How To Track Referrals From Google Plus in Google Analytics

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by andrewsho

My Google Plus Shortcuts & Tips post has started getting a bit of traffic from inside G+ as more people come in and start sharing it. I thought it would be useful to show you how to track these referrals in Google Plus (I have adapted (aka “ripped off”) this great post from Sebastien Page):

  1. Go to your Google Analytics account and click on Filter Manager > Add Filter, and enter the following information:

Filter Name: Full Referrer (or whatever you want to call it)
Filter Type: Custom Filter
Advanced
Field A -> Extract A: Referral (.*)
Field B -> Extract B: leave blank
Output To -> Constructor: User Defined $A1
Field A Required: Yes
Field B Required: No
Override Output Field: Yes
Case Sensitive: No

It should look like this:

  1. Go back to your dashboard and click on the Visitors tab in the left-hand nav. You should see an option called “User Defined”. This is the report that will track full referring URLs.

Note: This report will be empty for a while at first.  It takes some time for GA to start populating it with data.

  1. Click the “advanced” filter right next to the report search box.

  1. Create two “Dimension” filters including “google” and “url?sa”.  “Url?sa” is the identifying element of Google Plus referring URLs.

  1. Hit the “Apply” button and voila!

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