[EN] Page name settings

Page names and settings

Snoobi Analytics has several methods to view the webpage-based analytics data.

Page names can be created in four ways:

1. As the complete url, showing the url and any additional elements (for instance advertising codes)
2. With the title that as added in the Snoobi code on the website by the CMS
3. Collected by Snoobi from the title tag that every webpage has as part of the html page code
4. Manually, based on the settings done by a Snoobi administrator

Whichever method you choose, you can always create page names manually. If a manual created page name conflicts with an automatic created one, the manual created one prevails. This way, you can change automatic page names which you don't like.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Page names and settings
  • Method 1. show the full url.
  • Account-wide settings
  • Method 2. Setting the page name from the parameter
  • Method 3. Setting the page name from the html-title tag
  • Method 4. Setting page names manually 
  • Additional information for a Snoobi Administrator

Method 1. show the full url.

This is the most exact and provides a lot of technical analytics data, but it also means it can be difficult to analyse page-level metrics since every different url is also a different page for metrics such as landingspage and bounce rate.

An example is the following, where these two entries actually show the same page to the user but metrics are separate:

Note that using url's as page name means the lists with page names as shown below are empty.

Reporting-wise it is good to replace difficult to recognize URL addresses by clear page names for your report. E.g. Products: Chairs is easier to read than www.company.nl/index.php?pageID=45. 

Account-wide settings (as of the V2021-9/10 release)

 Go to Settings | Content and Pages naming and settings. This will display a listing with all created page names.
Note so this includes page names created by methods 2,3 and 4!

The list can be sorted on id, the higher the id is, the newer the page name. The list shows all page names that are available, so the methods 2,3 and 4.

To select the page naming settings, click  'EDIT PAGE NAMING'.

Here you select which method Snoobi uses to display page names.
Disabled means Snoobi only shows the url.

In the list, each line will display an i and a trash can icon on the right side. Click on i to see which URLs are linked to a page name. Click on trash can to delete a page name manually.

In addition to selecting and removing each page name separately, you can search for one or more pages with the same name and remove them as one.

The 'Select all' checkbox selects all pages that are shown on the list.
Click on 'Delete Selected' to remove these page names. You will receive a warning that you are removing page names.

Snoobi will update existing data, which for large websites with many visits and page names, may take some time to complete. As reports cannot be fully created during that period, Snoobi advises to handle this when nobody else needs access to the analytics data.

Note that removing page names keeps the original visit data intact, as we only remove the name linked to a url, not the url (which represents the web page) itself. Depending on the method of page naming chosen, Snoobi will again start a fresh process to add page names.

Method 2. Setting the page name from the parameter

This is particularly suitable for dynamic websites and web shops and requires access to the templates or source code of the website and programming skills to add a & page_name = parameter to the end of the Snoobi tag. The value of this parameter represents the content of the page. Do not give two pages the same parameter, unless you want these pages to be analyzed as one. If a & page_name = parameter is changed, the change will be implemented after a period depending on the traffic on the site.

Method 3. Setting the page name from the html-title tag

This method is suitable for all websites whosepages already a descriptive title (html title tag) and only requires the push of a button. However, do check in advance whether the page names actually describe well what the pages are about. In the report, URLs are replaced with the titles of the pages - if the titles are misleading, the page names in the report are too. 

Also long titles of which the beginning is the same, may be a problem because these would be shown incomplete.
In addition, if your application creates a large number of unique page names due to translations, or for instance a webshop of site with many documents, it may be advisable not to switch this on. Use the url instead, or page title from the parameter. Otherwise this automation can easily create many thousands of unique page names, or even different page names for the same page - making the analytics slow and confusing.

Method 4. Setting page names manually 

Go to Settings | Content and Pages manual naming. Choose this method for static html websites or if there is no other possibility.

Note that this method overwrites other page naming methods.

Click on 'Add New' to add a new page name. In the next screen, enter the page name and the identifier, such as in the sample above. You can enter multiple identifiers, for instance when the same page that is shown to the visitor has multiple url's:

The functionality of this list is otherwise the same as for 'Pages naming and settings', in the list, each line will display an i and a trash can icon on the right side. Click on i to see which URLs are linked to a page name. Click on trash can to delete a page name manually. You can of course also handle this with search-and-select from the Account-wide settings.

Additional information for a Snoobi Administrator

1. When page names are linked a an url, that 'link' between name and url is maintained in Snoobi for the complete history. If the &page_name information in the Snoobi tag or the html-title changes later, that change cannot be taken into consideration.
   That can lead to incorrect information if no action is taken.
   An example is when a new page is created but not yet published, it could be clicked by someone and display a title such as 'This page is not available - 404'. Remove the incorrect page name in that case, and Snoobi will link the correct page name to the url. Similar issues can happen if url's are re-used.
   For instance when www.snoobi.com/campaign is used for a campaign in 2019 and the same url is used for a campaign in 2021 then incorrect metrics may be displayed. Removing the old page name resolves that problem.
2. For page names, automated from the html-title, the name is created aftere the page has been visited several times to avoid maintaining page names where simple typo's were made and quickly corrected.
   Snoobi also does not link (automated) page names to urls's when the visitor is a bot- or search engine.
   Updating page names is a nightly process in the background, so it is very well possible that you don't see page names appear immediately after you have made settings.
3. Since old historic data that is no longer needed is cleaned from Snoobi every now and then, it is possible that page names are linked to url's that no longer exist. Snoobi runs a monthly process to clean out page names that have no url's linked since this can delay reporting.

Contact Snoobi Support if you are unsure what method to choose or how to handle the settings.