Sourcebuster tracks the sources of your site’s visitors and stores the data in the cookies for further analysis.
It handles sources-overriding just like Google Analytics does.
It’s written in pure JavaScript, without any dependency from third-party libraries.
You can use received data for:
phones change
site content change
export data within forms to your CRM or analysis system.

Links

Download · Upgrade guide · Changelog · Test page

Install

# from `npm`
npm install --save sourcebuster

# or `bower`
bower install --save sourcebuster

Or you can download this repo and use sourcebuster.min.js from /dist folder.

Setup

I'm gonna walk you through the inline-HTML setup pattern, but keep in mind, that Sourcebuster is available as CommonJS / AMD module, so you can require it as dependency as well.

Script is written in pure JavaScript, doesn’t have any dependency on third-party libraries and doesn’t interacts with DOM’s objects, so it can be called as soon as you want it. Higher you’ll place it in the <head> tag, sooner you’ll get the cookies, whose data can be used for DOM’s objects manipulation (phones change etc.).

Place in the <head> tag:

<script src="/path/to/sourcebuster.min.js"></script>

Or require it:

var sbjs = require('sourcebuster');

It will expose Sourcebuster object — sbjs. This object has just 2 methods: init and get. Basically first one is setter, and the second one is getter.

So, lets initialize it:

<script src="/path/to/sourcebuster.min.js"></script>
<script>

  sbjs.init();

</script>

This will:

set all the cookies
give you the data (available through the second method sbjs.get)

Configure

sbjs.init accepts one argument: object with the settings. It's optional and usually it will be something like this:

sbjs.init({
  domain: 'alexfedoseev.com',
  lifetime: 3,
  callback: doSmth
});

There are 11 types of user settings:

lifetime
session_length
domain
referrals
organics
typein_attributes
timezone_offset
campaign_param
user_ip
promocode
callback

Now I'll show you the whole list of configurable options. The short description is provided in comments. The rest is explained below.

sbjs.init({

  // Set custom expiration period for cookies in months
  // 6 months is default
  lifetime: 6,

  // Set custom session length in minutes
  // 30 minutes is default
  session_length: 30,

  // Set domain name in cookies
  domain: {
    host: 'alexfedoseev.com',
    isolate: false
  },

  // Set custom referral sources
  referrals: [
    {
      host: 't.co',          // This is host from Twitter's `http referer`
      medium: 'social',      // This is custom `utm_medium`, you can drop it and it'll be `referral`
      display: 'twitter.com' // And this is how you'll see it in the result data
    },
    {
      host: 'plus.url.google.com',
      display: 'plus.google.com'
    }
  ],

  // Set custom organic sources
  organics: [
    {
      host: 'bing.com',
      param: 'q',
      display: 'bing'
    }
  ],

  // Set `utm_source` & `utm_medium` values for `typein` traffic
  // Defaults are `(direct)` & `(none)`
  typein_attributes: {
    source: '(direct)',
    medium: '(none)'
  },

  // Set time zone
  timezone_offset: 3,

  // Set custom `utm_campaign` param
  campaign_param: 'my_adwords_campaign',

  // Set user ip
  user_ip: '192.168.1.1',

  // Set promocode
  // Default range is [100000..999999]
  promocode: {
    min: 100000,
    max: 999999
  },

  // Set callback-function,
  // It will be executed right after `sbjs` cookies will be set
  callback: doSmth
});

lifetime

lifetime: 6

Setting up custom expiration period for sbjs cookies (in months). Default is 6.

session_length

session_length: 30

Setting up user's session duration (in minutes). Default is 30.

This parameter affects only referral sources overriding. When the visitor comes on your site for the first time, we receive and store the data about his source. After some time this visitor can return to your website, but from another source, and we need to have some rules to decide — should we overwrite previous source or we should not.

The rules are the same with Google Analytics:

UTM and Organic source always overrides any previous source.
Typein never overrides a previous source.
Referral source overrides previous source only if there is no user session at the moment. If it’s inside the same session — a referral source will never override previous source.

Explanation to referral logic: sometimes visitor within the current visit (session) comes to the website from the “source” which is not actually a “source”. For example, it can be visit from the email service, where he had a registration activation link.

domain

domain: {
  host: 'alexfedoseev.com',
  isolate: false
}

Setting up cookies domain.

