Tracking code on link causing social sharing buttons to report different stats

Discussion in 'Google Analytics' started by Greenbricks, Feb 22, 2012.

  1. #1
    Hello,

    We use Google campaign tracking codes at the end of URLs to track traffic from different campaigns e.g. from Facebook, Twitter etc.

    However, this seems to cause the social sharing buttons we have at the top of each page to display different numbers of shares depending on if tracking code is used or not.

    E.g. this link with tracking code from Facebook has over 50 likes:

    http://www.time-to-change.org.uk/blog/people-do-care-they-just-dont-know-how-say-it?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=wall&utm_campaign=social-media

    But this link to the same page without tracking code (what people would see if they navigated through our site) has 0 likes at the time of writing:

    http://www.time-to-change.org.uk/blog/people-do-care-they-just-dont-know-how-say-it

    But other websites seem to get round this problem - see example from Econsultancy below:

    e.g. Econsultancy share buttons show the same numbers for standard URL:

    http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/8249-adobe-to-ditch-flash-for-mobile

    And URL with tracking code added to URL paramater:

    http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/8249-adobe-to-ditch-flash-for-mobile?utm_medium=feeds&utm_source=blog

    We'd obviously like to show all social shares because it's a good way to demonstrate how popular the content is. Does anyone have any tips for how we can keep using tracking code but still display all social shares no matter what the URL parameter is?

    Thank you.
     
    Greenbricks, Feb 22, 2012 IP