How to use the Tracking Validation Tool

This document is for anyone who wants to make sure Wicked Reports is tracking your UTMs and to verify you have traffic to these UTMs

Why You Need This Tool

In order to get this most out of Wicked Reports, it is critical that the Wicked Reports tracking script for your account be on every page in your funnel, including your checkout. Clicks and optins are vitally important to improve your Attribution Health and give you the necessary information to make better decisions regarding your campaigns. 

This tool provides a mechanism for you to see if we are tracking your URL's and see if those URL's have traffic. In addition, you can revalidate clicks & optins for your URL's as well as manually validate a URL if you don't see it in your list.

Common Tracking Scenarios that this Tool can Solve

  • What URLs has Wicked tracking in the past 24 hours?
  • Is there traffic in terms of clicks in the past 7 days going to my URLs?
  • Are there optins on my URLs in the past 7 days?
  • What URLs have tracking but no traffic (clicks or optins) ever?
  • What URLs have tracking but no traffic in over 7 days?
  • Does my new page track clicks or optins correctly?
  • When was the last time I validated a click or optin?
  • How did Wicked track a specific URL?
  • I know a URL doesn't need tracking or I no longer want to track it. How do I hide it?

How to use the Tracking Validator Tool

The Tracking Validator Tool will show you all URLs that Wicked has tracked since yesterday.

Tracking Validation tool

Using the image above as guidelines, here is what this tool tracks and how to use it.

  1. This tells you how many URLs Wicked has tracked since yesterday.
  2. Clicking this URL will allow you to manually enter a URL to verify if we track clicks or can track an optin. Follow this link to test your URL.
  3. Wicked Reports gathers URLs from 3 sources, the Wicked Reports Widget, Facebook Ads & Google Ads. You can narrow your display by picking one of these options or choosing All (default).
  4. The URL column shows all the URLs we have tracked over the last 24 hours. This column is sortable.
  5. The URL Traffic Origin columns shows where Wicked has tracked this URL. This column is sortable.
  6. The UTMs count column tells you how many UTMs Wicked has tracked for this specific URL. This column is sortable. You can click on VIEW UTMS (#12) to see the UTMs Wicked has tracked.
  7. The Last Widget Validated Click Date shows the last date (if any) that you validated the click using the validation tool. If you have not validated the URL yet, it will say "Not validated yet". This column is sortable.
    1. This is useful if you think you should have traffic to a URL but the date is old or there is no date (Not validated yet). You can click the Validate Click button to validate that the tracking code is tracking properly.
  8. The Click Traffic column tells you graphically (and with a hover) if you have traffic to this URL. Wicked breaks down the traffic into three categories:
    1. Tracking Validation tool - Green icon: URL has recorded click traffic within the last rolling 7 days.
    2. Tracking Validation tool- Yellow icon: URL does not have recorded click traffic in over 7 rolling days.
    3. Tracking Validation tool- Red icon: URL does not have recorded click traffic.
    4. Based on the icon, you are able to see if click traffic is coming to this URL. If you are not seeing traffic (red icon), you may need to validate the URL or check that your ads are setup properly.
    5. This column is sortable
  9. The Last Widget Validated Optin Date shows the last date (if any) that you validated the optin using the validation tool. If you have not validated the URL yet, it will say "Not validated yet". This column is sortable.
    1. This is useful if you think you should be tracking optins on a URL but the date is old or there is no date (Not validated yet). You can click the Validate Optin button to validate the optins are tracking properly.
  10. The Optin Traffic column tells you graphically (and with a hover) if you have optin traffic to this URL. Wicked breaks down the traffic into three categories:
    1. Tracking Validation tool - Green icon: URL has recorded optin traffic within the last rolling 7 days.
    2. Tracking Validation tool- Yellow icon: URL does not have recorded optin traffic in over 7 rolling days.
    3. Tracking Validation tool- Red icon: URL does not have recorded optin traffic.
    4. Based on the icon, you are able to see if optin traffic is coming to this URL. If you are not seeing optin traffic (red icon), you may need to validate the URL or check that your ads are setup properly.
    5. This column is sortable
  11. This column allows you to hide a URL so that it's not shown. This is useful if you know a URL doesn't need tracking (but Wicked is still tracking through Facebook Ads or Google Ads) or you know URL is tracking properly and you want to hide it. Clicking the HIDE URL button will hide it. You are able to view hidden URL's by clicking on the Show hidden URLs slider (#13).
    1. If you hide a URL, you can unhide it by enabling Show hidden URLs (#13) and clicking the UNHIDE URL button.
  12. The columns allows you to see the UTMs that Wicked has tracked over the last 24 hours for a given URL.
  13. The option, Show hidden URLs, will unhide/hide the URLs that you have marked as Hide. See #11 above for more information
  14. Fast search allows you to narrow down the URLs and only show the URLs that match what you type. This is very useful if you have a lot of URLs.
NOTE: For #7 & #9, as this is a new feature, most of your URLs will say "Not validated yet". This is normal. You can always validate the URL and a date will show up.

Troubleshooting

  1. As stated above, we didn't track this date prior to releasing this new feature (September 22, 2020) and therefore it will say this. However, if, after this date, you have validated a click or optin and are still seeing this message, please email support@wickedreports.comI've validated clicks or optins on my page but the report is still showing "Not validated yet". Why is this?
  2. My UTMs are stripping. Why?
    The most common reason for UTM stripping is "URL Redirects". Redirects are most commonly caused by:

    1. Your team designed the URL to redirect from URL A to URL B

      1. Solution: Send contacts directly to URL B

    2. Link Shorteners such as bit.ly

      1. Solution: Use a link shortener that allows for __PARAMETER APPENDING___ , such as Wicked Redirects or Rebrandly.

    3. You do not have a "/" at the end of your URL.

      1. Solution: Add "/" to the end of your URLs to avoid the re-direct