First of all lets talk about how script handles the absence of this custom option: if no value is set, cookies will be placed for current domain and all its subdomains.

Why it is so. Lets say the site doesn't have subdomains to share traffic with, and now it doesn't matter: do we share the cookies with subdomains or we do not. But what's gonna happen if someday subdomains will occur? If cookies wasn't shared — subdomains won't get them, it means they won't share the traffic, and visitors, which came from main domain to subdomains (and vise versa), will be considered as referral traffic.

So by default the cookies are shared. However if you don't want to share them — use isolate: true, to isolate domain.

Let’s take a look at further examples.

No. 1
The first scenario. You have a site: wow.com. Also you have a blog on this site: blog.wow.com. And you don’t want to separate traffic between them. It means that when the visitor come from blog.wow.com to wow.com, it won’t be a new visit for wow.com (with blog.wow.com as Referral source), it will be a common inner click without source change (to sourcebuster.js this scenario will be equal to inner page change: from wow.com/about to wow.com/contacts for example). To achive this you have to add this line on both sites: wow.com & blog.wow.com.

domain: 'wow.com'

No. 2
That was simple. Now lets take a look at opposite scenario — you want to separate traffic between your subdomains and consider it as Referral. There is the main site — wow.com, and there is a blog on this site — blog.wow.com, which also has users subdomains — alex.blog.wow.com is one of them. You don’t want to separate traffic between blog.wow.com and alex.blog.wow.com, but you do want to separate it between all the blogs and the main site. Here’s how we can sort it out:

// put this on the main domain wow.com
domain: {
  host: 'wow.com',
  isolate: true
}

// and this on the blogs subdomains (blog.wow.com & alex.blog.wow.com) 
domain: 'blog.wow.com'

Pay attention to the isolate: true param in setting for the main domain. Use it only when all incoming traffic from all subdomains should be referral in relation to provided host.

In our example if the visitor came for the first time on the main site wow.com by clicking on the link in user’s blog alex.blog.wow.com, his source (for the wow.com) will be alex.blog.wow.com (traffic type: referral).

NB! Do not change isolate value after you pushed the script in production! If you'll do — your visitors will get doubled cookies and bad things may happen.

The option, that will give the ability to force-update cookies domain (if you need to change subdomains handling rules), is in my TODO-list, but not available yet.

How to check that isolate is set right:

host of the page, which code have setting domain with param isolate: true must be equal to the host provided in domain line:

// CORRECT: on the pages of wow.com
domain: {
  host: 'wow.com',
  isolate: true
}

// DOESN’T MAKE SENSE: on the pages blog.wow.com
domain: {
  host: 'wow.com',
  isolate: true
}

all incoming traffic from all subdomains will be referral in relation to provided host:

domain: {
  host: 'wow.com',
  isolate: true
}
// visit from *.wow.com → wow.com will be referral

referrals

referrals: [
  {
    host: 't.co',            // This is host from Twitter's `http referer`
    medium: 'social',        // This is custom `utm_medium`, you can drop it and it'll be `referral`
    display: 'twitter.com'   // And this is how you'll see it in the result data
  },
  {
    host: 'plus.url.google.com',
    display: 'plus.google.com'
  }
]

Adds custom referral sources.

In general if you’re ok with the fact that medium (utm_medium) of traffic from facebook.com is referral, you don’t need this setting. But if you want to make this kind of traffic social (utm_medium=social), you can set it up using referrals. First param is host of the source from http referer, second — medium — preferred value of utm_medium.

Moreover some of the traffic sources have different referer host in relation to their main domain (for example, traffic from Twitter has referer with the host — t.co). In these cases you can assign alias to the source using optional display param. Also with this param you can group the traffic from the set of the sites into one virtual source.

