I am trying to use PHP to fire hits at Google to track newsletter opens and clickthroughs. I want to use the same technique for both clickthroughs and opens since the clickthroughs will go to sites outside of my own control - I want to be able to report on the clickthrough rates of the newsletters regardless of where the clicks go to. I was thinking of trying code.google.com/p/php-ga/ but there is little in the way of example code/support docs to start with so I am hesitant.
Here is my url to __utm.gif broken up over the lines for clarity:
utm.gif?utmac=MO-xxx31982-1">http://www.google-analytics.com/_utm.gif?utmac=MO-xxx31982-1
&utmhn=myfake.com
&utmcc=_utma%3D7042858245.1436153422.1214501708.1340117181.1340117181.1%3B%2B_utmz%3D1.1340117181.1.1.utmcsr%3D%28direct%29%7Cutmccn%3D%28direct%29%7Cutmcmd%3D%28none%29%3B
&utmwv=1
&utmr=click
&utm_source=Emails
&utm_medium=Newsletter
&utm_campaign=tet+2012-06-19+10%3A41%3A30
&utmp=%2FMYZZ%2FNEWSLETTERS
&uservar=16430
Does the utmhn need to be a legit URL or one associated with the account? What about utmr? I was using that to contain 'click' or 'open' so I could differentiate.
When I click a link in the newsletter I get the expected pixel image returned so Google is getting something anyway even if ignoring my querystring. In my Google Analytics account where should I see the data relating the the __utm.gif hits? So far I see none when using this technique.
P.S. I got this technique from here
Follow up:
I changed a few things and my url now looks like so:
utm.gif?utmwv=1">http://www.google-analytics.com/_utm.gif?utmwv=1
&utmn=8391432847
&utmsr=click
&utmsc=-
&utmul=-
&utmje=0
&utmfl=-
&utmdt=-
&utmhn=myfake.com
&utm_source=my_newsletter
&utm_medium=Emails
&utm_campaign=tet 2012-06-19 10:41:30
&utmr=my_newsletter
&utmp=images/google/click
&utmac=MO-xxx31982-1
&utmcc=_utma%3D24820632.1925394567.1340121629.1340121629.1340121629.2%3B%2B_utmb%3D24820632%3B%2B_utmc%3D24820632%3B%2B_utmz%3D24820632.1340121629.2.2.utmccn%3D(direct)%7Cutmcsr%3D(direct)%7Cutmcmd%3D(none)%3B%2B__utmv%3D24820632.6430%3B
and nothing happens except when I paste that link into my browser then Google gets it, so why does it not work when called from the PHP line $handle = fopen ($urchinUrl1, "r");?
ok, nevermind. I changed my app around so the utm.gif is just included in the email and in a redirect page rather than called from the script. Should have done it that way but got caught up in the fancier idea of calling the url from php.
Even though this question is over a year old...the GA measurement protocol can be used to send hits back to GA for newsletter opens and clickthroughs.
To answer your initial question, it looks like you're missing the utmhid and utmn parameters.
Related
In adobe analytics I try to implement link tracking for all links can be found in a page using this:
$(document).on('click', 'a', function() {
s.tl(this, 'e', 'external', null, 'navigate');
return false;
});
Try to test it using a page like this
The extra calls are likely coming from how you have Adobe Analytics configured. There are a handful of config variables that will cause extra requests depending on how you set them (on their own and/or in relation to each other).
