Google Analytics Experts

From EpikOne

If a visitor clicks on multiple advertising campaign links, which campaign gets "credit" for the conversion?

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By default, Google Analytics attributes a conversion to the current campaign that delivered the visitor to your site. Referencing your example, GA will correctly identify the June 1 and June 15 newsletters as the source for the each visit, but it will also show a conversion for the visit on June 15. The urchin.js does not 'set and forget' the campaign tracking cookie. It is updated each time a visitor visits your site.

With that said, there is a 'pecking order' to which activities will overwrite the campaign tracking cookie. First, let's remember how GA buckets your traffic in terms of referral information:

* Campaigns: links that you have tagged with campaign information
* Referrals: links on other web page
* Direct: people who type your URL into a browser
* Organic: organic search engine traffic

Now here is how GA updates the campaign tracking cookie based on referrer:

* Direct traffic is always overwritten by referrals, organic and tagged campaigns
* New campaign, referral or organic that brings a visitor to the site always overrides the existing campaign cookie

Here's an example. A visitor goes to your site from newsletter. They look around and decide to leave. When they leave your site the campaign tracking cookie will persist and indicate that they arrived on your site from the newsletter. The same visitor decides to come back the next day and types your URL into the browser. The campaign cookie will still indicate that the visitor arrived via your newsletter.

With that all said, you can also configure GA to NOT overwrite the campaign data that is stored in the tracking cookies. This let's you identify the first campaign that brought the visitor to your site. Here is the link:
http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=27247&to...
However, this technique does NOT prevent the urchin.js from updating the campaign cookie if a visitor arrives by organic search or untagged referral link.

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