Duplicate GA events in different Event Categories

  • Resolved tf5_bassist

    (@tf5_bassist)


    6 years, 10 months ago

    Been trying to figure this out for a quick minute, and while I have an idea of what’s going on, I’m stumped on the solution.

    Have TA set up with tracking to a GA Event Category called TA Aff Link. Also, have Monster Insights set up for general GA tracking. Whenever I get a click on an aff link, there are two events captured by GA, one for each category. This is mostly problematic with uncloaked links, such as Amazon links. These uncloaked links are reported with the category of outbound-link.

    I’ve found why the cloaked links double-report, because I had the /go/ path set to track as outbound in MI, and these get categories as outbound-link-aff. I can disable this without issue from MI.

    The uncloaked ones are the problem, though. The event is reported by TA, MI then recognizes the link as a general outbound link since it’s not being cloaked with the /go/ path.

    Is there any way that anyone is aware of to force Monster Insights to ignore TA-based clicks? Or are there better, more customizable GA plugins being used in conjunction with TA instead of MI?

    Thanks in advance!

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

  • Hey @tf5_bassist,

    Interesting problem.

    I use TA and MI together as well on all my own sites. Like you I also have the MonsterInsights tracking for affiliate links turned off.

    I guess I just haven’t really minded having the double up in events for the uncloaked links. I pretty much ignore them and I actually use a custom dashboard report on the GA side to track a lot of that data without having to dig through those event reports each time.

    If you definitely need to solve this, it might be worth reaching out to the MonsterInsights guys about it. They should be able to give you a snippet to selectively NOT track certain links.

    For example, if you’re uncloaking certain links using the TA uncloaking feature, then it adds certain attributes to the < a > tag. Alternatively, you could just say any link with the “thirstylink” CSS class, don’t track it.

    Let me know how you go!

    • This reply was modified 6 years, 10 months ago by Josh Kohlbach.
    • This reply was modified 6 years, 10 months ago by Josh Kohlbach.
    Thread Starter tf5_bassist

    (@tf5_bassist)

    Yeah, I had a feeling it would come down to getting Monster Insights to somehow not track the TA links. I don’t know if this option is hidden somewhere in the MI Pro feature set since I just use the free version, I wouldn’t be surprised that if they added the feature it would live there.

    I’ll keep poking around and see what my options are there, and probably submit a ticket to the MI site if I can’t find any options.

    At least it’s not just me, though, and I didn’t miss anything stupidly simple haha. Thanks for the quick reply!

    I have the Pro version, and I can’t seem to find it anywhere. The outbound link tracking section is quite simple there, so I’d say there might be a hook or something.

    Thread Starter tf5_bassist

    (@tf5_bassist)

    Yeah, I didn’t see anything in the feature lists for customizable tracking, so figured it wasn’t there.

    I did shoot a support ticket to their Lite support page, and Chris got back to me, so we’ll see if there’s anything they have for it.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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