NOTE: This feature will be available in production Feb. 15, 2022.
BLOX internal source tracking adds a dynamic internal source hashtag at the end of specific links within blocks. When a user clicks on that link, and arrives at the resulting page, the hashtag triggers a special custom dimension in Google Analytics which records the source of that click.
Setting up blocks
This new internal source tracking is available on the following blocks:
- Card: Blog
- Card: Feature
- Card: Grid
- Card: Grid Behavioral
- Card: Headline list
- Card: Image grid
- Card: Modular grid
- Card: Modular summary
- Card: Mosaic
- Card: Promo boxes
- Card: Showcase
- Card: Summary
- Card: Top story list
- Card: Updates
- Editorial: Breaking
- Editorial: Full article
In the “Appearance” tab, scroll down to “Tracking” and select “Enable click tracking.” By default, the click tracking will use the block title (as defined in the Appearance tab). If there is no title, it will use the name of the block as defined in the Configuration tab.
If you would like to set a custom name, click on “Tracking name” and enter your own tracking name.
This tracking name will be the value that is appended to the URL after the internal source hashtag. For example:
Creating a custom dimension in Google Analytics
The above process will create a tracking code that will be added to the data layer of your website. Now, you'll need to set up Google Tag Manager to capture this variable and send it to your Google Analytics. (Tip: Use our Jump Start GTM container which will include this information - and other valuable set ups - for you.) Then you’ll need to create a custom dimension to record this traffic in Google Analytics.
First, go to your admin settings in Google Analytics. Then, go to your property settings and click on Custom Definitions -> Custom Dimensions.
Then, create a New Custom Dimension with the name Internal Source, the scope of “hit” and make sure it is active.
This will begin recording your internal source data to Google Analytics.
Creating custom reports
In order to see the value of the internal source data, you’ll want to create a custom report in Google Analytics.
Go to Google Analytics -> Customization -> Custom Reports and click on +New Custom Report.
For Metric Groups, choose Pageviews.
For Dimension Drilldowns, choose Internal Source.
By default, BLOX CMS records other internal source links as well. Including:
- Article-nav-next and article-nav-prev to record clicks on the article navigation buttons.
- Behavioral recommendation blocks, whether contextual, behavioral or contextual-fallback.
- Infinity scroll summary clicks.
- Gallery endcard clicks.
