You can read Steve’s comment here

Probably everyone is aware of this by now so my apologies for suggesting something long after the fact; I believe Stephane Hamel’s WASP tool does what you ask. You’d need to get in touch with Stephane for more details.

If a solution (i mean any solution) is too hard for a client to implement (or do correctly in some cases as tags seem to) then shouldn’t the vendors be looking for an alternative methodology for building analytics information.

Cheers,
Dean Collins
www.Amethon.com

WA vendors supply the tools. They provide instructions on how to tag a site. Sometimes they even help with that tagging. However I don’t think you can hold the vendors to blame for shoddy tagging on the part of their customer.

There’s been several posts about integrating WA tagging into CMS. If that’s possible then go for it. It will certainly reduce human error if the CMS adds the tags it needs to (and I’m a big advocate for CMS and WA vendors partnering here). But its likely there are always going to be those exceptions that need to be “hand coded”. And errors definitely creep in.

I’ve been working with our businesses around the world for over 4 years now, purely trying to get the tagging implemented in a consistent, and clearly documented manner and we’re still not 100% there, and this is mainly due to tagging errors - whether inadvertent, or a local business thinking they know better and doing their own thing.

In fact recently we’ve taken the step Debbie suggests - working with a third party to design a test that automatically crawls any of our 150+ sites and checks the tagging. But its difficult to get an automated crawler to log on to a secure site, or complete a multi-step application (it can be done of course, its just not easy). So you’re often still left with the issue of having to manually check some pages.

You suggest that WA vendors who partner with people who have “calibration” (we call it auditing) as a core competency must in some part be assuming responsibility for proper calibration, but I disagree.

Partnering isn’t about accepting the responsibility for their customers tagging. Its about producing a tool that is pre-configured to check that particular WA vendor’s tags - to understand their specific JavaScript - rather than (as we have had to do) develop an auditing solution from scratch. Whether this is offered as part of the WA vendor’s solution, or as a value-add extra is up to each vendor. But the need for such a solution is definitely there.