Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Domain Grouping
Your data collection project strategy is not to be confused with domain grouping. It is quite common
to run matching versions of a website under different domain names or vanity domains, such as:
Domain 1:
http://visualrevenue.com/
Domain 2:
http://visualrevenue.net/
Multiple domains, if not set up correctly, will create suboptimal, and to some extent faulty,
reporting in areas such as most popular pages, where you might have duplicates but it is in fact
the same page, just served from two different domains.
To avoid this, Yahoo! Web Analytics allows you to group all your different domains under a proj-
ect, and all of them are treated as the same website. You can find this option under Settings:
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This procedure allows you to map each page of your secondary domain to your primary domain
and thus ensure the reporting will be amalgamated correctly.
Note that this setting is a rewrite upon data collection and it takes effect immediately after sav-
ing it; it is not something that can be changed for previous collected data.
Vanity URL
A vanity URL (unique domain) is typically created by a company as part of an advertising campaign
that points to a microsite (you will see this used in offline campaigns the most), with the assump-
tion that it is easier to remember a specific domain name, such as:
Country URL: http://www.hp.com/country/dk/da/welcome.html
Vanity URL: http://www.hp.dk
the rule of thumb is that you should have a good reason to split your data col-
lection into separate projects. Unless you are running very different web properties,
you should end up with something like the setup shown in Figure 1.5.
if and when you deploy multiple Yahoo! Web analytics projects, always make
sure that you choose the correct and corresponding project tracking script.
