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.
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...
-
Hi Guys thank you to all for your help on this topic
It's very much appreciated, cheers... -
For hundreds of files you might want to consider these Ga hacks: Brian Clifton's GA add-ons http://www.advanced-web-metrics.com/blog/free-to-use-plugins/ There is another by Stephane Hamel http://gaAddons.com/ Both will do the job...
-
install piwik it will tell you how many times that url with the pdf was downloaded, also awstats which usually comes standard on cpanel will tell you the number of downloads.
-
You could use some jQuery to pull the name of the file into the trackPageview GA call from the href, that would automate populating it anyway. If href contains pdf, onClick is now this, etc.
-
One method would be to use the logs on your server. If you're using IIS for example, every time a pdf was downloaded or viewed, this would be stored in the IIS Logs. It would normally show the time, date and IP address that viewed the pdf file.
You can get software to analyse these logs here;
http://www.iis.net/community/default.aspx?tabid=34&i=1864&g=6
Otherwise instead of linking directly to your pdf in your website, you could point the link to anther html page, which then in turn opens/downloads the pdf. You could then put the Google Analytics tracking code in this html page and then you would be able to track how many time that page was viewed in analytics (and therefore how many times the pdf was viewed).
The html page would just need to contain a simple redirect to the pdf, eg.
<title>Your Page Title</title>
Optional page text here.
You would also need to insert your analytics tracking code in the section.
Hope this helps.
-
You want to track individual pdfs?
Off the top of my head adding ="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview('/spoofpage')>anchor text will spoof a page view to your spoofpage in analytics.
That will require individually tagging each pdf though.
Let me have a think if there's anyway to change the 'spoofpage' to the href 'url' to allow you to add the same code to each.
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
-
Unsolved Can you accurately track lead source when using a cookie consent system?
With the introduction of cookie consent for third party analytics cookies, is it still possible to accurately track traffic source? Legally, you can't create a tracking cookie for platforms like Analytics until consent is given. So...the associated Javascript tags can't fire. Surely this means you can't collect any of the information on the user's original source... Can anyone shed any light on this conundrum....greatly appreciated.
Reporting & Analytics | | Marketing-EdJones0 -
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 -
Tracking PDF downloads from SERP clicks
For the longest time, our company policy has always been to put PDFs in a secure folder (hence they are not indexed and do not appear in search results). After evaluating this strategy, there has been clamor in recent months to allow Google to index our whitepapers. My question: Once PDFs start appearing in search results, what is the best way to start tracking clicks due to these "downloads"?
Reporting & Analytics | | marshdigitalmarketing0 -
Tracking 301 redirect traffic in Google Analytics
if I 301 redirect www.mywebsite.com to go to www.yourwebsite.com, how can I track the traffic in Google Analytics that is coming from mywebsite.com?? I don't think that's a referral traffic, is it?
Reporting & Analytics | | Armen-SEO0 -
Would updating Meta Titles affect Google analytics tracking?
Hi All, I need a little bit of help. We need to optimize our blog's articles Meta titles for SEO which all exceed 100 characters. I was told that if we change the titles, google analytics would split the tracking pages and count the data as 2 pages (old title and new title). Has any of you have this experience before and if so, is there a way to avoid google analytics counting this as two pages? Thanks in advance! Viviana http://analyteguru.com/ http://analyteguru.com/ http://analyteguru.com/
Reporting & Analytics | | mchoi0 -
How to track subfolders in GA?
Is it possible to get the visitor statistics for a subfolder (example.com/blog/) in Google Analytics? I already have GA tracking set-up like normal, and visitors do get logged, but to see data only for /blog/ I have to go to Content > Site Content > All pages and search for "/blog/". Should I create a new profile in Google Analytics? Or is there a better way to only see stats for a subfolder?
Reporting & Analytics | | Qon0 -
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?
Reporting & Analytics | | ozgeekmum1 -
How to track what people type on my text boxes on Google Analytics?
Hi there! In our website, we have a few text boxes that users need to use to complete the goal. The boxes aren't search boxes, but it's still important to us to track what people type on it. I'm looking for a way to track the data through the "event" feature in Google Analytics, but it seems that this tracker can only calculate clicks, or video views etc. Does anyone knows how to track do it?
Reporting & Analytics | | ivan.precisodisso0