This article/survey is from 2016. Please note that blocking or hindering of Google Analytics, one way or the other, is even more widespread now. This is still due to ad blockers, but also due to browser technologies such as ITP and ETP implemented by Safari and Firefox. Ad blocking software has gotten a lot of attention recently. Not because it’s new, but likely because it’s being used more widely. Studies put the ad block penetration at up to 37% or even higher - it depends on country and other factors. Read more →
There is one thing I hear a lot when I’m giving talks about Google Analytics: “I didn’t know Google Analytics could track that!”. Put another way, I just as often get a question like “Could you make Google Analytics track [insert anything here]?”.
The short answer is always, “Yes, you can track that in Google Analytics”. Basically, you can track anything that goes on inside a browser. If it happens within a browser (a mouse click, a keyboard key click, a mouse movement, scrolling) you can track it. Read more →
Did you know you can detect and track device orientation changes in Google Analytics? That is, if a mobile or tablet user switches between portrait and landscape mode? Well, of course it’s possible (basically anything that happens inside a browser can be detected and tracked in Google Analytics). In a previous post, I wrote about how to detect and track the browser’s viewport (which was made almost obsolete by the new native Browser Size dimension). Read more →
If you see self referrals appearing in your Acquisition reports in Google Analytics, or if you are performing a Google Analytics implementation audit, one of the first steps is to make sure that the Google Analytics Tracking Code (GATC) is present on all pages - Screaming Frog will help you do that fast and easy. In this post, I’ll show you a step-by-step guide for checking your website for pages that don’t have the GATC installed or don’t have the Google Tag Manager snippet present. Read more →
This post provides a complete event tracking example so you’ll be able to set up and configure it on your own. I’ll be using the autotrack feature, which is a plugin developed by Google Analytics released early in 2016. This plugin allows website owners to easily set up event tracking - even if your knowledge of HTML and javascript is limited.
When to use event tracking First, it’s important to know when you should use event tracking. Read more →
When you are setting up Google Analytics on your website, you’ll want to verify that it’s actually working and that data is being collected and processed. So even before you begin to configure events, ecommerce tracking etc., it’s crucial that you can trust your data collection. This involves checking if Google Analytics is being loaded at all and if your customisations such as event tracking is working as intended. In this post, I’ll provide some tips and tricks that can help you in the initial setup phase on your Google Analytics implementation. Read more →
I often setup accurate browser viewport tracking in Google Analytics. Actually, I more or less stopped using the native Screen Resolution dimension in Google Analytics years ago, and I think it has become even less useful after it became possible to view the device category (mobile, tablet or desktop) of a user.
The main reason is that the dimension really does not provide a good actionable insight when deciding how to layout and design a web page, and what I would really like to know is to see the user’s actual viewport; i. Read more →