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August 18, 2010

Picasa Web Stats in Google Analytics

Picasa Web Albums has an option that lets you see detailed visitor stats for your photos. If you go to the Settings page, you can enable "photo tracking". The only thing you need is a Google analytics tracking code.


Picasa Web's help center explains that you need to create a new Google Analytics account (not a new Google account) to monitor Picasa Web Albums photo traffic. After creating the new account, find the account ID that looks like UA-xxxxxxx-y and enter it in the Google Analytics tracking code box from Picasa Web Albums. "Once the setup is complete, just sign in to Google Analytics and click View reports to see visitor stats for your photos. It can take up to 24 hours for Analytics to detect your tracking code."

A similar option is available for Google Docs, but only for published documents. While this feature is useful, it's not very easy to use and it's not properly integrated with Google Docs and Picasa Web. Showing simple stats, like the number of views, the top search queries and referring websites, in a special section of Google Docs and Picasa Web would be a much better idea.

12 comments:

  1. When I click on the "save" button, nothing happen

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  2. Have same problem.

    JavaScript error.

    Message: Object required
    Line: 367
    Char: 107
    Code: 0
    URI: http://lh3.ggpht.com/s/v/66.22/script/lh_settings.js

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  3. It would be better if they integrated it so could could at least select the site from a dropdown populated from your analytics accounts!

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  4. Tracking can't be Installed? Looks like the Picasa Web Team need more fixes.

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  5. Yup, can't save changes in preferences.

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  6. What browser do you use? It should work well in Chrome.

    ReplyDelete
  7. My browser: Google Chrome 5.0.375.126

    Can't save changes in preferences.

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  8. Should note that Google Sites too has a similar option.

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  9. I configured this a few days ago, and it appears to be working fine. Nice to see this kind of integration between Google services! One minor issue I have is that requests for individual photos are logged like /FirstAlbum#123456789 (note the #) which prevents Google Analytics from aggregating requests by album: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Analytics/thread?tid=5a72beab024703ac.

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  10. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Picasa/thread?tid=66b038cf5c86b3d1&hl=en

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  11. It would be nicer to have in Picasa and Docs but it's great to get the integration as well.
    I''ve been using it as well, but with the full url, so now I can track all visitors from my site and from Picasaweb within 1 profile..

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  12. I haven't been able to get this work and I've tried Chrome 6, Firefox 4 beta, and IE8. :/

    ReplyDelete

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