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Yahoo Analytics Tracking Parameters: Whoops

A quick post regarding Yahoo! Analytics tracking parameters. Our conversion tracking software recently added support for Yahoo! Analytics tracking parameters, which, according to Yahoo Analytics documentation are:

  • ysmtac — tactic code (Category)
  • ysmchn — channel code (Source)
  • ysmcpn — campaign code (Campaign)
  • ysmgrp — ad group code (Ad Group)
  • ysmtrm — term code (Keyword)
  • ysmcrn — creative code (Creative)
  • ysmrfd — referring id override code (used to rename referring domain)

The thing I find fascinating is that multi-billion dollar companies like Yahoo! can make mistakes by including a misspelling of the query string parameter, specifically:

They seem to use ysmcpm and ysmcpn interchangably for “Campaign” throughout the documentation.

ysmcpm or ysmcpn?

Your guess is as good as mine. Searching their documentation, you’ll see multiple references to both ysmcpm and ysmcpn.

My guess is that ysmcpn is the correct query string parameter you should use, but anyone reading their documentation would have no idea.

I had considered that maybe they were different things, like one was “Campaign Code” and the other was a “Campaign Name”; however it doesn’t seem to differentiate between the two in their documentation.

Our conversion tracking service supports either parameter for “campaign”, so if you use one or the other, we do the right thing, which may be what Yahoo! is doing as well.

Perhaps I should short Yahoo! stock?

Comment if you’ve run across this!