Cross-domain tracking Hotel Website - Booking Engine: #1 Error to Avoid with Google Analytics

[@dennisritchiebz]

Hello Ale, is making this cross-domain tracking variable still necessary to do with GA4? We don't use UA anymore. Also I have a huge revenue tracking problem. Are you knowledgeable in this area? I run google ads for a hotel that takes traffic to their website and then the traffic goes to their booking engine which is Synxis. Inside GA4 we are not getting any revenue data from google ads in the revenue reports inside GA4, however, there are indeed conversions happening inside the google ads account because we track the confirmation button click and also use enhanced conversions. (At the moment google is suggesting in-page code or API for more accurate conversion measurement.)

[@DirectYourBookings]

You still need cross-domain tracking in GA4 but it's easier to set up, you can do it directly from the admin panel of your GA4 account and no code needed on the site.

[@leighton1691]

Hi there, I've followed these steps and FINALLY got cross domain tracking working, only prob is I'm not seeing ecommerce conversion data from the second domain - booking engine. Is there any added steps needed to enable this? I have ecommerce tracking/enhanced data tracking enabled in GA, but that's all. There is an option in tag manager > variables > more settings > where you can also enable enhanced ecommerce features ... do I need to switch this on for ecommerce to track? I have definitely received bookings and can see the /confirmation page views cross domain tracked in analytics now, but not included revenue/conversion data... Thanks in advance!

[@DirectYourBookings]

The confirmation page is just a page like any other, so the fact that you're seeing it, it simply means you're tracking the confirmation page. But ecommerce tracking has nothing to do with page tracking and, consequentially, nothing to do with cross-domain tracking. It all depends on your booking engine, if it has a structured dataLayer in the confirmation page all you need to do is set up a Google Analytics transaction tag in GTM which will automatically read ecommerce data from the dataLayer.

[@leighton1691]

@@DirectYourBookings Thanks! that's really helpful. So it sounds like a question for my booking engine support team?

[@DirectYourBookings]

@@leighton1691 correct, everything can be tracked in every booking engine, but the way you set your tracking up exclusively depends on how your booking engine outputs the data in the confirmation page.

[@galuhary9678]

Great video, Ale Tried your tips on two different Booking Engines. One works, one not yet working, I'm wondering why...

[@DirectYourBookings]

What exactly did you you try? And what IBEs are they?

[@galuhary9678]

@@DirectYourBookings Cross-domain tracking. It works on OmniHotelier. It counts me as 1 user while moving from the hotel's website to the IBE. It is not yet working on D-EDGE IBE, maybe because I'm trying to connect a sub-domain (Hotel website) to a domain (IBE)?

[@DirectYourBookings]

@@galuhary9678 subdomains are considered different domains in the context of cross-domain tracking. Does the _ga parameter get appended to the booking engine page?

[@DirectYourBookings]

Have you taken 10 seconds to check your cross-domain tracking? Did you see that _ga parameter in the URL of your booking engine when landing from your hotel website?