Twitter (host: 't.co', display: 'twitter.com') and Google+ (host: 'plus.url.google.com', display: 'plus.google.com') added to default referral sources. You still can override it by your custom setting (to mark it as social for example).

organics

There are already a number of predefined organic sources in the core:

Source         ->  Alias
-------------------------
google.all     ->  google
yandex.all     ->  yandex
bing.com       ->  bing
yahoo.com      ->  yahoo
about.com      ->  about
aol.com        ->  aol
ask.com        ->  ask
globososo.com  ->  globo
go.mail.ru     ->  go.mail.ru
rambler.ru     ->  rambler
tut.by         ->  tut.by

But you can use this setting, if you want to add more organic sources or override aliases of predefined ones.

organics: [
  {
    host: 'bing.com',
    param: 'q',
    display: 'bing_in_da_house'
  }
]

For example you want the traffic from the SERP of bing.com to be organic and the alias for this source to be bing_in_da_house. So you need to provide host: 'bing.com', and the query param of keyword — 'q'. Both are required. Also, to set custom alias for the source, provide optional third param display: 'bing_in_da_house'.

To get the keyword param go to bing.com and search for smth, “apple” for example. After you’ll get to the SERP, explore its URL: http://www.bing.com/search?q=apple&go=&qs=n&form=QBLH&pq=apple&sc=8-5&sp=-1&sk=&cvid=718ad07527244c319ecebf44aa261f64

Keyword param — 'q' — is a symbol/word between “?” (or “&” if the param is not the first after question sign) and “=apple” in URL of SERP.

typein_attributes

typein_attributes: {
  source: '(direct)',
  medium: '(none)'
}

Sets custom utm_source and utm_medium for typein traffic. By default the values of source and medium for typein traffic are (direct) & (none). You can override this via typein_attributes.

timezone_offset

timezone_offset: 3

Setting up time zone.

By default datetime is taken from the visitor's system. But you can normalize it to predefined time zone via timezone_offset.

Example. Your visitor is in London (UTC +00:00). His local time is 03:00 AM. If no timezone_offset was set, the time in cookie will be 03:00 AM. Another visitor at the same moment is from Berlin (UTC +01:00) and his local time is 04:00 AM. The time in cookie will be 04:00 AM.

If you want to normalize time of all visitors (let it be UTC +03:00 for example), you should set it via timezone_offset: 3. So the time in cookies of both visitors will be 06:00 AM.

campaign_param (Google AdWords `gclid` param handler)

campaign_param: 'my_adwords_campaign'

Sets custom GET-param, whose value (if present) will be set as utm_campaign in cookies (if there is no original utm_campaign in request). This feature was added mainly because of Google AdWords gclid param.

Here is the use-case. If you have traffic from Google AdWords and you use gclid param, you can shorten your urls by removing utm out of it. Sourcebuster will match this traffic as utm from Google.

If there is only gclid param in url: http://statica.alexfedoseev.com/sourcebuster-js/?gclid=sMtH

This will give you the following results:

Traffic type: utm
utm_source: google
utm_medium: cpc
utm_campaign: google_cpc
utm_content: (none)
utm_term: (none)

You can provide a custom utm_campaign name via campaign_param and value of this GET-param: http://statica.alexfedoseev.com/sourcebuster-js/?gclid=sMtH&my_adwords_campaign=test_custom

You'll get the following:

Traffic type: utm
utm_source: google
utm_medium: cpc
utm_campaign: test_custom
utm_content: (none)
utm_term: (none)

WARNING

If there is original utm-param in request (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign), it will override gclid param and campaign_param param value.
If there is only custom campaign param (campaign_param) in request, Sourcebuster will consider it as utm traffic.

user_ip

user_ip: '192.168.1.1'

Sets user’s ip address. By default sourcebuster can’t get ip address of the visitor. But if you need it, you can get it on your back-end and push it using user_ip setting.

promocode (beta)

promocode: true

// or
promocode: {
  min: 100000,
  max: 999999
}

Sets random promocode for visitor.

If you don't want to do promocode-stuff on your back, Sourcebuster can generate them or you. There is no check for uniqueness, of course. But you can rely on probability and set range of promocode values min and max params. They are optional, by the way. If they are not set, range will be between 100 000 and 999 999.

This option is beta — mainly because I haven't check the percent of duplicated promos on big projects.

callback

callback: doSmth

Callback. Just pass the name of the function to the option, and it will be executed right after the cookies will be set. Callback will get the object with sbjs data as argument.

sbjs.init({ callback: go });

function go(sb) {
  console.log('Cookies are set! Your current source is: ' + sb.current.src);
}

Usage

Getting the data

Grab the data through sbjs.get method (it's object actually).

Here is the list of what you can get.

