Tracking RSS Subscriptions using Google Analytics
24th April 2008 by David North
I love Google Analytics and can always be found looking through all the pretty reports it generates for various websites I am involved with. I never cease to be amazed at the various routes people find a website.
One major downside of Google Analytics however is its reliance on JavaScript which makes some things on a website difficult to track. One example of a figure I would love to know is the true number of subscriptions to an RSS feed.
I’ve found a half way house solution to this posted by Hamlet Batista which tracks people clicking on RSS links on a website using the same code I use to track conversions on dynamic pages. For your reference this is:
<a href=http://www.digital-rant.co.uk/feed/ title=”Subscribe to my feed” rel=”alternate” onclick=”javascript:urchinTracker(’/tracking/feed’);”>
Or if you are using the latest Google Analytics code:
<a href=http://www.digital-rant.co.uk/feed/ title=”Subscribe to my feed” rel=”alternate” onclick=”javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview(‘/tracking/feed’);”>
Where “/tracking/feed” is your goal URL setup in Google Analytics.
However this code makes the following assumptions:
- Everyone subscribes using the RSS links within the page and not the RSS details in the page header (picked up by various browsers).
- Everyone that follows an RSS link actually subscribes to the feed.
If anyone has any other suggestions to overcome these problems give me a shout - I’d love to know! In the meantime I’ll have to survive on these approximate figures.
Of course if I had the cash I’d upgrade to Google Analytics’ big brother Urchin 6 which recently came out of beta which sorts these issues but as I don’t have $2995 I’ll have to carry on as I am.
