Social shares tracking in GA - google-analytics

Question

This is pretty much covered topic for original FB/Twitter buttons. But what if I have my own "share on fb" button? Like this:
<div id="fb_share"><a target="_blank" href="http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=blah-blah">Share on FB</a></div>
so I've come up with the folloing solution:
var FBbtn = document.getElementById("fb_share");
FBbtn.addEventListener('click', function() {
ga('send', 'social', {
'socialNetwork': 'facebook',
'socialAction': 'share',
'socialTarget': window.location
});
//console.log('tracked');
});
That is placed AFTER the Google Analytics code.
Despite the fact it wont catch FB callback - it is supposed to do the trick but for some reason I still cannot see any results in Analytics so the question is this: will the solution actually work? In fact it could be even like this I believe:
FB

Answer 1

Your 'share on Facebook' links causes the page to navigate (and not open a new window/tab). When this navigation happens, most mainstream browsers cancel all pending HTTP requests for the current page and then navigates to the new page (fb.com)
In this scenario, one of the pending HTTP requests will be the GA event tracking call which will therefore never complete and never be received by the GA servers.
What you need to use is the GA hit callback functionality, this essentially cancels the native navigation (to FB), sends the tracking call and waits enough time for it to complete and then does a JavaScript redirection to the next page.
You should read the google docs here
In your case your event tracking function should be similar to this:
var FBbtn = document.getElementById("fb_share");
FBbtn.addEventListener('click', function() {
ga('send', 'social', {
'socialNetwork': 'facebook',
'socialAction': 'share',
'socialTarget': window.location,
'hitCallback': function(){
window.location = this.href;
}
});
//console.log('tracked');
return false;
});
So I've made the following changes:
Added the hitCallback property to the event tracking call. this is an anonymous function that is called once the GA servers have sent their response to the event tracking.
added a 'return false' statement which cancels the native functionality and then relies on the hitCallback function to do the navigating.