PLEASE READ: About Tracking IDs
The tracking parameter ID is not mandatory and can be anything. You can use the same ID for different URLs if you are tracking the same campaign, you do not need a new ID for each URL as long as you're tracking the same thing.
Example: a brochure might have 10 QR codes that each have different URLs but share the same tracking ID because we want to know that all the visits came from that one brochure.
Rules: Make the ID unique so that we can differentiate it from any other ID (Program numbers are a great). The full URL is displayed just above the QR code below. PLEASE REVIEW IT.
Generate QR code
File Name Creator
Copy this text once it updates:
It's a blue QR code pointing to https://nicic.gov
The Year and Month have been automatically prepended to your ID to assist with uniqueness.
PLEASE SAVE THIS ID for your records, email it to yourself, so you can generate a report later
Right click on the QR code and choose Save As... Then, when the download box pops up, paste in the title from the right side of the second grey box on the page. Then save the image to your computer.
Definition: A campaign (referenced below) is any group of URLs you want to track with a single ID. This could be a brochure, GovDelivery email, Tweet/X post, or something else. Campaigns should be distinct from each other and time-bound so that you can tell one from another.
General Guidelines for Tracking IDs:
- Each ID should be descriptive of what it is tracking, but short. Example: 2027-01-whats-new-brochure-pdf
- The year and month that the tracking ID is created will be automatically prepended to the ID to help keep IDs unique. Having worked with them before, there's often a problem where people use the same ID for too many things and their reporting is bad because you can't distinguish one source of traffic from another.
- The same ID SHOULD be used for different URLs as long as they are tracking the same campaign. For example, if we create a brochure, you probably want all the links in the brochure to have the same tracking ID so that we know someone accessed one of the links from that brochure/campaign and not a different one.
You probably don't want a unique ID for every link. If each link had its own ID, then you'd have to run the report once for each ID and then merge all the different ID's data into a unified report instead of just running one report for the common ID that are really part of the same campaign. - Tracking IDs should always be unique from other IDs, the year and month will help with this, but information like Program numbers or just a unique string of text really help. If you use the same ID for multiple campaigns, there isn't a good way to separate the data to know that they came from separate sources. Date kind of works, but someone could still be using an old brochure and because a new ID wasn't created, we have no idea whether the new brochure or old brochure is generating links. This is why IDs should be unique per campaign/source.