Documentation Center

Tracking Keys

By tracking Keywords associated with Web site content, Tracking Keys identify the type of content a visitor has viewed and measure how interesting that type of content is considered to be. This information helps you to personalize Web content.

The following diagram depicts the relationships between Content Manager items used to set up Tracking Keys on content:

  • Create Categories and Keywords to categorize your content
  • Create Schemas for the content for which you want to collect Tracking Key information and use a Category to define a list field in this Schema
  • Create Content based on the Schemas and use a Keyword in a list field
  • Create Component Templates that use the Schema as a Linked Schema and identify the Category as a Tracked Category

On the Presentation Server, you configure Tracking Key elements in the Profiling & Personalization configuration file cd_wai_conf.xml. The file contains Global, <Presentations>, <Host>, <Personalization>, and <Keys> elements used by Tracking Key collection. In the <Keys> element you can specify the weight you want to assign to a visitor accessing or not accessing a specific type of content; Tracking Key values are increased or decreased based on the content on the Pages that a visitor accesses.

For example, if a section of your Web site has a section that contains software reviews, you may want to create a Category with Keywords that resemble the types of content contained in the reviews. You could create a Category called "Software" and then create the following associated Keywords:

  • Graphics and publishing
  • Internet applications
  • Music and video
  • Operating systems
  • Utilities

When the Category is used to identify list field values in a Schema, Authors can select a predefined Keyword to fill in a field about that content. If Tracking Keys are enabled for the published content, then whenever visitors visit the Web page that contains the relevant Component Presentation, the value of the Tracking Key is increased in the database that stores visitor information. You can then track the type of software reviews that the visitor is most interested in. For example, one or more Components use the Keyword called "Graphics and publishing". A visitor enters your Web site and goes to a Page that contains Components that use the "Graphics and publishing" Keyword. If the visitor does not have a cookie, Profiling & Personalization generates a cookie, creates a new record for the user and increments the "Graphics and publishing" keyword in the database. If the visitor has a cookie, Profiling & Personalization uses the cookie to identify the visitor and increments the "Graphics and publishing" keyword in the database.