Google Analytics showing source/medium as appengine.google.com/referral for sessions using Google Sign-In

[James Foster]

I'm wondering whether anyone else is running into this and whether there is a workaround.

My site sends users through Google login using users.create_login_url when they opt to sign in. At that point, Google Analytics seems to tag the session as a referral from appengine.google.com.

It's particularly disruptive, as it hinders my ability to measure results from AdWords.

Is anyone else encountering this, or is it something unusual about my setup? Has anyone managed to work around or resolve this?

[Patrice (Cloud Platform Support)]

Hi James,

Not being familiar with the AdWords part of it, I'm not entirely clear on why this stops you. Can't you simply add an "OR" clause in your checks for Adwords, adding "appengine.google.com" as a referral? 

Basically, what do you use to measure results from AdWords and why having the referral breaks this?

Cheers

[James Foster]

Google Analytics tracks a single referring page for each session. I'm not 100% sure why a visitor logging in causes a new session in Google Analytics, but I suspect seeing a new referring page is what causes it. (eg. it looks like the user came from an external site)

I can't add an "OR" clause in checks for Adwords because visitors who don't come from Adwords go through the same login flow.

I'm using Google Analytics to measure the results from Adwords. The problem is that since Google Analytics tracks a single referrer for each session and the appengine.google.com referral comes after the Adwords referral, any conversions (from Adwords or other source/medium combinations) are being attributed as appengine.google.com/referral in Google Analytics.

[Patrice (Cloud Platform Support)]

Hi James,

Thank you for your clarification, it does highlight what your issue is.

Do you have a Google Analytics premium account? Because if you do, I would suggest you go through them. I see this being a feature Request (ie "make page referral a repeating attribute" or "make Adwords have precedence over appengine.google.com/referra|"). They might already be aware of the situation and have a workaround for it!

Cheers

[James Foster]

I don't have a Google Analytics Premium account. Is there any other way forward?

[Patrice (Cloud Platform Support)]

Well by no means will we let you alone here :). It's just that if you had that avenue of discussion as a possibility it would have helped.

I'll try to dig in on my end to understand what exactly causes that and what can be done about it. I should be able to let you know what I find within the next couple of days.

Cheers!

[Patrice (Cloud Platform Support)]

Hi again James.

So, just to keep you updated on your issue, I did a bit of digging around internally to see what can be done, and here's how we'll proceed here:

as soon as I have a second (today or tomorrow at the latest), I will create an Issue Tracker entry about your issue (and link it here), then, if you could post the code you use for your users to log in, we'll try to reproduce the referral behavior on our end and if we can reproduce, file this as a defect and start working on it.

Sorry if it took a little while, since it touches both Analytics and App Engine, I had to make sure about the proper place for this to be handled.

Is that okay with you? (in any case, expect another message on this thread within 24 hours, where I will let you know of the link to the issue I've created for you).

Cheers!

[Patrice (Cloud Platform Support)]

Hi James!

So as I said yesterday, I created this issue to track your specific case. If you could go on this and add your exact full login code (complete with the Oauth flow), it would be helpful.

Also feel free to star the issue so you get notified via email whenever something happens.

Have a good weekend :)

[James Foster]

Hi Patrice,

Thank you for your effort. I do appreciate it. What I'm really after is a workaround, though. I don't really think of this as a bug as much as an unintended side-effect of sending users to a Google login and back again. I'd rather that App Engine engineers focus on more pressing stuff like getting SSL to work with naked domains.

I imagine there is some way that people are currently dealing with this. For example, I could potentially just add utm tags to my post-login destination url. I'm just wondering if there are better workarounds.

Regards,

James

[Patrice (Cloud Platform Support)]

Hi James,

Totally fair :). I figured changing the effect might help more than just your use-case, but I can see how SSL over naked domains might be a better way to spend our time indeed.

In any case, I will leave this here running in case someone comes in with suggestions. I don't really use Analytics, so besides the obvious workarounds (which you seem to already have figured out), there's not much I can provide here. Maybe someone else from the group will post something to give you a hand with a less obvious one.

Cheers,

[DFB]

Hi James,

I'm having the same issue. Can you elaborate more on your workaround / solution?

Thanks.