jk11uk Posted April 20, 2010 Share Posted April 20, 2010 Hi I was wondering if there was any way to use google's javascript to do your own tracking? Google tracks using a tracking gif request - so one way could be to look for the image request in the browser resource requests, is this possible? Also, google use cookies, can you access a google cookie and read its contents? thanks very much in advance! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trq Posted April 21, 2010 Share Posted April 21, 2010 If your using Analytics why would you need your own tracking? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jk11uk Posted April 21, 2010 Author Share Posted April 21, 2010 good question the reason is that i do SEO for a client who pays me on conversions. They are a claims management company however, so they need to know exactly which client (or case) i have referred. This means i need to interface the conversion goal page with the google analytics 'first touch' tracking i have set up (this keeps the keyword they were first brought to the site on) and grab this data from google to store in the database against that clients details any ideas? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trq Posted April 21, 2010 Share Posted April 21, 2010 Google provides an api for analytics, you should take a look at that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jk11uk Posted April 22, 2010 Author Share Posted April 22, 2010 Yeah i've had a look into that, it might be the only option. I was hoping to avoid using it. Google sends the data back to its servers by requesting a gif (eg. _utm.gif?[data after this]). You can see this using the firefox pagespeed plugin. I was wondering if there was a way of getting javascript to tell you what that gif request was? so maybe javascript which can monitor all browser requests? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trq Posted April 22, 2010 Share Posted April 22, 2010 If you look at the Analytics manual you will find there are all sorts of ways of making custom 'events'. Otherwise, you might need to use your own tracking. There are plenty around including piwik which aims to be an Analytics clone. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jk11uk Posted April 22, 2010 Author Share Posted April 22, 2010 this looks interesting, thanks for the link. However i'd need to have GA on the site at the same time, is that a problem? One problem is i need to track first touch, which you can do with GA - but doesn't look like you can with piwik first touch tracking is where it tracks users on the first way they ever found the site (so if they return on the brand keyword, thats ignored and they are tracked as coming from the first keyword they found ther site on). This is why i ideally need to use and abuse GA Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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