I've been working on a jQuery plugin to simplify the process of adding
Google Analytics tracking to a page. The bulk of the code came
together pretty quickly, but I've run into a strange snag that's kept
me from finishing it off.
Here's what the plugin is intended to do:
- Determine whether to include the SSL or non-SSL version of the GA
script.
- Include the GA script (currently urchin.js, soon to be replaced by
ga.js) from within try/catch to help suppress any issues GA may have
from time to time.
- Set the _uacct variable to your GA tracking code.
- Call the urchinTracker() function once for the initial page load.
- Examine all of the links on the page and attach onclick events to:
- External links.
- Mailto links.
- Downloads.
- Call urchinTracker() when these links are clicked, prefixing them
appropriately.
In addition to the tracking code, the prefixes used for each of the
link types above, as well as the extensions considered "downloadable
files" are configurable by the user.
Using tools like Firebug and Live HTTP Headers in Firefox, I have
pretty much determined that all of the above is indeed happening
exactly as intended. I see the requests for urchin.js and _utm.gif go
out to Google on the initial page load, and another request for
_utm.gif for each click, and Google responds with a 200 OK. The
appropriate cookies get set, etc. I haven't picked apart every single
item in the query string attached to each call, but the few pieces I
understand well enough to verify appear to be correct. Yet, the hits
don't appear in my GA account.
I posted to the Analytics Troubleshooting group and got a few replies,
but it's still a mystery to me. I think this would be a pretty handy
plugin, so I'm hoping someone out there can figure out what's going
on, or at least confirm with their own GA accounts whether tracking is
working or not for them. If you are interested, you can grab the
plugin here:
http://dev.corefive.net/jquery/jquery.gaTracker.js
It requires jQuery 1.2 or higher for the cross-domain $.getScript()
call. Usage is simply:
$.gaTracker('UA-XXXXX-XX');
Or you can specify options like so:
$.gaTracker(
'UA-XXXXX-XX',
{
external: '/external/',
mailto: '/mailto/',
download: '/downloads/',
extensions: [
'pdf','doc','xls','csv','jpg','gif', 'mp3',
'swf','txt','ppt','zip','gz','dmg','xml'
]
}
);
Suggestions appreciated!
Thanks,
Jason
