I haven't really found that to be the case. I finally got GA working with that setDomainName variable so that it reports both domain and subdomain to the same profile, but I still get the subdomain as the top referrer. Not sure what I'm doing wrong, but I've found the GA code to be a little temperamental.

@Reid: Not tracking for subdomains is not the only reason someone might see self-referral in their Google Analytics reports. Other reasons include not tagging all pages of the site with the Google Analytics Tracking Code, not properly tracking for multiple domains in addition to subdomains, content, applications, or forms that require a visitor to stay on a single page for an extended period of time, etc.

In addition to this, even if you fix one of these issues, any visitors who had their source/medium overwritten with a self-referral will again show up as a self-referral when they return to your site. It's important to fix these issues in order to maintain the cookie integrity of your future visitors, but there is no hope of getting the previous source/medium for those visitors who have had theirs overwritten.

Hi,

We use unique URL's to try and bring off-line advertising online (where we can more easily track it!). So we have started putting unique URL's in most of our print ads. All of the unique URL's point to our main site and now we are noticing that they are not being captured by Analytics. Do you have a strategy to fix this? Is sub-domains the answer (if "yes", we're screwed b/c our unique names have already been printed!)

Any comments/posts on the topic would be appreciated.

@Benjamin: You don't need subdomains for what you're doing. What you will need to do is tag the 301 redirects to your main site with the appropriate utm parameters. You can get help with tagging your links by going to our URL builder found here.

I have the following situation: main domain is www.firstdomain.com whitin the site we have pointed a'second domainname www.seconddomain.com to: www.firstdomain.com/academy

Now I want messeaure this second domainname separate from firstdomain.com

@Emiel: This would involve setting up an additional profile with a filter that only includes visits to the /academy subdirectory. There is a built in filter that does this, so it's pretty easy to set up. You do not have to modify your tracking code in any way to track a site that just has subdirectories. Since your second domain is pointing to your first domain, you don't have to worry about any multiple domain issues either.

Something I have always wondered is what if you have sub-domains AND multiple domains on your site? For example, main site is www.site.com and it also has a subdomain, example.site.com. When customers make a purchase they go to a secure shopping cart on another domain, www.securesite.com.

I know for tracking sub-domains you want to add pageTracker._setDomainName("domain.com")
in your code but for multiple domains you are supposed to use pageTracker._setDomainName("none").
So which one do you use if you have both?

Thanks, have always wondered!

@Jesse: The short answer is that it's complicated. The not-quite-as-short answer is that you need to use pageTracker._setDomainName("domain.com"), but you need it to match the root domain of the page you're on. You still have to call pageTracker._setAllowLinker(true); and use appropriate linking functions between domains (though not between subdomains with the same root), and you also have to call pageTracker._setAllowHash(false);.

This will all be explained more fully in a future article. For now, let me point you to an excellent article that explains this for the urchin.js version of Google Analytics.

"The not-quite-as-short answer is that you need to use pageTracker._setDomainName("domain.com"), but you need it to match the root domain of the page you're on."

So will the other domain, such as a secure shopping cart on another domain like www.securesite.com, be be counted along with the main site and subdomains this way? Liek would I see in the top content report pages from the main site and the scure site all togther instead of seeing th secure site as a referral if I follow all of these above instructions?

@Jesse: If you are able to put the Google Analytics Tracking Code on your shopping cart pages and everything else is set up correctly, then yes, you would see everything together in your top content report, pages from both the main site and the secure site. It would prevent future referrals from the shopping cart as well.

If you can't put tracking code on your shopping cart, however, you can still prevent referrals from your shopping cart by tagging your return links with utm_nooverride=1.