I am implementing event tracking system in to my web application using Google Analytic.
using
_trackEvent(category, action, opt_label, opt_value, opt_noninteraction)
but I cannot find a a way to track the event time as well for each events
any idea please ?
Firstly, there are time-based dimensions in the custom reports, for instance Dimensions > Visitors > Hour. Have you checked that out?
But if you were wanting to specifically pass the time...
What are you using "category", "action" and "opt_label" for? I'm guessing you are probably using category and action, but are you using opt_label? You can pass the current timestamp there...
Alternatively you could pass a custom variable with a timestamp value. Depending on how much traffic you are getting, and/or expected length of activities...I would suggest rounding the times to nearest quarter hour, half hour, full hour, half day or full day or whatever (again, whatever makes most sense for your site). That way you won't have to sort out hits for literally every second of the day (because really, how actionable is it to know 100 visitors did something at 12:00p vs. 12:01p, sort of thing)
Related
I would like to compare some data between a 3rd party analytics tool and GA.
Now I would love to see the IP addresses that Ga is receiving however it seems that they do not reveal this information, fine, however, I cannot find a way to use the flat table in the GA custom report to show me the following if possible;
Full Date Time (Seems as though they don't want you to have this either)
Browser Version
Browser Width & Height
Page (from the hit)
And I would like this data not to be grouped by the metric, this way I can see that if the same user has hit a page 3 times it isn't grouped.
If anyone can help please let me know. If the question is poorly phrased please let me know.
Thanks,
Connor.
This requires some work, and it will allow the breakdown only for future hits, not for hits that are already collected.
To view individual hits you need to create a hit based dimension that is unique per hit. Unless your page has an amazing amount of traffic a timestamp in milliseconds (e.g. new Date().getTime()) will be sufficient (for your report you might want to format that in a nice way). So in the admin section of your GA property you go to custom definitions, create a hit scoped custom dimension, and then modify your pagecode to send the timestamp to that dimension. Hit scoped means it is attached to the pageview (or other interacton hit) it is sent with.
If you want to break down your report by user you need the clientid (clientid is how Google recognizes that hits belong to the same user). Again, send it as a custom dimension.
This does not tell you how many sessions the user had (there is no session identifier in GA). If you need to know that you can create a session scoped custom dimension and send a random number along ("session scope" means that GA only stores the last value in a session, so you don't need to maintain a session id over multiple pageviews, since the last value will be set for all hits within the session). The number of different sessions ids per client id then tells you the number of sessions per user.
The takeaway is that GA only shows aggregated data, and if you want to defeat this mechanism you need to throw data at it that cannot be aggregated further. You might run into other constraints (i.e. there is a limited number of rows per report).
I created an IFTTT recipe that logs the time I arrive and leave work every day, but it always records it in 1hr blocks.
I'm using iPhone's location to track when I arrive and leave. Everything seems to be working, but calendar events are showing as 1hr blocks rather than just a timestamp.
For example, if I arrive at 8:05am it will show as a block on my calendar from 8:05 to 9:05 rather than just showing for one minute. I'd rather it just say "I arrived at work at 8:05". Thanks in advance!
Am I right in assuming you used the default "Track your work hours in Google Calendar" applet made by Google ?
It uses the Quick add event action to add this event to your calendar. Instead, create your own version of the applet that uses the Create a detailed event action. This allows you to set the following parameters (specifically, it includes Start time and End time):
You can set the start time and end time to the same value, but it will, of course, still read as an event that runs from e.g. 9:05 to 9:05.
If you want to record just a single timestamp, you will need to use a different service to store your data. Perhaps record the data in a Google spreadsheet ?
Any queries, post a comment and I'll get back to you.
Is it possible to export a list of all page views, with timestamps, out of google analytics?
Currently I can see page views per day, but not specific times for each view. I do see real-time data as it comes in, so I assume the time for each view is being stored.
If not, how might I go about sending that data when I report the page view in a way that will make it accessible in the dashboard?
[[UPDATE]] The Google Analytics v4 API now includes a "dateHourMinute" dimension.
