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Get data based on an specific URL

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Hi! How can I get the data based on an specific URL?

1 Accepted Solution

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Correct answer by
Community Advisor and Adobe Champion

Hi, While URL is collected by Adobe, it's only available through the Data Warehouse and Raw Data Exports.

 

If you want to be able to access a URL from the Workspaces, you will need to set up a custom eVar (Hit Level) to capture the URL (you can do this in Launch by passing the URL directly to the eVar or use the more efficient "dynamic variable" which will duplicate the URL value into the eVar using D=g - this is case sensitive; or using Processing Rules to set the eVar based on the Page URL)

 

The reason I suggest an eVar over a prop is due to the character limit, props have a max character limit of 100, whereas eVars are 255; but I cannot stress enough making sure the eVar is Hit expiry - since you don't want the URL to accidentally persist to other pages. You can set this on both Page Views AND Actions (I do), then make sure you are pulling data with the correct metrics - Page Views for just your pages, Custom Link Instance / Custom Event on your Actions for actions, and Occurrences for everything combined.

 

You may also want to consider tracking full URLs (including parameters), base URLs (not including parameters), and depending on your setup canonical URLs (no params, but for a group of sites that share content and the "primary owner" of certain pages may have the  canonical link point to the owner rather than to the site the page was viewed on.

 

Now... let's get into information you might not realize, but I always stress this when teaching anyone analytics in my company.. if you have a lot of URLs, or maybe you have content where changing the title of page changes the URL, pulling content by the URL is not the best choice to use...

 

For one thing, in Workspace, Adobe has a 500,000 unique value limit per month for each dimension... so the URL you are looking for, if its not a high performer, may get lumped into "(Low Traffic)"... this means any segments you build to look for that URL will fail. Also another reason to track the base or canonical URL as per above.. there will be less variations, allowing the variations to roll up together and create less rows of data. If the URL changes, then you will still need to pull all variations of a URL... so if you have a site with articles, or blogs, or products, etc... tracking a unique identifier, which only loads on the content pages, and not all pages of your site (section pages, searches, info pages like about us and faq, etc) wouldn't have an identifier like that, and therefore not contribute to the 500,000 unique value limitations.

 

If URL is the only way to identify the page, you can either create a segment for that URL (based on your eVar), or you can use the Freeform filter (assuming you are pulling in the eVar URL as your breakdown dimension)... but usually I prefer to use segments, cause then I can use any sort of freeform setup, with any values.

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1 Reply

Avatar

Correct answer by
Community Advisor and Adobe Champion

Hi, While URL is collected by Adobe, it's only available through the Data Warehouse and Raw Data Exports.

 

If you want to be able to access a URL from the Workspaces, you will need to set up a custom eVar (Hit Level) to capture the URL (you can do this in Launch by passing the URL directly to the eVar or use the more efficient "dynamic variable" which will duplicate the URL value into the eVar using D=g - this is case sensitive; or using Processing Rules to set the eVar based on the Page URL)

 

The reason I suggest an eVar over a prop is due to the character limit, props have a max character limit of 100, whereas eVars are 255; but I cannot stress enough making sure the eVar is Hit expiry - since you don't want the URL to accidentally persist to other pages. You can set this on both Page Views AND Actions (I do), then make sure you are pulling data with the correct metrics - Page Views for just your pages, Custom Link Instance / Custom Event on your Actions for actions, and Occurrences for everything combined.

 

You may also want to consider tracking full URLs (including parameters), base URLs (not including parameters), and depending on your setup canonical URLs (no params, but for a group of sites that share content and the "primary owner" of certain pages may have the  canonical link point to the owner rather than to the site the page was viewed on.

 

Now... let's get into information you might not realize, but I always stress this when teaching anyone analytics in my company.. if you have a lot of URLs, or maybe you have content where changing the title of page changes the URL, pulling content by the URL is not the best choice to use...

 

For one thing, in Workspace, Adobe has a 500,000 unique value limit per month for each dimension... so the URL you are looking for, if its not a high performer, may get lumped into "(Low Traffic)"... this means any segments you build to look for that URL will fail. Also another reason to track the base or canonical URL as per above.. there will be less variations, allowing the variations to roll up together and create less rows of data. If the URL changes, then you will still need to pull all variations of a URL... so if you have a site with articles, or blogs, or products, etc... tracking a unique identifier, which only loads on the content pages, and not all pages of your site (section pages, searches, info pages like about us and faq, etc) wouldn't have an identifier like that, and therefore not contribute to the 500,000 unique value limitations.

 

If URL is the only way to identify the page, you can either create a segment for that URL (based on your eVar), or you can use the Freeform filter (assuming you are pulling in the eVar URL as your breakdown dimension)... but usually I prefer to use segments, cause then I can use any sort of freeform setup, with any values.