RegExp alternative to negative lookahead match for Google Analytics

Question

I'm setting up some conversion funnels on Google Analytics. One is to analyse traffic going from the main site to a secondary promotional site running on a virtual directory (on the same domain though)

I should add, this is a setup form in Google Analytics, I can't using another other code (PHP, JS, C# etc) and it has to be done in one step

So for example something like:

• /default.aspx or /directory/default.aspx or /somedirname/default.aspx
• [to >]
• /promotion/default.aspx

In regular expression land, this would be:

• ^/(?!promotion)(.*).aspx
• [to >]
• ^/promotion/(.*).aspx

The problem is Google Analytics no longer supports negative lookaheads, so the regexp ^/(?!promotion)(.*).aspx fails. (Reference here, first reply)

Is there another way I can do this?

Many thanks.

Answer 1

Do a match on "^/promotion/(.*).aspx" and negate the result.

Answer 2

You could do a two-step approach (whether that's possible in Analytics, I have no idea, though):

1. Replace unconditionally:
   /(.*\.aspx) --> /promotion/$1
2. Replace again:
   /promotion/promotion/(.*) --> /promotion/$1

If all else fails:

^/(?:[^p]|p[^r]|pr[^o]|pro[^m]|prom[^o]|promo[^t]|promot[^i]|promoti[^o]|promotio[^n])/(.*)\.aspx