`sbjs.get.current`

Params of the latest visitor’s source. If the visitor had more than one source, this will be the latest values.

sbjs.get.current.typ Traffic type. Possible values: utm, organic, referral, typein.
sbjs.get.current.src Source. utm_source, actually.
sbjs.get.current.mdm Medium, utm_medium. Values can be customized using utm-params and referrals.
sbjs.get.current.cmp Campaign. Value of utm_campaign.
sbjs.get.current.cnt Content. Value of utm_content.
sbjs.get.current.trm Keyword. Value of utm_term.

`sbjs.get.current_add`

Additional info about the visit, when the current source was written.

sbjs.get.current_add.fd Date and time of the visit. Format: yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss. Time zone can be customized via timezone_offset.
sbjs.get.current_add.ep Entrance point.
sbjs.get.current_add.rf Referer URL.

`sbjs.get.first` & `sbjs.get.first_add`

Just like sbjs.get.current & sbjs.get.current_add, but holds params of the very first visit. Stored once, never overwritten.

`sbjs.get.session`

Current opened session data.

sbjs.get.session.pgs How many pages user have seen during the current session.
sbjs.get.session.cpg Current page URL.

`sbjs.get.udata`

Additional user data: visits, ip & user-agent.

sbjs.get.udata.vst How many times user visited site.
sbjs.get.udata.uip Current ip-address.
sbjs.get.udata.uag Current user-agent (browser).

`sbjs.get.promo`

Visitor's promocode. Cookie set only if promocode option is present.

sbjs.get.promo.code Promocode.

Cookies

All data are stored in cookies. When the script is pushed to production, visitors will get the following yummies:

sbjs_current
sbjs_current_add
sbjs_first
sbjs_first_add
sbjs_session
sbjs_udata
sbjs_promo

sbjs_current & sbjs_first

Format
typ=organic|||src=google|||mdm=organic|||cmp=(none)|||cnt=(none)|||trm=(none)

Examples

# source: adv campaign with utms
typ=utm|||src=yandex|||mdm=cpc|||cmp=my_adv_campaign|||cnt=banner_1|||trm=buy_my_stuff

# source: google's SERP
typ=organic|||src=google|||mdm=organic|||cmp=(none)|||cnt=(none)|||trm=(none)

# source: referral from site.com/referer-path
typ=referral|||src=site.com|||mdm=referral|||cmp=(none)|||cnt=/referer-path|||trm=(none)

# source: facebook with custom `referrals` setting
typ=referral|||src=facebook.com|||mdm=social|||cmp=(none)|||cnt=(none)|||trm=(none)

# source: direct visit
typ=typein|||src=(direct)|||mdm=(none)|||cmp=(none)|||cnt=(none)|||trm=(none)

sbjs_current_add & sbjs_first_add

Format
fd=2014-06-11 17:28:26|||ep=http://statica.alexfedoseev.com/sourcebuster-js/|||rf=https://www.google.com

sbjs_session

Format pgs=3|||cpg=http://statica.alexfedoseev.com/sourcebuster-js/

sbjs_udata

Format
vst=2|||uip=192.168.1.1|uag=Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_9_3) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/35.0.1916.114 Safari/537.36

sbjs_promo

Format code=002354

Limitations

Visits from https to http

When the visitor come from https web-site to http, the request don't have a referer. So the script will consider it as typein (direct visit).

Keywords

FAQs

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Package last updated on 27 Mar 2019

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Install

@modulbank/sourcebuster

Sourcebuster JS

1.0.5 is released.

About

Links

Install

Setup

Configure

lifetime

session_length

domain

referrals

organics

typein_attributes

timezone_offset

campaign_param (Google AdWords gclid param handler)

user_ip

promocode (beta)

callback

Usage

Getting the data

sbjs.get.current

sbjs.get.current_add

sbjs.get.first & sbjs.get.first_add

sbjs.get.session

sbjs.get.udata

sbjs.get.promo

Cookies

sbjs_current & sbjs_first

sbjs_current_add & sbjs_first_add

sbjs_session

sbjs_udata

sbjs_promo

Limitations

Visits from https to http

Keywords

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campaign_param (Google AdWords `gclid` param handler)

`sbjs.get.current`

`sbjs.get.current_add`

`sbjs.get.first` & `sbjs.get.first_add`

`sbjs.get.session`

`sbjs.get.udata`

`sbjs.get.promo`