pf » Tracking JavaScript Events with Google Analytics

September 28, 2006

Tracking JavaScript Events with Google Analytics

Did you know that you can track JavaScript events with Google Analytics? I just found this out... It's pretty cool, because allows you to track things like outbound link clicks, AJAX calls, static files, and more.

It's quite simple to do, just call the urchinTracker function (make sure that your urchin code defined before and above calling this function), and pass in a url. It will then track log the url as if it were a regular page visit. So for example lets say you wanted to log downloads of a zip file...

<a href="stuff.zip" onclick="urchinTracker('/downloads/stuff');"> download </a>

You can use the same method to log a outbound link click...

<a href="http://adobe.com/" onclick="urchinTracker('/outgoing/adobe_com');"> adobe </a>

You should see /downloads/stuff and /outgoing/adobe_com in your reports within 24-48 hours.

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add to del.icio.us | Tags: google, analytics, javascript, ajax, urchintracker, urchin

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Comments

On 09/29/2006 at 9:00:52 AM EDT Dave Carabetta wrote:

Hey Pete, great tip! Just a quick note to let you know that your iframe code to display your code snippets is collapsed in IE (which is the engine my blog reader uses). You can't see the code at all unless you open the link in Firefox.

On 11/06/2006 at 10:13:27 PM EST LDD wrote:

Thank you so much for the download counter. It has been the only thing holding me back from using googlepages as my main storage center for files. This really sealed the deal. Thankyou Thankyou Thankyou

On 02/02/2007 at 2:51:50 PM EST Sonicko wrote:

Thank you for that suggestion. We operate a Google Analytics Consulting firm and I'll be sure to add this to our list of options with a link back to this thread. Our site is www.sonicko.com if you have any questions.

On 08/23/2007 at 11:46:37 AM EDT ziggy wrote:

Why do people always add "javascript:"? It's on a js onclick handler. Not needed.

On 12/05/2007 at 11:21:51 AM EST Andrea Canfield wrote:

I'm wondering if I can use this to track WITHIN a site - while I can use google navigation certainly, I'm thinking that this would be a more succinct manner to track say, a landing page to the product page.

On 01/13/2009 at 3:11:14 PM EST PS wrote:

Hi... I was just wondering if anybody knows anything about posting data on Google Analytics without using Javascript. Any advice would be appreciated...Thanks!

On 02/15/2009 at 10:12:37 AM EST Dave wrote:

I cannot get this to work on an iframe form on a .net site. Any idea why? This is the page with the form.

http://www.beringer.net/IT-Services-Consulting.aspx

http://www.beringer.net/MiniContactUs.aspx

On 03/02/2009 at 6:36:02 PM EST Stuart Green wrote:

This is great, but doesn't work with the new pageTracker code. You can see how to implement the same thing here: http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/eventTrackerGuide.html

But I have a question, Pete. I've implemented the tracking code, but can't find the "Events Categories" in the reporting. Do you know where the events that are tracked will appear?

On 03/24/2009 at 9:12:10 AM EDT Vineet Manohar wrote:

You can also use the events API to visualize your website's response time how real users see it, not the crawlers. You can achieve this by populating the fourth parameter (value) by the response time and then charting it using Analytics. For more details see my blog post: http://www.vineetmanohar.com/blog/2009/03/23/using-google-analytics-event-api-to-track-your-website-performance/