Tracking Your Twitter Links in Google Analytics

In this article I'll show you a quick tip that will allow you to track any link to your website that you post on Twitter.

I'll assume you already have Google Analytics working on your website.

Introducing the Google Analytics URL Builder

Before we go any further: Google Analytics already tracks most links, clicks etc on your website. The URL Builder tool should only really be used in situations such as:

• Creating links used with the advertising banners that link to your website from another website.
• In your links from pay per click advertising networks OTHER THAN Google Adwords (as long as 'auto-tagging' is turned on in your Adwords settings). For example: Yahoo Search Marketing.
• In links from your HTML newsletters.
• In Twitter tweets!

Using the Analytics URL Builder

OK, here is where you find the URL Builder Tool:

http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55578

The image below shows you the form with some link data for my website. Note that the fields marked with an * symbol are required.

Here are the steps I recommend:

1. In the 'Website URL' field enter the link to the relevant page on your website. Can be any page, not just the homepage.
2. In the 'Campaign Source' field enter the word Twitter.
3. In the 'Campaign Medium' field enter the word tweet.
4. In the 'Campaign Name' field enter a short description of what the tweet is about.
5. Click the 'Generate URL' button and your done!

Your minty fresh Google Analytics friendly link is now ready to be copied form the text field below the Generate URL button.

Why bother? What are the benefits?

Normally, any click to your website from Twitter will appear in your Google Analytics data under 'All Traffic Sources' as simply:

twitter.com / referral

So you'll know how many visits came from a Twitter, but not much else.

Wouldn't it be better if you could tell from exactly which tweets? Well by using the Google Analytics URL Builder as described above that's exactly the sort of information you would have available in your Analytics reports.

By adding the 'Campaign Name' in the URL Builder (it's required) you can also group tweets with a broader online marketing push that may also include tagged links from other forms of advertising such as email newsletters, banners and so on.