What are my options when unwanted domains show up in my Analytics statistics?

The purpose of this article is to explain the options available when unwanted domains are reported on within your Analytics statistics.

• Tracking on domains and subdomain
• Domain Settings
• How do I change the domain settings?
• What are unassigned domains?

Tracking on domains and subdomain

When a site is added to your Siteimprove Analytics subscription, we will automatically track all subdomains on that domain containing the Siteimprove Analytics Script.

For example, if you have a website called www.domain.com, then the standard configuration in Siteimprove Analytics is that anything that has domain.com in the URL will be logged to this site unless a site with the specific subdomain has been added to your subscription.

So for example, if Site 1 and Site 2 below are configured for analytics on your Siteimprove account, then any logs we get for Site 3 will be associated with Site 1 by default.

• Site 1: www.domain.com
• Site 2: subdomain.domain.com
• Site 3: staging.domain.com,

Domain Settings

If the default configuration described above is not the desired, Account Owners can change the Domain settings within analytics.

Domain settings are a way to control the domains associated with the Analytics tracking for your site. Domains are configured as either internal or external.

External domains

Siteimprove records visits to pages/domains as being external to your website. This means they will not be included as page views, but rather as clicks on outbound links. This is a good solution in cases where you don't want subdomains to be registered as page views for your main site.

Internal domains

If the domain is assigned as internal it will be treated as part of your main site. Statistics regarding page views and visits will be collected.

How do I change the domain settings?

1. Go to Analytics > Analytics Settings > Tracking > Domain Settings
2. Click on “Mark as external” for any domains that should not be tracked.

What are unassigned domains?

Unassigned domains are domains that are not subdomains of your site and therefore have not been automatically assigned as such. Unassigned domains are by default external domains. 

Using the link “Review unassigned domains” at the top of the domain table, you can view all detected domains. Here, you can mark unassigned domains as internal/external using the options to the right of the unassigned domains table.

If you need help with any actions listed above, feel free to contact Siteimprove Technical Support with your request.