Inside Google Analytics, I think the problem you will run into is that a "timestamp" includes Date, Hour, Minute, Second (and maybe millisec) and you can only drill into one secondary dimension at a time (ie: just date). An alternative method is to use the query explorer or just use the Google Analytics API.
Ad Hoc Report with query explorer
You can use the Google Analytics API Explorer: https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/query-explorer/
It will allow you to select:
A date range
Metrics: (like Users, pageviews, etc)
Dimensions: pagePath, Date, Hour, Minute (can't go to second or further, as in a timestamp, though)
Use filters to get rid of some data.
If your website gets a decent amount of traffic (> 50,000 pageviews per month), you might want to grab it 1 month (or less) at a time to avoid hitting limits/sampling effects.
#doctaj solution works. Please just note that if you are using the query-explorer for example, "dateHourMinute" dimension is considered 3 dimensions and will burn 3 spots from your available 7 or 10 dimensions that you can query. So if you need more dimensions, you need to decide which is more important to you. For example, you may want to query for the date and hour dimensions separately to drop the minutes in favour of something else.
I wish to extract (via the Analytics Core Reporting API) all the transactions made TODAY by users that had a specific ga:eventCategory few weeks ago.
I'm looking to see the date of a transaction and all dated of event that are related to that transaction.
If GA was sql I would join by the ga user and take in the dimension both his transactions date and his dimension update date...
Thanks.
Noam.
Like I have indicated in my comment you can segment the data to include only those users who have the specific event. Segmentation works fine with the core reporting API.
Your segment defintion would look like this:
users::condition::ga:eventCategory==[myEventCategory]
(where obviously the thing in [brackets] is a placeholder that needs to be substituted for the event category name). The "users::" prefix means you are segmenting by user scope (as opposed to sessions), so this will include all sessions in the selected timeframe for users who had the event at least in one of their session (even if the event was outside the selected timeframe).
Select transactionId as dimension and some metric (revenue) and todays date and you are done. Or you would be done if this was actually going to work, but there are at least two caveats:
Google Analytics does not work in realtime, so it's unlikely that TODAYs transactions are fully available (Google says it's 24 hours until the data is processed - actually it might happen faster, but you cannot rely on it).
If a user has deleted his or her cookie she won't be recognized as a recurring user and GA will be unable to segment her out. The longer the interval between the event and the transaction the less likey it is that the GA cookie is still present.
So even with a technically correct query it might be that you won't get the data you need.
We have a website that has a large number of events that have dates and times created by admins. Admins choose a time zone for each date time entered, and they are stored in UTC time. We are trying to support a global audience, and be completely localized in terms of dates.
We have a search page, that allows dates to be entered as search criteria.
So users could say, show me all events between "12:01 AM July-1-2011" and "11:59 PM July 10-2011".
I'm trying to figure out what the best approach is to determining what time zone to consider the date filter criteria in.
Force end users to select a time zone when creating a date filters. This is cumbersome, and our designers our pushing back. It is what I would prefer.
Assume the the entered dates are in the users "preferred" time zone, which is set upon logging in.
Store times in Local time, without converting to UTC. This way the end users are searching in the admin created date. I hate this idea, i need help explaining why this is bad.
Please help!
Second option is possible solution to your problem. And it is probably the best.
Possibly you could get current time zone offset from web browser (with JavaScript) but the problem is, there are certain time zones that currently have the same offset but Daylight Saving Time switches on different dates, therefore search result would be inaccurate. By having User to choose his/her prefer time zone and storing that information in the profile, you could always present correct dates and times, as well as use this information for searching. However, I would add an information near search box, so that end User would know what time zone this refers to (with JavaScript that would be obvious: the current one, with profile User might forgot).
BTW. Time zone information is best to show as "UTC+02:00 (Warsaw, Zagreb, Skopje)" instead "Central European Time"...
As for other options:
1. Too much clicking. As well as "don't make me think, I want to have it in my local time zone, isn't that obvious?".
3. Local times will not be comparable against each other. You will soon end up with two different dates referring to the same point in time (at least in terms of the numbers). Really bad idea.