Google Analytics Tips & Tricks - Tracking 301 Redirects in Google Analytics

There are many ways to redirect a web page, but few are SEO friendly, and even fewer can be tracked through Google Analytics. Here I’m going to show you a way of tracking 301 redirects with Google Analytics.

1) About SEO Friendly Redirects
Typically a 301 redirect, the most SEO friendly type of redirect, is setup on the server level via the .htaccess file or httpd.conf file. These are easy ways of setting up 301 redirects, but they don’t allow tracking via Google Analytics. So we’re going to setup our 301 redirect at the page level using scripting.

I’m going to be using the PHP scripting language in my example, because it’s an extremely popular scripting language, but almost any scripting language will do (see 301 redirect examples in other programming languages).

2) Setting up the Redirect
There are two snippets of code that needs to be added to the page you want to redirect. 

- 301 redirect command code
So here is an example of the 301 redirect command in PHP:
<?
Header( “HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently” );
Header( “Location: http://www.new-url.com” );
?>

- Google Analytics Tracking Code
<script type=”text/javascript”>
var gaJsHost = ((”https:” == document.location.protocol) ? “https://ssl.” : “http://www.”);
document.write(unescape(”%3Cscript src=’” + gaJsHost + “google-analytics.com/ga.js’ type=’text/javascript’%3E%3C/script%3E”));
</script>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker(”UA-YOURPROFILE-ID”);
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script>

3) Results in Google Analytics
As long as the Google Analytics tracking code is in place on BOTH of the pages involved in the redirect, redirect page itself, as well as the destination page, you’ll see the redirect page in your Top Content report in Google Anlaytics.

(an example of the page being redirected showing up in Google Analytics - just for testing purposes)

**A big shout out and thank you to Hugo Guzman for the idea behind this post, and with help in testing**

Dan Cristo is a search engine optimization specialist at Zeta Interactive Agency - Follow me on Twitter