Tracking Social Media Logged In Users Help

[BryanCasson]

Hi, I recently read Tom Anthony's post on "Monitor Which Social Networks Your Visitors are Logged Into With Google Analytics".  I have looked and re-looked at the code implemented and after two days I am still not getting any results tracking. Could somebody please take a look at my site and tell me if they see any conflicts or errors I may have made when installing the code.

Thanks for any help!

[SL_SEM]

If fixing the bracket doesn't work then forcing the variable to be set is probably best done with an event tracker, and not a pageview tracker so it doesn't screw with your bounce rate or your pageview count.

If you look at google's example they follow up their custom variable code with the following code:

_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Shopping', 'Item Removal', ]);

You would want to put that in just below the custom variable lines:

_gaq.push(["_setCustomVar", slot, network + "_State", "LoggedIn", 1]);

You probably want to change the details of the event to say something like:

_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'login check', 'successful check', ]);

This event is fairly useless for segmenting as it will get fired off every time the code runs, but it will be sure all of your info gets passed to google.

I wouldn't try this until you try putting the bracket in I mentioned above though.

[SL_SEM]

Actually, I just took a look at your code, and I think it is something much simpler.

You somehow deleted the opening "{" after the function call.

Your function declaration code looks like this:

function record_login_status(slot, network, status)

if (status)

it should look like this:

function record_login_status(slot, network, status)** {**

if (status)

The key is that bracket telling JS to start the function.

[BryanCasson]

Thanks for this, so tell me, how would you rewrite the code so that it works. Are you suggesting that _setCustomVar() should be replaced with _trackPageview()

[SL_SEM]

This is probably occuring because you are calling the custom variable function after the main track pageview function. Without another track pageview or event tracking call you aren't ever really passing the data back to google.

The talk about this in the setup guide for using customer variables in the GA help documentation: http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/tracking/gaTrackingCustomVariables.html#setup

Scroll all the way down to the bottom and you will see this:

Call the _setCustomVar() function when it can be set prior to a pageview or event GIF request.

In certain cases this might not be possible, and you will need to set another _trackPageview() request after setting a custom variable. This is typically only necessary in those situations where the user triggers a session- or visit-level custom var, where it is not possible to bundle that method with a pageview, event, or ecommerce tracking call.

I will put this into the original posts comments as well so he can update his method, or tell me I am wrong