Google Analytics Graham Triggs Head of Repository Systems

Google Analytics Graham Triggs Head of Repository Systems, Symplectic

Google Analytics Overview Its strengths, and its weaknesses

Google Analytics: Pros Easy Setup Powerful tools Tracks cache hits Alerting Email reports Scalable Free

Google Analytics: Cons Requires Javascript Tracks page views (no downloads) Separate login Reports URL path/part Hard to locate specific items

Google Analytics – Tracking Issues Shortcomings of the Google tracker, and how to overcome them

Problem: Downloads • Page tracked in footer • Download link will return PDF, not html – so no Analytics tracker <a target="_blank" href="/e-space/bitstream/2173/3518/3/williams%20%20 specificity%20 of%20 acceleration. pdf" >williams - specificity of acceleration. pdf</a> <script type="text/javascript"> var page. Tracker = _gat. _get. Tracker("UA 1234567 -3"); page. Tracker. _init. Data(); page. Tracker. _track. Pageview(); </script>

Downloads – Solution 1 • On. Click tracks url of download • Every download link needs to be changed • Does not track links from outside <a target="_blank" href="/e-space/bitstream/2173/3518/3/williams%20 -%20 specificity%20 of%20 acceleration. pdf" onclick="javascript: page. Tracker. _track. Pageview('/e-space/bitstream/2173/3518/3/williams%20%20 specificity%20 of%20 acceleration. pdf'); ">williams - specificity of acceleration. pdf</a> <script type="text/javascript"> varpage. Tracker = _gat. _get. Tracker("UA 1234567 -3"); page. Tracker. _init. Data(); page. Tracker. _track. Pageview(); </script>

Tracking without Javascript Mobile site code • Introduced Oct/Nov 2009 • Server side code retrieves image from Google Analytics to log request • Supports page views and events • PHP/Perl/JSP/ASPX code provided http: //code. google. com/mobile /analytics/docs/web/

Downloads – Solution 2 • Intercept download request • Test user agent for robots Identifying robots Contains: bot, crawl, fetch, ndex, nutch, spider Major engines: teoma, bing, msnbot, slurp Contains email address or url • Call http: //www. google-analytics. com/__utm. gif from server Documentation for the __utm. gif parameters: http: //code. google. com/apis/analytics/docs/tracking/ga. Tracking. Troubleshooting. html#gif. Parameters

Event Tracking • Events have Category and Action eg. ‘Videos’ and ‘Play’ • Optional label eg. Name of video • Optional value eg. Time to load • Log via Javascript, or Mobile site code Event tracking guide: http: //code. google. com/apis/analytics/docs/tracking/event. Tracker. Guide. html

Google Analytics – Reporting Issues Relating the statistics to repository contents

Relating to the Repository No structure URLs, not items/files

Analytics API • Launched April 2009 • Same API as Calendar, Finance, etc. • Javascript and Java clients provided • Protocol uses HTTP and XML • Choose dimensions, metrics, filters, sorting Usage Tips • Prefer fewer distinct queries • Prefer queries that return fewer rows • Do some filtering client side • Do totalling client side

Analytics Examples

Google Visualizations Add charts and maps to your reports

Chart Tools / Interactive Tools • Simple charts are static images • Interactive charts use Javascript / SVG / Flash • Simple charts have data limits (2 K GET / 16 K POST) • Can be used with any data source • Works well with Analytics exports For more information on how to use the visualization API: http: //code. google. com/apis/visualization/documentation/using_overview. html

Useful Charts See more at the gallery: http: //code. google. com/apis/visualization/documentation/gallery. html http: //code. google. com/apis/ajax/playground/

Analytics and Charts http: //bit. ly/a. Kh. X 6 S http: //bit. ly/9 t 8 r 8 H

Reasons for Analytics Counting for more

Analytics versus Statistics All statistics are imperfect Have you removed all the spiders? Can you count views / downloads that have been served by caches? Analytics are imperfect too … … but show you how users interact with the site Server-side download tracking = better coverage

Useful Analytics Data User retention User loyalty Client environment (browser / operating system) Entry points Exit points Relationship to web (incoming links, searches) Achieving ‘goals’ (ie. using submission wizard)

Constant Enhancements Announced in the last two months: Flow Visualization Real Time Analytics Social analytics with Share. This / Add. This

Flow Visualization - Visitor

Flow Visualization - Goal http: //analytics. blogspot. com/2011/10/introducing-flow-visualization. html

Real Time Analytics http: //analytics. blogspot. com/2011/09/whats-happening-on-your-site-right-now. html

Summary Use server-side Mobile API to capture file downloads Use Analytics API to query data and relate to your repository Use Analytics UI to understand the interactions with the repository Free, highly available, scalable, and constantly evolving