Help with Understanding breakdowns: page names & URLs

[MarkVictoria]

When I run a breakdown on a page name, I don't get just the URLs of that page. If there are five URLs in the breakdown,  the top one will overwhelmingly be the URL for that page, getting typically 85-90% of the page views but there will be other urls in there. 

The way I typically explain this is that a breakdown is not exposing the things below that add up to the main item, but things that correlate with the main item. Of course the right URL correlates most strongly,  but other page URLs, the most common preceding ones, will show up. 

Is my explanation correct? 

[Jennifer_Dungan · Accepted solution]

Based on your description, I am going to guess that you have an eVar set up to track the URL? I am also going to guess that this eVar is set up to Visit level expiry...

Your eVar really should be set up to a Hit level expiry.. if any hits set a PageName value, but not the URL, then your URL will be sent on the hit as the last recorded value (that does not match your page)

Example:

• Page A
  • pageName = "pagea";
  • eVar1 = "https://www.domain.com/a"
    • value is specifically set
    • eVar1 Instance metric is also set, because a value was specifically passed
• Page B
  • pageName = "pageb";
  • eVar1 is not set
    • value remains "https://www.domain.com/a"
    • eVar1 Instance metric is not set
• Page C
  • pageName = "pagec";
  • eVar1 = "https://www.domain.com/c"
    • value is specifically set
    • eVar1 Instance metric is also set, because a value was specifically passed
• Action 1 (on Page C)
  • pageName = "pagec";
    • note: most actions remove the pageName value, but I have seen some reports do fancy stitching to allow the pageName to be associated to some of the default out-of-the-box actions
  • eVar1 = "https://www.domain.com/c"
    • eVar1 is not set
      • value remains "https://www.domain.com/c"
      • eVar1 Instance metric is not set
• Page D
  • pageName = "paged";
  • eVar1 is not set
    • value remains "https://www.domain.com/c"
    • eVar1 Instance metric is not set
• Action 2 (on Page D)
  • pageName = "paged"; (see note above)
  • eVar1 = "https://www.domain.com/c"
    • eVar1 is not set
      • value remains "https://www.domain.com/c"
      • eVar1 Instance metric is not set

You can see how the default visit expiry can cause the value to remain past the page it belongs to... and cause some of that discrepancy you are describing...

[MarkVictoria]

Thanks, this is very helpful.  We populate the the pageName value but don't use it much.  We have an eVar1for pageName and an eVar2 for URL. We rely on the eVar1 almost exclusively. That eVar1 should be set on every page (and it is attached to most events). 

Page D

• pageName = "paged";
• eVar1 is not set

If we set our pageName and the main one to expire on every hit, would that impact our ability to discuss how the page participates in a conversion?

[Jennifer_Dungan]

It really depends..

If your eVar is set only on Page Views, and you rely on Visit level expiry to set this on your actions, then you will have to make sure to add the eVars specifically on your actions.

If the above is true, the other potential issue is that some of your actions could be fired before your page view, something like:

• Page A
  • eVars set
• Action 1 (Page A)
  • eVars pick up last set value (from Page A)
• Action 2 (Page B)
  • eVars pick up last set value (from Page A)
• Page B
  • eVar set

If you set the eVars on all your Pages and Actions directly, then even if the action is sent before the Page View, you should have the correct information for all your reports...

If a page or action fails to set a value for some reason, then that will be missing in your data. But it may also be easier to track that down, since it will be Hit level and you can check for missing values to try to fix tracking.