Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
What is best practice for tracking RSS feed subscribers
-
What is the most accurate/achievable way of tracking data about subscribers to your RSS feed through Google Analytics?
With standard WordPress sites, we place the RSS link to Feedburner so we could track statistics.
However it wouldn't track the way that I use it.
I use Pulse on an Android Tablet to read my feeds offline on the bus each morning. At home, Pulse automatically downloads the latest feeds wirelessly overnight. So then I can read them without a connection.
The obvious downside for my reading experience is that I only get what is contained in the feeds. If the company only includes an excerpt, it's too annoying to read the teaser and be unable to connect and follow a link. So I only subscribe to feeds that contain the full post. Yeah to seomoz, aimclear, SEL, adwordsblog. I dont subscribe to bruceclays blog, much as i'd like to, because it doesn't contain the full feed. That's probably deliberate on their part, because I have to consciously visit their blog on my desktop at work, to see the whole post.
The other problem with say Pulse, is how it locates the feed. I typed in the URL, and Pulse subscribed me. I assume that Pulse simply looked for the domain.com/feed URL and added that, rather than look for feeds2.feedburner.com/domain.
I looked at Feedburner stats and they didn't go up for 2 days, so basically it didn't track me.
Would it be as simple as using the Google URL builder to add parameters to each post in the RSS feed? Eg utm_source=feedreader, utm_medium=rss, utm_campaign=tracking.
But that still wouldn't track offline users.
I assume that most people are also not going to paste the Feedburner URL into their FeedReader, but would let the platform auto-detect the feed.
Any suggestions?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
PDF best practices: to get them indexed or not? Do they pass SEO value to the site?
All PDFs have landing pages, and the pages are already indexed. If we allow the PDFs to get indexed, then they'd be downloadable directly from google's results page and we would not get GA events. The PDFs info would somewhat overlap with the landing pages info. Also, if we ever need to move content, we'd now have to redirects the links to the PDFs. What are best practices in this area? To index or not? What do you / your clients do and why? Would a PDF indexed by google and downloaded directly via a link in the SER page pass SEO juice to the domain? What if it's on a subdomain, like when hosted by Pardot? (www1.example.com)
Reporting & Analytics | | hlwebdev1 -
Change Phone Number Based on Traffic Source + Ping URL for Call Tracking Number
Hi Everyone, Is there a tool that can change the phone number on a web page based on the visitor source (i.e., direct, organic, paid, etc.)? I'd like to implement a solution like this with different call tracking numbers based on the visitor source. We use the Google suite for our analytics (GA, GTM, Google Data Studio, Google Optimize is also an option as well). - Also, is there a good call tracking service that will ping a URL each time the phone number is called so that we can track these calls as events in GA? The majority of our visitors use a desktop PC and dial in the number on the screen rather than clicking (tapping) on it from a mobile device. Thanks, Andy
Reporting & Analytics | | AndyRCWRCM0 -
Google Analytics Goals - Button Tracking
Does anyone know if there is a really easy way to track a button in Google Analytics yourself? It seems that most button click goal setups involve some use of tricky code and I'm wondering if there is a much easier way to do this that will allow us to simply setup and track certain button clicks as goal conversions in Analytics. Your help here is much appreciated!
Reporting & Analytics | | Gavo0 -
Track conversion from paypal express/Apple pay
Hi All, Is there any way to track apple pay conversion or paypal express conversion in Google Analytics? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | Alick3000 -
Can you track two Google Analytics Accounts on one site?
If you have a site that had an old analytics account and then implemented a new one is it possible to run tracking code that records to both accounts without causing your site or data issues? We are doing this so we don't loose data at any point - ideally it wouldn't have been split between the two but making one redundant isn't an option. Ideally we would have merged the data from both accounts and had one - however the research we have done points to this not being a possibility - unless one of you guys knows different? It would be great if anyone has experience on any this.. Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | ChrisAllbones0 -
Is there a way to use Google Analytics event tracking for YouTube embedded videos on my website?
Hello! I am trying to track different types of interaction on the YouTube for videos which are embedded on a website to measure the interaction on these video from my organic traffic. Is there a good way to go about this with the code since these are coming from an iFrame on YouTube? Would appreciate any feedback or help on implementing the event tracking with YouTube videos. Many thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | CabbageTree0 -
Custom Variables to track Vimeo plays on website with Google Analytics?
Hello Everyone, I'm trying to track how many times a Vimeo video is played on my site via GA. Does any of you have any knowledge of how can this be achieved? I've read the documentation and came up with this: After the iframe embed i insert this: Of course the GA is loaded in the header. Does not work, at least i cant see anything in analytics. I have set up the segment as per the attached image. Thanks in advance! Alex E6XnO.png
Reporting & Analytics | | pwpaneuro0 -
Tracking pdf downloads
hello, I have a site with 100's of pdf's for download and I would like to track how many people are downloading these, does anyone have a simple solution for this? Is there anyway I can do this in Google Analytics using one piece of code, thanks...
Reporting & Analytics | | Socialdude0