Back to Basics: What's in a profile setting?
Monday, September 28, 2009 | 4:33 PM
A little known link in your Analytics account is the key to unlocking extra ecommerce functionality in your Google Analytics account. In this post, we'll show you how clicking the 'Edit' link in your Main Website Profile Information box can open doors for your AdWords and ecommerce tracking purposes.

Once you click 'Edit' (highlighted in red above), you'll see a screen with editable fields like the image pictured below. The numbered list corresponds to the number next to each field so that you can learn how to set up a profile and enable the right features for your tracking purposes.

- Enter an easily identifiable profile name.
- Fill in the web property URL that you are tracking for this profile.
- Enter the default page to which your server defaults to when no page on the domain is specified. This information allows Google Analytics to combine requests to www.yourdomain.com and www.yourdomain.com/index.html, which are in fact the same page. If Default page isn't specified, these would be reported as two separate pages.
- If your account is linked to an AdWords account, your time zone country and time zone will default to the ones specified in your AdWords account. If your accounts are not linked, you'll see pull-down menus that display options for you to select for #4 and #5.
- Same as #4.
- If your site uses unique session IDs or other query parameters in your URLs that you are not interested in seeing in your reports, you can easily exclude these parameters by entering them into this field.
- Enter the currency you want to see in your reports.
- If you have linked an AdWords account, import your cost data so that you can get AdWords information pumped into your Google Analytics account. Once your cost data is imported, the information will appear in the Clicks tab of your AdWords report. Learn how to import your cost data.
- If you're tracking e-commerce on your website, you must enable it to be reflected in your reports in this section. If you would like to set up e-commerce for your site, please read this Help Center article.
- If you have a search engine on your site, you may want to enable this feature. Site Search contains reports about the visitors using the 'search' functionality on your website. Google Analytics Site Search reports deliver many useful pieces of information - for example, they can help you analyze how people use the search functionality on your site, and report its conversion metrics. Learn how to enable Site Search.


12 comments:
Gilbert said...
Hi Christina,
Do advise what is the impact on putting an incorrect URL in the "Website URL:" field.
My understanding is that, GA collects data based on the Account ID embedded on the webpage itself. Thus, was wondering how does this profile information come into play?
Pardon my noob knowledge. Thanks in advance. Cheers
Br
Gilbert
7:54 PM
Debby Burk Optical said...
I implemented Site Search tracking last week, and I highly recommend it. It's invaluable to see what terms people search for while on your site, which end up as conversions, and which end up as exits.
Also, someone tried to "sell" me a "site search" program a few weeks ago. They said the "unique" thing about their site search was that they could track it with Google Analytics, and he wanted to charge me over $12,000 for the first year.
Thanks to Google Analytics clear instructions, it took me less than an hour to figure out I could do this all myself.
8:26 AM
lukas said...
I do have the same question as Gilbert.
3:51 PM
lukas said...
About the "Website URL:" field: I have discovered a "problem" with that: My homepage's url is www.mydomain.net/show/detail.php/225.
So what did I do? - according to this guide, I put show/detail.php/225 in the Website URL: field.
Now what happened was that all my pages that had the URL structure mydomain.net/show/detail.php/xxxx were displayed correctly in the Top Content report.
Yet, pages that DIDN'T have that structure were displayed improperly. For example, I have a blog who's url structure is like this: mydomain.net/blog/xxxx
GA displayed pages from this blog this way: /blog/xxxxshow/detail.php/225, that is, it added to the URI what I had put in the Website URL field.
So now that I have removed the content of that Website URL fieldm, everything is displayed properly again.
My recommendation thus would be to not use that field at all. Please do correct me!
1:01 PM
bigbert said...
Hey Lukas, that's weird.
By right, I thought your sceneario should only happen IF you put the show/detail.php/225 under the DEFAULT PAGE field?
I don't have such issue though...
How come Google don't replies to our queries???
1:36 AM
lukas said...
Good to hear that I may be the only one with this problem. The Analytics team seems to be working hard. Neither blog comments nor questions in the q&a section of GA help are seem to get answered anymore.
2:27 AM
Jeff Geoghan said...
Christina, I have two active profiles - one's a new blog I created and the other is a long-running site. After the first week I noticed that the content from the first site is showing on the 2nd profile's "top content" report. Why are they bleeding together like that? Can I filter out the other content so as to just see the blog content? Thanks!
Jeff
6:38 PM
Jeff Geoghan said...
Oh, I should add that the new blog is located in a subfolder of the old website, and has a dedicated domain assigned to that folder.
6:40 PM
Gabriel said...
Hi Gilbert,
Gabriel from the Google Analytics Team here. The impact of putting the incorrect URL is minimal. There will be no impact on reporting or data collection. However, site overlay will not work.
Gabriel
10:19 AM
Gabriel said...
Hi Lukas,
Gabriel from the Google Analytics Team here. You are probably talking about the Default page field, not the Website URL field. You're correct that the default page will be appended onto the end of all urls. I also recommend not using this feature unless all pages of your site actually end in that default page address. eg. index.php.
Gabriel
10:22 AM
Gabriel said...
Hi Lukas and bigbert,
Gabriel from the Google Analytics Team here. Sorry for the delay in answering your questions. We have been working hard but that's not a good excuse for not responding to our users. We apologize.
Gabriel
10:24 AM
Gabriel said...
Hi Jeff,
This is probably because you are using the same tracking code account across the two different websites. One way to separate the data is to create a new profile and use that code on the second website. Another way is to create an include filter by hostname to include only traffic from a particular web domain in your reports. See http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/search.py?query=filters&ctx=en:searchbox
Gabriel
10:26 AM
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