Track AJAX and Flash Actions with Google Analytics Event Tracking

Get more detailed actions with Google Analytics Event Tracking

Released as beta a version to testers, Google Analytics can now tag certain events that happen on a page that are normally not tracked by default on many other analytics platforms. This is common on websites that use AJAX and Flash, which are two technologies based on the current trends will just see more and more of these technologies used. Thus there is a great demand for tracking the events on sites like these.

Often web analytics platforms track many server and browser variables once an HTML rendered page loads. Problem today is many page elements powered by AJAX and Flash does not reload a new page. Thus an AJAX or Flash heavy site may be having a lot of user activity but are not effectively tracked as common web analytics software are not being able to track these events without a page loading.

Google Analytics new feature released to beta testers now has Event Tracking. This allows you to tag Objects on your site. Picture an object as selected elements of your page you with to track its activity. This can be ideal on AJAX and Flash elements; you can place this on an AJAX step by step process, a file download, streaming webcast video, tutorial videos, etc. With these objects you assign Actions that are done on you defined objects. These can be: play, pause, stop in videos and you can even set video playing percent timelines. This can give analytics a whole new insight into user behavior data that can be translated into improvement of a better user experience, better site conversion.

The Limitations of Web Analytics

A common limitation with many free analytics packages is they can only track all numbers as the page loads, either reading server logs or using page tagging often with JavaScript but can also be done with small pixel images.

Each tracking technique has their own advantages and limitations, server logs have the limitations of recording various people using the same IP address like in a corporate network. Several people may be visiting a site but it may appear on the server logs to be one person. JavaScript tagging can take advantage of browser cookies thus being able to determine if a visit is unique based on the unique browser cookie even if the IP addresses are all the same. Although many anti-spyware, anti-adware software have also cookie cleaners that can clean out cookies and skew other analytics reports. This is unavoidable but can be minimized as much as possible. Many modern day analytics platforms use a combination of all tracking techniques.

Hits to a website give you limited knowledge of other activities, with the new Event Tracking, this will bring a new light into the interpretation of data.

Other Advanced Analytics Platforms

I still remember HitBox that became HBX that was then purchased by Visual Sciences and became one of the biggest competitors of Omniture. Then, Omniture bought Visual Sciences and that acquisition was finalized earlier this year. So far Omniture is known to be one of the most advanced analytics platforms being able to track almost anything on a page.

But as Google’s free Analytics platform that had its beginnings from starting with the purchase of Urchin, and just kept getting better might be able to put Omniture out of business don't you think? Maybe some people might think of that. But personally, for a big company like Omniture, I doubt Google Analytics will kill Omniture, it might kill their platform, but the business can still exist as many website owners cannot understand the numbers right away and may need from help from a specialist to digest the information into usable data for important business decisions.

Yahoo Bought IndexTools and Microsoft Bought Gatineau

And of course if Google is improving, Yahoo and Microsoft are also improving. Yahoo has purchased IndexTools which is not only a web analytics platform, but also a bid management tool as well. Currently their site looks is closed for new customers right after Yahoo announced the purchase and you cannot signup anywhere so we really don't know if this will be a paid service or dive into the free analytics world like what Google does. I do envision this to be rebranded with Yahoo colors and probably implement the unified Yahoo account login just like all other Yahoo properties. And Microsoft has purchased Gatineau and is now called Microsoft AdCenter Analytics. This is accessible through Microsoft's AdCenter thus you just have to sign up an account with them and you're good to go.