Google Analytics tracking for ArcGIS.com items?

5980
11
04-19-2012 08:03 AM
Status: Open
MarkReddick2
New Contributor II

ArcGIS.com offers item View and Download tracking but something i would find valuable is the ability to track in more detail (where are the hits coming from, which countries, what type of browser etc). 

I'm wondering if for organizational accounts there could be a way to introduce an optional insert of some Google Analytics code associated with an organizational account so that we can track items in more detail. This would not disable the current Views and Downloads, just give users the option of getting more detail from analytics if they wish.

Not sure how technically feasible this is....
Regards,

mark

Tags (1)
11 Comments
ThomasColson
When editing an AGOL item details in HTML Mode, one can do all sorts of fancy HTML syntax yet not include the JS script that allows embedding of Google Analytics tracking code. Web content managers, for the most part, will not put media in a heavily visited web site that they can't track the effectiveness or feedback of what's being put in there. This includes web maps and apps produced by AGOL. Obviously allowing JS in the Item Details is a non-started, how about giving organizational account admins the ability to "turn on" google analytics for the whole org, then content owners can plug in their own GA tracking code in some field somewhere. 
KellyGerrow
Thank you for submitting this idea!

Mark, you mentioned wanting more details about location of users and browser types. What other feedback or tracking items are you interested in viewing on your items?
ThomasColson

Essentially what you get when you login to GA. I feel like it is a rather simple process to attach a GA tracking ID to all the content in my Org...which is what the original idea is for. Being limited to a very few metrics based on a custom UI wouldn't be helpful at all. For example, for some content, we may be linking the GA review to an event, such as a social media post, and want to see how many hits were generated by FB, and how many of those resulted in map views longer than 3 minutes (user acquisition and engagement). Or, I want to see how many non-english speakers are hitting my story maps (do we need to do spanish translation on all of them?). How many users bail after less than 1 minute that are using Ipads? What page do they go to next? We have GA tracking ability on a custom, in-house Leaflet-based map viewer, and let me tell you, the data we get from that is incredibly helpful in focusing development efforts. 

deleted-user-K4WEem421GEH

Just a suggestion - perhaps a configurable Google Analytics WAB widget world do the trick.

DavidRunneals2

From a perspective of an enterprise with all of our public services on arcgis online, we really want to see the basics of what google analytics provides so we can see metrics with the big one of where the end user originates which can help determine who is using our services (end users) and where they are used (referrer/client) - be able to determine external applications/viewers that are used to show the service - so we can ultimately notify users of service changes/outages/etc.

by Anonymous User

I like Thomas Colson‌'s idea to 'enable' GA for an Org, then let users 'plug in' a tracking number somewhere. Of course use of JS must be controlled on a hosted platform but the "plug & play" approach he outlines would be great.  

DanielleKulas

Any progress on this? I think analytics is an essential capability, or at the very least, more granularity to the usage statistics page would be nice. View count is ok but I want to know so much more! Who is viewing the data and from where? on what device? How long do they stay? What's their favorite color?

JamesRounce

Is there an update on this?  We too would like this functionality.  We have the GA code on our Arc Hub (Open Data) site, however content hosted on the organisational site/url such as web apps, including stories, are not tracked.  Whilst we can see the high level of views of this data, it would be useful to remove things like staff views so we know how many public only views there are, plus more about the behaviour i.e. where and how people are accesing the stories.

WhitneyLoy

Now midway through 2020 and no update. It's a bit weird that Hub has this function and yet the organisational site still lacks this function. 

DavidRunneals2

Sounds like configurable apps may see something implemented in the next AGOL update.