Plugins
These are commercial strength Google Analytics “plugins” for the async version of the GATC. Originally called “hacks” (though that belies the professionalism behind the work!) these have been documented either as posts in the GA Plugins category or part of the book. Directly maintained and supported JavaScript code by Brian Clifton.
Selection of clients relying on these plugins:
PLUGIN 1: Auto-Tracking File Downloads & Outbound Links >>
- Aimed at webmasters as a huge time saver
- Automatically tracks file downloads, outbound exit links, mailto links for you and optionally modifies the default bounce rate calculation
- Each type can be are tracked as a virtual pageview or an event
- Optional bounce rate adjustment i.e. a single pageview with time-on-page of 30+ seconds is not treated as a bounced visitor (aimed at content publishers)
- Self-contained code – does not depend on jquery or any other libraries
- more info
PLUGIN 2: Customising the SEO list for Google Analytics >>
- Aimed at digital marketers running localised SEO accounts
- Separates out regional search engines (instead of the default GA behaviour of lumping all together as google, yahoo etc.)
- Adds 219 regional variations – google.co.uk, google.fr, yahoo.co.uk etc.
- Adds 46 other search engines – from middle east, far east and eastern Europe
- Tracks keywords used on Google image search
- Adds price comparison engines kelkoo.com, pricegrabber.com
- Self-contained code – does not depend on jquery or any other libraries
- more info
[ Free GA plugins (non-async code, unsupported) ]
Come and join the Pro Lounge… The Pro Lounge is a FREE member’s area for like minded professionals who enjoyed the book and want more… further info.
August 23rd, 2010 at 10:41 pm
Does the combined tracking script work with the new asynchronous tracking code?
August 27th, 2010 at 8:19 am
Alanna: At present I haven’t produced an asyn version. However, stay tuned for news on this in the coming weeks
August 31st, 2010 at 7:11 am
The hack for converting google image traffic from referral to organic is not working for sometime now. Can you please update us on this.
August 31st, 2010 at 8:12 am
Beno: What issue are you getting with the image search hack from the book? Its not something I use a lot…
August 31st, 2010 at 1:38 pm
In your book, there is a topic on “Capturing Google Image Search”, you had mentioned by modifying the GATC code and advance filter the traffic from Google image search will be shown as organic, this was working well, but lately, this modification is not working and shows Google image traffic as referral. Please advice.
August 31st, 2010 at 5:06 pm
Beno: I am not aware of any changes for Google Image search that would impact this i.e. the referral URL still contains the prev parameter. I will put aside some time to set this up for one of my sites and check to verify. What version of the GATC are you using? Note, the book code is for the standard installation i.e. not the async method.
Update: the last image search I have for this method was on 18th Aug and the keywords were extracted ok.
September 1st, 2010 at 11:03 am
I’m using the ga.js code. Only a few of them (image search terms) are shown as google/organic, the remaining are shown under google/referral and their referral path is /imgres.
September 6th, 2010 at 2:19 pm
OK, this is because Google have changed their domain structure for image search. Whereas before they used e.g http://images.google.com, they now simply use http://www.google.com (or localised version). I don’t know if this is a permanent change…
To get my image search hack (page 162) working for this change, you should edit both parts of the hack:
If you use my Tracking regional and custom Search Engines in Google Analytics hack, I have added this new domain already.
I will write up this fix more fully when I am back in the country…
September 13th, 2010 at 7:38 am
Ok Brian, that would be very helpful. Thanks.
October 26th, 2010 at 10:34 am
Hi Brian,
I have one of my clients GA Accounts manually tagged to the Adwords campaign, but all the data for PPC shows as organic traffic,, is there any hack or way of seperating the ppc traffic from the organic, to get the paid keywords?
October 27th, 2010 at 7:00 am
Hi Brian, is there an update on this? Hope you are back!
October 27th, 2010 at 9:58 pm
Palashi: Take a look at your setup again. Campaign Tracking correctly done, does not need a hack to work.
October 27th, 2010 at 11:06 pm
Beno: My description in comment #8 is working for me. Have you tried it?
November 24th, 2010 at 12:50 pm
Hi Brian,
I tried it and most of the image traffic are now getting stored in organic traffic. However, a small portion of traffic are still being stored as referral, but that is fine. Thanks a lot for your advice.
January 9th, 2011 at 12:51 am
Hi Brian,
With reference to Alanna’s question, “Does the combined tracking script work with the new asynchronous tracking code?” have there been any developments on the async script?
Hoping so
January 10th, 2011 at 12:43 pm
Karin: Make sure you are a member of the Pro Lounge – announcement of new scripts will be made there. Async scripts should be ready by Feb…
August 2nd, 2012 at 2:46 am
Master
I like your book ,it’s useful for me to help other company to understand how to set and read google ananytics (sorry my english is not very good,I come from Taiwan) if I have any question about GA,may I ask ?
August 10th, 2012 at 5:29 pm
@Kevin – thanks for your feedback. The best place to post your question in on the LinkedIn group. I am there regularly also
http://www.linkedin.com/groupInvitation?groupID=66386&sharedKey=4F471D6A219B