Here's the scenario:
I have a mailing list that contains a PDF download link. The PDF contains ads with clickable links. I need to get analytic data on the link clicks - preferably via Google Analytics (due to the richness of information available).
The solution I have in mind is for the link to go to a web page that I host with some sort of ad-specific token. GA records the request and then I use a client-side technique to redirect to the actual target URL. The redirect page serves no purpose other than to track the click and so I'm not worried about it being perceived as cloaking by search engines.
What I want to know is:
Are there any alternative ways to achieve the tracking without using an intermediate redirect page (could I perhaps call GA server-side somehow)?
If I do use the redirect page approach, what are potential pitfalls could I encounter?
Thanks in advance for any advice.
dunno what server-side environment/language you use but for instance in php you can use cURL to send an image request to google, with the custom code appended to the url. Easiest way to do it is to output the code with javascript with your custom code and then capture the image request url with a sniffer, so you can replicate the format for your cURL request. Make sure to send header info, including fake browser info so GA doesn't weed it out as a bot. Then forward to the ad url. That way you don't need to output a page.
Yeah you still have a 'redirect' happening but you cut out having to have the client download a page or worry about javascript being disabled, etc...
unfortunately there really isn't anything better you can do.
Related
I am creating a Web Widget, a page that customers can use within an HTML Iframe in order to embed our experience on 3rd parties and vendors.
The site will be public, I am not willing to ask consumers to register in order to have a key or a unique identity to be passed as a query param for example (e.g. ?id=<unique_id>).
On the other hand, I need to track who is using the iframe. What are my options? A colleague suggested using the request headers, such as the origin, to track the usage on the server-side. Is that a good strategy? I'm not sure how much I can trust the origin header.
What if I fire an event (hence a client to server call), at page load (such as analytics) which logs the current page URL? Would that work, from within an iframe?
I am pretty sure I am reinventing the wheel here. What would be some good recommendations?
Thanks!
For others ideating for a similar solution, my fix was actually to simply hook a proper client analytics to the page, and trigger a page load event, upon page load, which would push not just the page, but quite a few other properties to our analytics.
Also, we added a clientId query param to our urls, so that we could identify precisely who was serving the iframe visited by the user.
I am sending an marketing Email attaching an image or PDF URL.
Is there is any way to track how may users viewed/clicked this page via google analytics ? I could see the number of page view who accessed html pages but seeking for a way to find how many of them accessed image or PDF URL?
Including a link directly to a pdf or image will simply open the resource without JavaScript tracking or cookies required for Google Analytics.
You would need to send a GA hit from your server in response to the request for those files - neither trivial nor recommended in this case
Rather send the link to a page on your site containing the content.
Tracking that in GA is trivial and is likely already set up on your site.
If you need to have the content in a PDF rather than on the web page directly, have a link to the PDF and track that as an event or Virtual Page View
I would also recommend tagging the link in your email with GA UTM Campaign Parameters to identify the traffic from that link
If your question is about tracking the email itself, please restate the question.
all I am trying to create Google Analytic clone. I know how to get information about the browser location IP and other similar things in PHP
What I want to know is how to create a java-script which sends this information from any website where my code is placed on my server ???
What is the minimum security requirement to create a tracking JavaScript code like google analytics?
redirect users to different pages based on session data in PHP?
Or in other words, do I have to send an ajax request to my server?
Is there any available solution already available subject to java-script?
Most analytics tools generate a url with query string parameters attached to it and then output a 1x1 image pixel, with the img src as the url. Your server would then receive and store the data. The only thing returned is the actual 1x1 pixel. This is the common method because in the event a site does not have js enabled, you wrap a hardcoded img to your server in noscript tags and still get basic info like page view.
But is there a reason why you are wanting to build your own analytics script instead of use an existing one? There are a number of 3rd party ones available, including free ones. Alternatively there is Piwik, which is a free and open source solution if you want to build off it and not have to start from scratch.
What's the best way to track how many times items in your RSS have been accessed?
Assuming your RSS is served from a webserver, the server logs would be the obvious place to gather statistics from. There are numerous packages for parsing and interpreting webserver logs.
AWStats is a popular (free) package, and Wikipedia keeps a fairly comprehensive list.
If you serve your feeds through something like FeedBurner then you can also get stats from there including clicks
You could use Google Analytics, but you would need a service to make the correct requests to the Google Analytics API or redirect to it. There are two APIs you can use:
the __utm.gif "API"
the Measurement Protocol API
To use the later (you need Universal Analytics), which is way better in my opinion, you would need to make a request or redirect to something like:
http://www.google-analytics.com/collect?z=<randomnumber>&t=pageview&dh=<domainname>&cid=<unique-client-uuid>&tid=<propertyid>&v=1dp=<path>
Where:
<randomnumber> is a random number to avoid caches (especially if you do redirects)
<domainname> is the domain name you see in your tracking code
<propertyid> is the property id you see in your tracking code (eg: UA-123456)
<path> is the path to the page you want to register the pageview for. Note that it must be quoted. Eg, for /path/to/page you would need to send %2Fpath%2Fto%2Fpage
I've implemented a simple redirector service that does exactly that here (explained at length here)
If you're stuck with the Classic Analytics then you would need to use nojsstats or the older implementation
Is there a way to test the url you're entering in a step, to see if Google Analytics will recognize it?
What I'd like to do is provide some web page or some web service with a URL, and get a pass or fail. It passes if Google Analytics recognizes a page hit to the url.
Let me give some context.
We've been having issues with our goal funnel steps in Google Analytics. The instructions on adding steps say not to use the domain.
e.g.
DO NOT use : http://www.mysite.com/step1.html
INSTEAD use: /step1.html
Our custom CRM uses friendly urls and as a result GA is having a hard time picking up on them. So we've experimented with changing around url we've placed in the step, however we've got to wait a day to see if the new url we've provided is going to work! Hence why we're looking for something quicker.
OK- so what you're doing is futzing around with the friendly URLs to see what's being tracked (so you can distinguish one URL from another), but you don't want to have to wait?
There are a few Firefox plugins which report on on-page GA (WASP & Observepoint), but the Firebug Net panel is as good as anything.
The other option is to pass a 'virtual URL' to GA in the _trackPageview, rather than depend on the friendly URL - maybe something like this
_trackPageview("/goal1/step1")
although I'd attempt to have the virtual URL (it's really just the path) named more like the actual steps in the process.
What I'd like to do is provide some web page or some web service with a URL, and get a pass or fail. It passes if Google Analytics recognizes a page hit to the url.
This would be a waste of time for someone to make, so you won't find it; it's a waste of time to make it because all that anyone needs to do to see if the page is being tracked by google analytics or not is to look at their 'content -> top content' report to see if the page is listed or not.
One can also go to the page with Firefox, and using the Firebug addon on can see if a call for the _utf.gif image is made, or not, and confirm that the ga account id's are correct, which would mean that GA is receiving the data, but this does not tell you if the data is making it past your ga profile filters. The only way to determine that the page is tracked and that the tracked page view is available in your profile is to check your content reports.