I am new to Google Analytics.
We would like the analysis of our data data to focus on specific brand promotion, in my application I have the data from twitter, facebook and instagram. I would like to track user activity and collect data on click event such as
Title of the post
date of the post
channel(twitter,facebook,instagram)
etc.
I want to use an application unique user id and analyze the data based on a specific userid.
I have read custom Variables in Google Analytics, but I am not sure about how much analytics will help me to tracked above information.
From the Google Analytics Terms of Service:
Privacy.
You will not (and will not allow any third party to) use the Service
to track, collect or upload any data that personally identifies an
individual (such as a name, email address or billing information), or
other data which can be reasonably linked to such information by
Google. You will have and abide by an appropriate Privacy Policy and
will comply with all applicable laws, policies, and regulations
relating to the collection of information from Visitors.
That being said if your website has a Userid that can not be used to directly map back to a user. You could place that user id into a custom dimension.
You need only configure it in your Google analytics account then add a tracking code like this to your site
ga('set', 'dimension1', 'XXXXXXXX');
Then you will be able to use user id as a secondary dimension in most of the Reports on the website.
Related
I have a company domain google site and enabled google analytics account. Could somebody advice if it is possible to view same domain site visitors by name?
I want to track who of my colleagues visited my site and what is the frequency.
Thanks.
In order to connect a user in Google Analytics to a person, you'd need some sort of system to make the connection. This could be a login, a form, a url parameter, or something like that, where at a certain point you know who they actually are. At that point, you can assign them an ID (in a custom dimension) and make reports tracking their behavior.
It is worth noting (as above) that you can't store personal info in Google Analytics - so the ID would have to be non-identifying, like a GUID or random, numerical ID.
Some strategies for connecting website users to individuals include:
Email Marketing - Many email marketing companies allow you to pass a unique identifier in the URL of anything they click. You could then read this url parameter with javascript and assign it to a custom dimension in Google Analytics.
Login/SignUp - You might have some content behind a login-wall. For example, in order to download a document, you make the user fill out some personal information (like an email and their name), then email a link to the document to them. Once you have the user's information in your system (via the form submission), you can grab the user's ID from the submission.
Manual Parameter - Similar to the "Email" one, you could just email your colleagues a link to the website with a custom ID on each link. Just read that parameter from the URL with javascript and assign it to a custom dimension.
is there a way in google analytics that we can retrieve user information, like ip, time browse etc? I need to track specific user on our website but it seems it was impossible
Google Analytics does not display a users IP address to you, while you could in theory save this in a custom dimension, along with other personal information about your user.
Personal information:
The Google Analytics terms of service, which all Google Analytics customers must adhere to, prohibits sending personally identifiable information (PII) to Google Analytics (such as names, social security numbers, email addresses, or any similar data), or data that permanently identifies a particular device (such as a mobile phone’s unique device identifier if such an identifier cannot be reset), even in hashed form. Your Google Analytics account could be terminated and your data destroyed if you use any of this information.
Answer: It is not possible to receive personal user specific information from Google Analytics, while it is possible for you to send this information yourself in the form of a custom dimension it is not advisable because it is against the terms of service.
All Information in Google Analytics can not be directly related back to a specific user.
I'm wondering if it is possible to receive user specific information (frontend or backend) from Google Analytics.
For example: A user arrives on our site and we can read from Google Analytics, hey this person is XX years and has these interests.
I've read some blogs about Google Analytics and the cookies, from which it should be possible to extract the unique user ID (NOT given by us but by Google Analytics). Maybe that's where the identification could start.
Is it possible and if, how?
Kind regards!
What you are referring to is the Demographic and interest reports. This data comes to Google by the way of DoubleClick cookie.
What is the Double click cookie?
DoubleClick uses cookies to improve advertising. Some common applications are to target advertising based on what’s relevant to a user, to improve reporting on campaign performance, and to avoid showing ads the user has already seen.
User ID in Google analytics:
User ID enables the analysis of groups of sessions, across devices, using a unique, persistent, and non-personally identifiable ID string representing a user.
Note: The user id is used internally by Google Analytics its not possible for you to see this User id via the Website or the API.
Personal information:
The Google Analytics terms of service, which all Google Analytics customers must adhere to, prohibits sending personally identifiable information (PII) to Google Analytics (such as names, social security numbers, email addresses, or any similar data), or data that permanently identifies a particular device (such as a mobile phone’s unique device identifier if such an identifier cannot be reset), even in hashed form. Your Google Analytics account could be terminated and your data destroyed if you use any of this information.
Answer: It is not possible to receive personal user specific information from Google Analytics, while it is possible for you to send this information yourself in the form of a custom dimension it is not advisable because it is against the terms of service.
I'm firing an event to GA that looks like:
_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Subscribe Modal', 'submit', 'test#test.com']);
This tracks when a user has entered their email to sign up for a newsletter where 'test#test.com' is the email address they entered.
What I would like to do is generate a table from GA that lists each recorded email address and the source/medium associated with that event.
I'm not sure is this is possible but any help would be appreciated.
You do know that you are not allowed to upload personally identifiable data to Google Analytics, according to Googles TOS?
Google Analytics protects the confidentiality of your data in several ways:
Google Analytics customers are prohibited from sending personal information to Google.
The Google Analytics terms of service, which all Google Analytics customers must adhere to, prohibits sending personally identifiable information (PII) to Google Analytics. PII includes any data that can be used by Google to identify an individual, including (but not limited to) names, email addresses or billing information.
Data cannot be shared without consent.
Google Analytics data may not be shared without customer consent, except under certain limited circumstances, such as when required by law.
Google Analytics continues to invest in security.
Security-dedicated engineering teams at Google guard against external threats to data. Internal access to data (e.g. by employees) is regulated and subject to the Employee Access Controls and Procedures.
Please read further here: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6004245?hl=en-GB
But to answer your question, that is indeed possible. Look at the area called "Secondary Dimension" on the "Top events"-report page. There you can choose if you want to see Source/Medium, only Sources or only Medium, as in this screenshot:
I am building a website and every user will upload images. The users' images will have unique IDs. The users will have their own dashboard with analytics.
I want to provide every user with analytics data (unique visitors, page views, bounce rate, etc.) for their own information. I am thinking of using google analytics for this instead of building something on my own.
Can this be done through google analytics legally? Are there any restrictions on showing such analytics information directly to the user?
The legal restriction with the Google TOS is that Google must not have any way to connect collected data to an existing person ( "data which can be reasonably linked to such information by Google", TOS §7). You are allowed to store anonymous IDs that can be matched in your own backend to persons as long as they cannot be resolved to individual users by Google.