Measurement Best Practices

In reviewing the best practices guide that Avinash Kaushik published on the site HERE, there was a list of nine items that should be kept in mind when implementing tracking.

The items listed are: 
# 1: Tag all your pages.
# 2: Tags go last (customers come first :).
# 3: Tags should be inline.
# 4: What’s your unique page definition?
# 5: Use cookies intelligently (they are delicious).
# 6: Javascript wrapped links might be a issue.
# 7: Redirects, be aware of them.
# 8: Validate data is being captured correctly.
# 9: Don’t forget Flash, Flex, RIA, RSS, Videos etc.

Using these rules and applying them to the GM web site there are several difficulties I can see. For the most part the GM web site is entirely Javascript based or Flash. For them to track the site traffic they would need to make sure that they implement a custom tracking of either event logs or use custom tags.

However in reviewing the source code of the page they are in fact utilizing a Javascript as they should at the bottom of the page, just before the </body> tag.
(<script type="text/javascript" src="/etc/designs/gmcom/js/gPageTracking.js"></script>)

There is also some custom tracking built in to the page that is created from a tracking XML file.

From what I can tell in the source all of the items are accounted for. They are tracking the traffic as they should be.