to a second page, but we need to know if the page that will host the iframe is the same domain as the calling page:

• If the page called by the iframe in the same domain of the calling page:

In this case, you can insert the block of JavaScript Google Analytics, as both the iframe on the main page, and we have the measurement data from the main site, the iframe.

• If the page that calls the iframe belongs to a different domain:

Some of the features that are measured are in frames within the site. These iframes indicate the domain, for example, site.com.br. Whenever a page in one domain has a frame to a different domain prevents the browser cookies that are stored inside the Iframe, which in the case would prevent the measurement.

Cookies are nothing more than small text files that are stored by your browser on the machine. Most of our cookies are session cookies that are automatically deleted from your hard disk in the closing of the window. Persistent cookies also are used by websites to facilitate identification of your computer in the next visit you make to the site. Inactivation of the cookies can be made in your browser however, this will preclude all the functions available on the site.

To allow the recording of cookies should add P3P headers in HTTP server that serves pages. This header causes no change in display mode or operation of the pages. Just instruct your browser to allow to record cookies of third, however, it has a bigger role in Internet Explorer. If you do not set, you can receive data from other browsers (Google Chrome, Firefox, Opera, etc. ..), but Internet Explorer still has a widespread use of the mass of the population.

Imagine that we have four distinct domains:

www.site1.com
www.site2.com
www.site3.com
www.site4.com

These four pages will receive the iframe tag:

• <iframe Src="http://www.meusite.com.br/anuncio.php">

The anuncio.php page need to have a call header p3p for accept the third party cookies.

To add the header p3p use the code below (should be added to all pages that belong to the same domain)

ASP.Net

HttpContext.Current.Response.AddHeader ("p3p", "CP = \" "PSA CONE NOI ONL OUR BUS \" "")

PHP

header ('P3P: CP = "NOI PSA CONE ONL OUR BUS"');

JSP

response.setHeader ("P3P", "CP =" NOI PSA CONE ONL OUR BUS '")

ColdFusion

<cfheader name="P3P" value="CP='PSA CONo OUR ONL NOI BUS'" />

I hope to have helped:)