How to track traffic source for iframe facebook application

Question

I have a facebook iframe app - call him apps.facebook.com/my-app.

We currently use Google Analytics for our tracking, and I correctly installed Google Analytics in my application (which is included in the iframe application in the FB application), and tracks any use of the application mentioned above.

However, I would like to know what traffic source for my-app is PRIOR for facebook; that is, if a user goes to domain1.com and follows the link from here to apps.facebook.com/my-app, it seems that the "traffic source" is tracked as "apps.facebook.com" and not "domain1" .com ", b / c GA is installed in my code of the page included via iframe, therefore its http-referent is apps.facebook.com

Is there a way to get "domain1.com" as a traffic source, in this case? Or try any suggestions? (regardless of whether you use Google Analytics or another source?) I see that the information on facebook gives some information about referrers, but it is not very extensive, there are no date ranges, etc.

Many thanks! - ali

Answer 1

Just using Google Analytics on Facebook, there is little you can do. However, what we have done in the past (to common success) is to create a redirect link outside of Facebook with analytics on it and first transfer all traffic.

In other words, create a page at www.myapp.com/redirect and put the google tracker there (or, alternatively, just add the referrer URL to the query string manually). Then redirect using javascript to the URL of the Facebook canvas application. Thus, the user will be in the right place, and you will also receive information about the referrer.