Google Docs Stats

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

Google Docs Stats

If you publish documents at Google Docs and link them from web pages, you may wonder how many people actually view them. Google helps you find this information by placing a Google Analytics tracking code that can be connected to your account.

How to get traffic stats for your documents?

Just go to Google Analytics, create a new profile for http://docs.google.com and get the tracking code for that profile. You only need a small piece of the tracking code: the value displayed in bold below, which should be different for your account.

var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-84813-6")

Once you have that value, go to Google Docs Settings, enable "Track visits to my documents using Google Analytics" and paste the value in the input box for "Google Analytics tracking code".

Google Docs Settings

What happens after enabling the integration with Google Analytics?

After a couple of hours, you should see some traffic data in your Analytics account:

Analytics profile for Google Docs

You'll also find a confirmation that the visitor traffic is tracked with Google Analytics after you publish a document:

The list of Google services that integrate with Google Analytics includes: Google Sites, Project Hosting, iGoogle gadgets and hopefully the support will be extended to other services.

{ via Blogoscoped Forum }

Labels: Google Analytics, Google Docs

13 comments ( Post a comment )

Eric Jain said on July 1, 2008 2:30 PM PDT:

Neat! Hope to see Google Analytics supported in Picasa Web as well.

Anonymous said on July 1, 2008 2:37 PM PDT:

Will this work for spreadsheets also as the URL for spreadsheets is http://spreadsheets.google.com or do I need to create another profile?

Ionut Alex Chitu said on July 1, 2008 2:42 PM PDT:

Your Analytics tracking code is only added to published documents, not to spreadsheets or presentations.

ahab said on July 1, 2008 2:57 PM PDT:

@Ionut Alex Chitu
Did you verify your own tracker code appeard in a freshly published Google Docs text document page? I could only find Google Docs own internal tracker code (UA-18065-1).

The Google Docs Settings did remember my personal treacker code from last time this feature - briefly - appeared. I re-saved my code but alas...

Please tell me I'm missing something (and what I'm missing ;)

Anonymous said on July 1, 2008 2:57 PM PDT:

>>Your Analytics tracking code is only added to published documents, not to spreadsheets or presentations.
correct. But the URL for published spreadsheets is http://spreadsheets.google.com so will the code on http://docs.google.com track that too?

Ionut Alex Chitu said on July 1, 2008 3:05 PM PDT:

@Anonymous:
That web address is not important and doesn't interfere with the tracking process.

@Ahab:
You're right. I can't find the profile ID in any published document.

Ionut Alex Chitu said on July 1, 2008 3:12 PM PDT:

@Ahab:
I see what's going on. Google builds the Analytics code dynamically and obtains the profile ID from the document's ID.

POST /MiscCommands HTTP/1.1
command=getanalyticscode&docid=DOCUMENTID

ahab said on July 1, 2008 3:34 PM PDT:

@Ionut Alex Chitu
One wonders why such an obfuscated scheme is used. I also wonder where the returned value of the req.send('command=getanalyticscode&docid=' + encodeURIComponent(docid)); is processed to initialise another tracker instance.

In a discussion at blogoscoped ( http://blogoscoped.com/forum/126270.html#split ) with Tony Ruscoe he showed ( http://blogoscoped.com/forum/126270.html#id126353 ) how a simple modifiction of the Analytics script would be enough to have two tracker instances.

It seems they are using such an elaborate workaround, but for what purpose...?

Googlaxy said on July 2, 2008 5:24 PM PDT:

Very nice. However, sad to know that Google Apps (Docs) doesn't support this track option...

Nicolas Hoizey said on July 4, 2008 12:35 AM PDT:

Sad too, it would have been really nice to have it in Google Apps...

Anonymous said on July 6, 2008 4:04 PM PDT:

What a great feature!

SteveT said on August 19, 2008 2:47 AM PDT:

Having added the wrong analytics code to a document is there a way I can change it? It looks to be locked in there.

Anonymous said on June 29, 2009 4:07 PM PDT:

Seesm to work only for doc, not for spreadsheet or presentation or uploaded pdf (at least there is no way to see that they are tracking, the message only shows for doc - why the **** does every format have totally different look and feel for publish?). of limited usefulness

What do you think?