Google Analytics Tracks Chrome

TechCrunch reports that Google Analytics included Chrome in the list of detected browsers. It's probably irrelevant that 8.64% of today's visits for this blog were from Google Chrome because a lot of users test the new browser to see if it's better than IE, Firefox, Safari or Opera.

(Find the report in : Visitors > Browser Capabilities > Browsers)

Two days ago, Google Analytics Blog admitted that the web analytics service intentionally concealed the identity of the new browser. "Because Google Chrome was not launched externally until today, we haven't yet changed Google Analytics to recognize it when you segment by browser within reports. However - this will change in the coming weeks (until then, the browser will show as Firefox)." The blog post has been edited and it no longer contains the reference to Firefox, but I can't help wondering if Google Analytics hides other things.

If you want to detect Google Chrome, this user-agent should be helpful:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US) AppleWebKit/XX (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/YY Safari/XX

For now, most services don't detect Chrome, probably because Safari has a very similar user-agent:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US) AppleWebKit/XX (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/ZZ Safari/YY

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".


What happens after enabling the integration with Google Analytics?

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


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 }

Google Analytics for Blogs

Two years ago, Google bought Measure Map, a very intuitive analytics software for blogs designed by Jeffrey Veen. Since then, Google Analytics borrowed some elements from Measure Map's interface. It seems that the transition is about to end soon as Google Analytics will integrate Measure Map's functionality: blog stats.

Measure Map users received an email that instructed them how to access the new version of the software.

Convert your Measure Map account to Google Analytics

We're giving our earliest users of Measure Map an opportunity to use our new service, built on the powerful Google Analytics platform and continuing to use the interface you're familiar with.

1) Create an account at Google Analytics.

2) Install the Google Analytics tracking code on your blog.

3) Tell us the URL of the blog you're using. (Option: This is a Blogger blog. If so, we'll put a "Stats" tab on your Blogger dashboard.)

It's clear that the standalone Measure Map is history and all of its features will be added in a new Google Analytics section for blogs with information about comments, links from other blogs, popular posts and, hopefully, real-time stats. FeedBurner is also a good candidate for integrating with Google Analytics and providing the big picture of your blog's traffic.

Another good news is that Blogger users will finally have a stats panel that can be accessed directly from Blogger's interface. Hopefully, Google will also include options like showing the number of views for each post or adding a list of the most popular posts in the sidebar.


{ The first image is licensed as Creative Commons by Andy Zeigert. }

Update. Google sent this:

Recently at South by Southwest, we announced our new Google Analytics for Blogger reporting interface. This integration marks the transition of Measure Map users worldwide to a new Google Analytics interface specifically designed for Blogger users. We've rebuilt Measure Map as an integrated feature of both Google Analytics and Blogger, which will give bloggers daily stats such as the number of visitors they receive, how many posts get traffic, and new referring links. Users can also use Google Analytics, of course, to track their blogs. More information is available on our Help Center.

We'll be refining the new interface in the coming months before we release it to the general public, and we're excited to help bloggers further understand the impact they're having on their readers.

Update 2: Google Analytics Blog has a screenshot of the Blogger integration. Google says it "will support all blogging programs. Bloggers who don't use Blogger will see a new reporting interface that resembles Google Analytics."