In writing my own keyword tracking script that

1. reads the Google Analytics cookie
2. writes the fields of the cookie to a mysql table with an auto-increment primary key
3. appends that primary key number onto the end of my affiliate link as the subid number

I found one main problem.

The Google cookie is not always being created. Which means I get no data for that visitor.

I found lots and lots of records in my table that had blank fields. At first I thought these were robots. But then I noticed that some of them turned into sales. Never heard of a robot buying anything before.

A few days ago I was modifying my script to be used with a new campaign. As I tested, I discovered that one time when I clicked to my site, the google cookie was not set and I ended up writing one of these ghost records to my tracking table.

Before I wasted time with too much troubleshooting, I tried it again. This time the cookie was set.

So I don’t know exactly what the problem is, but I DO know that I can’t count on Google to always set that cookie. So I started looking at other alternatives.

I found a free open source keyword tracker called Prosper202.

Their original product is called Tracking202, which is the same as Prosper202 but it hosted by them. You log into a web account to manage your tracking. But I wanted something that I host myself, so I downloaded and installed Prosper202.

I will review it in another post. Stay tuned.

Posted by susb8383 under Google Analytics | 1 Comment »