Here is a listing of Adobe Analytics variables for reference. These are the ones for you to look at:
s.trackDownloadLinks - If this is enabled, any standard links with href value ending in value(s) specified in s.linkDownloadFileTypes will trigger a request on click. Generally, this is to enable automatic tracking for links that prompt a visitor to download something (e.g. a pdf file).
s.trackExternalLinks - If this is enabled, any standard links with href NOT matched in s.linkInternalFilters OR matched with s.linkExternalFilters will trigger a request on click. Generally, this is to enable automatic tracking for links you count as visitor navigating off your site(s).
s.linkInternalFilters - If you have either of the above enabled, clicking on links may trigger a request, depending on values here vs. what you enabled above vs. what you have in s.linkExternalFilters. Generally, this should include values that represent links you do NOT want to count as navigating off your site(s).
s.linkExternalFilters - If you have either of the above enabled, clicking on links may trigger a request, depending on values here vs. what you enabled above vs. what you have in s.linkInternalFilters. Generally, you should never set this. It's intended for edge-use-cases for people who know what they are doing and have a complex site eco-system and definitions of what counts as internal vs. external.
s.trackInlineStats - This is for clickmap/heatmap tracking. This may or may not trigger an extra request, depending on how a lot of different stars align.
In addition to these, you may already have some plugins or other custom code that triggers click tracking. For example, there are linkHandler, exitLinkTracker, and downloadLinkTracker plugins that you may have included in your code that may play a part in extra requests being triggered.
Finally, more recent versions of Adobe Analytics code may trigger multiple requests depending on how much data you are trying to send in the request (whereas older versions just truncated the request, which resulted in data loss).
In any case, the long story short here is if you are looking to roll your own custom link tracking, you should make sure the above variables/plugins are removed or otherwise disabled.
But on the note of rolling your own custom link tracking.. I'm getting a sense of de ja vu here, like I already made a comment about this relatively recently in another post, over this exact same code... but generally speaking, this is not a good idea:
$(document).on('click', 'a', function() {
s.tl(this, 'e', 'external', null, 'navigate');
return false;
});
You are wholesale implementing exit link tracking on every single link of your page. And you are giving them all the same generic "external" label. And the native exit link reports are pretty limited and useless to begin with, so ideally you should also pop an eVar or something with the exit url or something.
But more importantly.. unless literally every single link on your pages are links that navigate your visitor off-site, this is not going to be useful to you in reports in general, and it's even going to ruin a lot of your reports.
I can't believe (or accept) that you really want to count every link on your pages as exit links..
I assume s.tl does an ajax call.
It should then forward the link to the href of the link - if the link is allowed to be followed immediately, the ajax call will be interrupted which seems to be what you see
You may want to change to
$(document).on('click', 'a', function(e) {
e.preventDefault();
s.tl(this, 'e', 'external', null, 'navigate');
});
I found this article when looking to see what s.tl is https://marketing.adobe.com/developer/forum/general-topic-forum/difference-between-s-t-and-s-tl-function
Let's say I have a site and the user comes into it with a parameter:
http://example.com&url=blahblahblah
How do I go about passing along the url value from the parameter into Google Analytics?
1) User comes to the page with a url in the params
2) User clicks a download link with a ga tracking code attached to it which was generated from ga account like this:
http://example.com/download/param1=dkljdf&_ga=1.149898996.39207121.1424368466
You have to create a custom Dimension and a metric for that.
About custom Dimensions and metrics:
https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/platform/customdimsmets
After you have created a Dimension, you can add metrics to it by view, in example.
Follow the steps here for Universal Analytics:
https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/custom-dims-mets
Note that due to not have 10 point of reputation, I wrote the a "_" in http like "ht_tp"
BUT:
I think what you want to know is the number os visitors that clicks a download link in your site that comes from, lets say "blahblahblah" as web origin or other methods.
For that, you have the param utm_source that you can receive directly in the url.
So instead of ht_tp://example.com&url=origin you should receive ht_tp://example.com&utm_source=origin
In this way, you have no care about it. Analytics is going to take care for you so you can get a report of clicks by source.
