Tracking Vanity URL Visits

[blake_ingram]

I'm having trouble tracking a vanity URL and the # of visits it has. I have a tracking code appended to the URL, but the target URL is quite long with >50 characters. Is the URL to long to track the appended tracking code? Are there other ways to capture this traffic?

[TanmayMathur · Accepted solution]

Hi Blake,

Welcome to the Analytics Community!

Since you are using Vanity URLs it is quite possible it is involving a redirect. 

Redirects can cause the browser to blank out the true referring URL. You can check out the page on redirects here - https://marketing.adobe.com/resources/help/en_US/sc/implement/redirects_overview.html

I hope this helps.

[TanmayMathur]

In addition, you could also create a segment with the logic 'cid equal to xxx' and apply it to the visits report. 

[vijayakumar_raj]

Hi Tanmay,

I have a quick question here, if I use "CID" in the vanity URL for example (https://xyz.com/test?cid=test) will be redirect to Original URL (https://xyz.com/test-new). Are you saying that if we create the segment by filter the cid id "test" in visit report will able to see the results of vanity URL hits right?

If "Yes", for your information I have tried that scenario but it is not working for me. Correct me If I am wrongly understand your statement!

Thanks,

Vijay

[Gigazelle]

Hi Vijay, unfortunately the answer to your question is no.

If you're redirecting example.com/vanityurl?cid=campaign to example.com/fullurl, the cid query string is not recorded. Only the landing URL is recorded, so you must therefore have additional measures in place to preserve the query string. You can do this either with server-side logic to append the query string, or store the query string in a cookie to be pulled on the landing page.

Tanmay's links to our docs on redirects provide more information on how to handle them in terms of Adobe Analytics data collection.

[vijayakumar_raj]

Got it thanks

[irenek97960727]

Hi - would you recommend putting the cid string in the landing URL? For example, example.com/vanityurl and it directs the traffic to example.com/fullurl?cid=campaign  Does it work this way?

[Urs_Boller]

yes! i think it is the most common way to add the cid to the final URL after the redirect. this way you have access with DTM to the query string and you can save it in the campaign variable.