Global Moxie

Question

I use Google Analytics to track visitor activity on my Big Medium-powered site. How can I configure it to track file downloads in addition to regular HTML pages?

Answer

The default HTML that Google tells you to insert into your pages will track only those pages that include that code. This means that it can’t track file downloads (because they are not HTML pages, downloads cannot include JavaScript code).

Google offers a workaround for this. The solution involves adding an onclick attribute to every link to files you would like to track. However, there’s another way to attach an onclick event to all Big Medium download files, which does not require this kind of intervention in the code. Here’s how.

Google’s recommended script looks like this (where UA-xxxxxx-x is replaced by your Google Analytics account number):

<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-xxxxxx-x");
pageTracker._initData();
pageTracker._trackPageview();
</script>

To track Big Medium document files, update the code like so (be sure to change UA-xxxxxx-x to your actual Google Analytics account number):

<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
  var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-xxxxxx-x");
  pageTracker._initData();
  pageTracker._trackPageview();
  (function(){ //track BM document files
    var logDoc = function(evt) {
      var e = Event.element(evt);
      if(e.nodeType == 3) { e = e.parentNode; } //Safari bug
      if (e.tagName=='A') {
          var match = e.href.match(/(\/bm~doc\/.*)/);
          if (match) { pageTracker._trackPageview(match[1]); }
      }
    };
    BM.onDOM.addEvent(function(){
      Event.observe(document.body,'click',logDoc);
    });
  })();
</script>

Limitations

This code change makes Google Analytics track links only to files loaded via Big Medium's control panel. It will not track downloads of files that are linked directly from other sites, and it will not track downloads to files that were not loaded via Big Medium's control panel.