Is there a way to track the traffic that comes from RSS using google analytics?
In other words to measure page views on RSS feeds through RSS readers and Click-thrus to the site from RSS feeds and readers?
Can I add Google Analytics tracking variables, like utm_source, for RSS feeds??
If so, how?
Pageviews in RSS readers aren't really reliable - the standard doesn't include javascript, and I'd expect RSS readers to simply ignore scripts. Also, the concept of a 'page' doesn't really apply to feeds as strictly as it does to web pages; what the user sees may very well be an accumulation of various feeds from different sources, combined into one document.
Click-throughs from RSS to a regular web page should be doable however, provided you add some magic to the link which you embed in your RSS, and detect that on the web server to adjust your GA calls.
Related
I have a doubt regarding the use of Google News RSS Feed. Google News help states this:
Why Google might block an RSS feed In some cases, Google News might
block a feed. That could happen if you are:
Using Google News feeds for profit or to increase traffic to your site
Reformatting news results so they look like your own content
Changing, editing, or creating works based on content from Google News
I am looking to clarify these points:
Can't I customize the look of the feed? I want to have a separate page for news related to content on my website. Will then I violate the second rule if I customize the look of it? For example, I'll display a slideshow on the top along with a listing in the bottom much like FeedWind or Feedgrabber widgets.
I am surely not violating the third one. But everyone displays Google News on their website to sustain traffic right? Isn't the first rule broken by everyone who uses Google news RSS feed on their website?
Can't I customize the look of the feed?
Create an app or script to grab the feed, parse it, decorate it the way you like. Now, you have successfully customized the look.
I want to have a separate page for news related to content on my website. Will then I violate the 2nd rule if I customize the look of it?
A bit critical question. Let me provide you a simple answer: mention at certain corner that it was from google news feed. When google shows you ads, it puts a little AdChoice at a cozy corner by clicking on which you can confirm that that was an ad from google - follow their strategy, give them proper credit.
I am surely not violating the third one. But everyone displays google news on their website to sustain traffic right? Isn't the first rule broken by everyone who uses Google news rss feed on their website?
When you are providing value to others, then people like to act blind and pretend that what they see is not a promotion. For example, free medical camps are not actually done for helping others if they cannot promote them to get prospective patients (clients/customers) or cannot get free media promotion (again free flow of lot of customers) - forget those doctors who are lonely or have no responsibility or for whatever reason serving for free.
Not specifically a programming question, unfortunately, but I am trying to develop some custom reports using the Google Analytics Core Reporting API (v3) and I'm stuck on how to interpret these referrers (in ga:referralPath or document.referrer) from Google News sites:
/nwshp
/news/rtc
/news/url
/
/news/story
/news/i
... and so on. These are all coming from Google News sites (.com .whatever) obviously, but I'd like to categorize them with more granularity if possible, e.g., Google News front page, etc.
Many thanks in advance (and feel free to point me to a better place to ask, if such a place exists).
According to Chris Boutet, these represent Google News Home page (/nwshp) and Google News Realtime Coverage (/rtc). That's the answer I was looking for. Hope that helps.
Been using internal site search with Google Analytics and while I love the ability to see what my users are searching for, I am having a really hard time figuring out what search terms lead to which pages.
When I search on both the nextPagePath and searchKeyword dimensions while filtering on the search results page at the current path, the nextPagePath is always the search results page even when I know it shouldn't be (when tracking my own obscure searches). The same goes for using the searchDestinationPage dimension. I can't get any data that shows a jump from a search results page to another page on the site.
Here's a cleaned up example of my api query.
dimensions=ga:searchKeyword,ga:nextPagePath&metrics=ga:pageviews&filters=ga:previousPagePath=#dosearch
When I use the standard Analytics UI and look at the Destination Pages list under Content->Site Search->Destination pages, I only have 25 or so, all of which are just the variations on the base search-result page URL.
Do I need additional tracking code on my search results pages? Custom variables? A different query through the API?
I can see the tracking requests going out from both the search results and the pages selected from the results.
I found a couple of questions in the Analytics forums that ask this same question, but none of them had anything resembling a working solution.
I would bet you are not using the proper dimensions in the API
See https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/reporting/core/dimsmets/internalsearch
ga:searchDestinationPage is probably what you wanted when using ga:nextPagePath
On a Wordpress site, I have both a normal blog that I want Google to detect and an RSS feed for outgoing links to other sites. I don't need/want bots to get at this other RSS feed nor do I want people to be able to get the link for their own use.
I've disabled RSS for the main blog successfully but am not sure how to encrypt/protect/hide the RSS link for this additional feed.
I'm not sure how Facebook runs a newsfeed without RSS but however they do it is probably beyond my means/experience to replicate.
Where these are just outgoing links, I don't think copyright notices in the feed will do much. Maybe there is a way to output the links automatically through a means other than RSS?
Use Robots.Text www.robotstxt.org to prevent google from following the link. All self respecting robots should follow the directives in the robots.txt file. This file needs to go in the root of your sit.
The basic answer to this is to use a method of getting the feed entries in a manner other than using the actual RSS like outputting JSON, going through the API, etc.
It will help prevent scraping though not completely.
I'd like to be able to collect RSS feeds online as an alternative to collecting them on a desktop machine using a regularly running process.
Ideally, it would either collect all feeds and simply email them to a single address as soon as it finds a new one (or even without checking for new feeds) or aggregates all the smaller feeds and sends them out as a bulk larger feed less periodically.
It would have to run on a web server continually, but would be a nice to be able to collect all feeds, not just the ones I happen to pick up when a feed reader is running on my machine. Is something like this available?
Just use Google Reader. :)
Google Reader.
Maybe Yahoo's Pipes could help you. It is an interesting way of combining and manipulating feeds.
I'm not sure if you have ever used it but iGoogle allows you to customise the google homepage to display information from around the web. You can add tabs to the page to allow you to split the information up. It's extremely useful and as you can log into it from any computer / browser you can access your feeds anywhere.
If you have a lot of feeds of one type or feeds that update infrequently then iGoogle can also be combined with google reader.
It's also great for adding other plugins like gmail, games, Dilbert :) and more.
To create an iGoogle page go to the google home page and click the iGoogle link in the top right corner. iGoogle will then provide you with a starter page and some suggested content which you can add or ignore. If you click the "Add Stuff" link then "Add feed or gadget" you can manually add all your RSS feeds. However, you can also configure Firefox to automatically select google as your RSS reader when ever you click on an RSS feed icon in the navigation bar. You can select / change this under Tools -> Options -> Applications -> Web Feed.
In order to use your iGoogle on multiple browsers / computers you will need a gmail / google account however it's free and easy to create.
T
simplepie is great if you have PHP installed.
Universal Feed Parser if you're programming in python might be of help