Anyone done/got a rank beginner's tutorial on using dcs.multitrack? For example, I have a link that's a server-side redirect, clicks on which aren't getting counted by our SDC. Thanks

If I understand what you mean, server-side redirects can't be tracked with SDC. There's no place to put a tag before the redirect happens, since there's no page per se to tag.

Server-side redirects are recorded in server logs though. If you want to see how many are happening, you could always filter and analyze those logs. there are ways to do it that won't add to your license page count.

You can set up the redirects in the server to add a parameter to the landing page that indicates when the pre-redirect URL was.

Or you can have the redirect happen on a landing page. That's not a great practice for SEO however.

There are a lot of tricks to this and I don't think dcs.multitrack by itself is your answer. I suggest that you pose the issue here about what it is you want to accomplish.

quote:

There are a lot of tricks to this and I don't think dcs.multitrack by itself is your answer. I suggest that you pose the issue here about what it is you want to accomplish.

Just want to count the clicks on the link, as if it were a "page," without having to go to the standard log file.

Point of clarification - a server side redirect is a non-page, so it can't be tagged.

It would help if you'd describe the "link" and the "server side redirect". The link goes to another site or another domain?

Or if you could supply a URL and tell us which link you're talking about, we can check directly.

Sorry if I sound like I'm trying to oversimplify.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Chris G,

Thanks for your reply. You can take a look at http://www.ssa.gov/. Click the blue box at top center ("Applying Online for Retirement Benefits"). The URL for this link, http://www.ssa.gov/retireonline/ is the redirect, which takes you to our back-end app server.

As I noted, a standard log file profile picks up the clicks here. We'd like our SDC to count 'em, too.

Thanks. That helps. The redirect goes from www.ssa.gov to secure.ssa.gov, and the secure.ssa.gov pages are not tagged.

At this point, I usually swivel my chair around and ask Mr. SDCTag who sits next to me. He, however, is taking a doggone vacation day today. I'll check back in tomorrow ... unless somebody else here wants to give it a try? Anybody?

You could in fact put a dcsmultitrack event on that particular link. E.g. bind the dcsmultitrack to an onclick event for that link.

perhaps something like:

<a href="http://www.ssa.gov/retireonline/"
onclick="dcsMultiTrack('DCS.dcsuri','/retireonline/','WT.ti','Retire Online App');">link text for page</a>


Note: I didn't look at the page source or anything, that's just off the top of my head for an onclick binding.

It's klugey, but you could also have the server-side redirect point to a tagged landing page ... which then does a redirect.

This is certainly not the best option, but if all others fail and you MUST have that click reflected in SDC, there you go.