The Analytics Blogger

Google Analytics uses 5 cookies in order to track the different aspects of the visit behaviour – utma, utmb, utmc, utmz & utmv.

All these GA cookies are 1st party cookies (ie: they are dropped from the host website: eg: godspeed23.com) for greater accuracy.

1. UTMA: utma is the cookie that is used for identifying the visitor session as either a new or a returning visit. This is the persistent ‘lifetime’ cookie (it’s actually set for 2 years). This gets updated every time the code runs (eg., whenever we load a new page). The implication of this is that only for the first time that a visitor comes to your site, he will be marked as a ‘new’ visit; every subsequent visit is marked as a ‘returning’ visit. This hold true ONLY if there isn’t a gap of more than 2 years between 2 consecutive visits. utmb & utmc are used to track the single visit sessions.
2. UTMB: utmb is a 30 minute (modifiable**) cookie. It gets updated every time the code runs (eg., whenever we load a new page)
3. UTMC: utmc is a ‘session’ cookie – it expires if the browser is closed. If either of these cookies are not present, a new session starts.
4. UTMZ: utmz is the cookie used to track the campaign source.  This is a 6 month (modifiable**) cookie. It gets updated every time a ‘new’ traffic source is identified. If a traffic source cannot be identified, the visit is assigned to ‘direct’ traffic.
5. UTMV: utmv (optional) is the ‘user defined’ variable that can be set according to the client’s requirements. This is dropped if the optional ‘setVar()’ code is being used.

Below are a few scenarios of what this translates to:

• (day 1) visit from SEM <cookie says it’s from ‘Google cpc’>;
• (day 5) visit & sale from ‘direct’ type-in <cookie still assigned to ‘Google cpc’>; thus, sale is attributed to ‘Google cpc’ (however, cookie is not updated, so it’s life is still 6 months from ‘day 1′)
• (day 12) visit & sale from Google Organic <cookie now changed to ‘Google Organic’>; thus, this sale is attributed to ‘Google Organic’ (cookie life is set for 6 months from ‘day 12′ )

This is a persistent ‘lifetime’ cookie (it’s actually set for 2 years). It gets updated whenever the specific ‘setVar()’ code is run. (**Note: ‘modifiable’ indicates that this can be changed as per the website’s requirement; however, the default values are the industry standards.)

For more details, go to  http://www.google.com/support/conversionuniversity/?hl=en

Google Adwords:

These cookies, as you may expect, have NOTHING to do with the Google AdWords cookies and as such, have no affect on the conversion data seen in your Adwords account.

In terms of the cookie used by Google Adwords, the cookie used to track the conversion is a 30 day cookie (3rd party cookies – dropped by Google). This is purely used to track any conversion that happens within 30 days of the Adwords ad being clicked. Within those 30 days, if another Google Adwords ad has been clicked, then the cookie gets reset by the latest clicked ad. You would still need to pay for the subsequent click and the cookie is reset to 30 days from that click.

However, Google Adwords does discount some clicks. For example, if someone ‘double clicks’ on your ad, for that, you would be charged for the 1 click. Further, if Google identifies your ads’ click patterns as ‘invalid clicks’, the Google Adwords ‘machinery’ automatically discounts these charges. More on invalid clicks here:

http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?answer=6114

Google Analytics cookies & Google Adwords cookies are independent of each other; they have NO influence on each other. (Note that this may be one of the reasons for any slight mismatch you may notice with regard to google adwords ‘conversions’ & google analytics ‘goals’).

For my first Analytics Post, I thought it best to just dive right into it!

In their effort to make Google Analytics even less dependent on support, the GA team has introduced a small, yet significant feature in the GA account administration.

We now no longer need to write to Google Support to delete a Google Analytics Account or to unlink connected Adwords-Analytics Accounts.

The feature can be found in the ”Edit Account Settings” tab within the Analytics Account.’, ‘Unlink Adwords & Analytics Account’

Note that in order for this option to be available, you have to log into the Google AdWords Account and go to the analytics interface from the ‘Analytics’ link within this interface.