Or, just use the referer in case all the incoming visitors are from webs:
ga('set', 'referrer', 'ht_tp://example.com');
And a final option, to use Events:
_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'ReferencedVisitors', jsVarWhereYouHaveTheOrigin]);
I am in the process of setting up enhanced Ecommerce for GA and have had a few requests of additional of what else the client would like to see in their reports. Once of which is
"Where can i see a report if the locations that a use types in when they use the store locator"
There is already an internal search functionality thats been set up and is tracking the search terms people are typing when looking for products, but i'm not sure if i would need to set this up as a second search terms report or if it's something different?
The URL of the page is different to the internal search results and is www.domain.com/store-locator#wales|GB|0|0|0
Any insight into this would be really helpful.
Thanks,
Roxi
As to me knowledge, you are not able to use bookmarks (#something) in GA for internal site search setup. Only GET and POST parameters are allowed. In your situation I think the best solution is to use GA events to send the data about used location each time the user is using this functionality. You need to include addition ga() function call to track those events. Info about how to set it up you could find here: event tracking. After setting things up, you will see all the info about number and type of called events in Behavior -> Events reports section in GA.
Example code:
<button onlick="var hash_location=window.location.hash;ga('send','event','Locator',has_location)">Click me</button>
With such function new event will be send to GA with Event Category=Locator and Event Action=hash in the url. You have some complicated hash, so most probably you need to extract first some info from this using regular expression. Example to get first item from |-separated list in the hash:
var pattern = new RegExp('[^#|]+');
var hash_location = pattern.exec(window.location.hash)[0];
I'm in a situation in which i need to be able to create a topics using self created bot. My forum has a special category and user, which can create a topics in that category.
Technology i'm using to create that bot is ruby + mechanize gem but it's not important right now. That bot works in a following way:
Sign in as previously mentioned user:
visit - /ucp.php?mode=login
fill the sign-in form using user credentials
if, after submiting a form, there is a sign-out link somewhere on the page, threat this whole process as "successfull"
Create a topic
visit - /posting.php?mode=post&f=21
fill subject field with desired subject
fill message field with desired message
submit a form using Submit button
And now, while first point works just great, the second one behaves in a strange way. After submiting a form, there is no error message or anything like that, i'm just getting redirected to /viewforum.php?f=21 (log's says that it's 302 Moved Temporarily status) page and the topic is not there.
Can anyone tell me what such behaviour means? Is there any security mechanism i don't know about? Please also note that the new topic form has form_token and creation_time fields filled correctly while form is beeing submited.
Thanks in advance for any clues.
According to this thread: https://stackoverflow.com/a/11713867/552936, user is treated as a bot if he sends a form without any delay (and it end's up with a 302 redirect). I can't find any info on google what's the exact delay, carck3r says that it's 8 seconds but for me, it was 2 seconds.
How can you modify the URL for the current page that gets passed to Google Analytics?
(I need to strip the extensions from certain pages because for different cases a page can be requested with or without it and GA sees this as two different pages.)
For example, if the page URL is http://mysite/cake/ilikecake.html, how can I pass to google analytics http://mysite/cake/ilikecake instead?
I can strip the extension fine, I just can't figure out how to pass the URL I want to Google Analytics. I've tried this, but the stats in the Google Analytics console don't show any page views:
pageTracker._trackPageview('cake/ilikecake');
Thanks,
Mike
You could edit the GA profile and add custom filters ...
Create a 'Search and Replace' custom filter, setting the filter field to 'Request URI' and using something like:
Search String: (.*ilikecake\.)html$
Replace String: $1
(was \1)
Two possibilities come to mind:
it can take a while, up to about 24 hours, for visits to be reflected in the Analytics statistics. How long ago did you make your change?
try beginning the pathname with a "/", so
pageTracker._trackPageview('/cake/ilikecake');
and then wait a bit, as per the first item.
Usually you have the ga script code at the end of your file, while special _trackPageviews() calls are often used somewhere else.
Have you made sure you have your call to pageTracker._trackPageview() after you have defined the pagetracker?
Like this:
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-XXXXXXX-X");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
otherwise you just get a JavaScript error I suppose.