How to modify page URL in Google Analytics

Question

How can you modify the URL for the current page that gets passed to Google Analytics?

(I need to strip the extensions from certain pages because for different cases a page can be requested with or without it and GA sees this as two different pages.)

For example, if the page URL is http://mysite/cake/ilikecake.html, how can I pass to google analytics http://mysite/cake/ilikecake instead?

I can strip the extension fine, I just can't figure out how to pass the URL I want to Google Analytics. I've tried this, but the stats in the Google Analytics console don't show any page views:

pageTracker._trackPageview('cake/ilikecake');

Thanks, Mike

Answer 1

Two possibilities come to mind:

1. it can take a while, up to about 24 hours, for visits to be reflected in the Analytics statistics. How long ago did you make your change?

2. try beginning the pathname with a "/", so

   pageTracker._trackPageview('/cake/ilikecake');
   

   and then wait a bit, as per the first item.

Answer 2

You could edit the GA profile and add custom filters ...

Create a 'Search and Replace' custom filter, setting the filter field to 'Request URI' and using something like:

Search String: (.*ilikecake\.)html$

Replace String: $1
(was \1)

Answer 3

Usually you have the ga script code at the end of your file, while special _trackPageviews() calls are often used somewhere else.

Have you made sure you have your call to pageTracker._trackPageview() after you have defined the pagetracker?

Like this:

var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-XXXXXXX-X");
pageTracker._trackPageview();

otherwise you just get a JavaScript error I suppose.