Can I track AJAX? And How? – Is Web Analytics Lost With AJAX

Well… it seems that AJAX is here to stay, and is slipping into every new application and site on the market. For once I’m glad to say go with AJAX and create your sleek non page loading site and live happy.

Too many people are complaining that “we can’t track with AJAX” on the clients site. Guys and gals settle down here is the simple way you can garner all the data mining you will need. (you can thank me later).

This tip is for all you Google Analytics fans:
Assign a page filename to the AJAX event. Typically, this is done as part of the onreadystatechange function, after the data has been returned and all updates to the page have been made. The example below shows one way of doing this:
…

http_request.onreadystatechange = sendAlert;
http_request.open(‘GET’, url, true);
http_request.send(null);

}

function sendAlert() {

if (http_request.readyState == 4) {
if (http_request.status == 200) {
alert(http_request.responseText);
urchinTracker(“/pagefilename1″ );
} else {
alert(‘Error.’);

…
The urchinTracker variable (/pagefilename1 in the example above) can be any value, which will be displayed as a page filename in your Analytics reports.

Important side note: if your sites pages include a call to urchinTracker(), utmLinker(), utmSetTrans(), or utmLinkPost(), your analytics tracking code must be placed in your HTML code above any of these calls. In these cases the tracking code can be placed anywhere between the opening tag and the JavaScript call.

I hope this helps all you AJAX ranting data miners, if not leave a comment and I can walk you through how to set this up.

The Big Three

So.. I’m going to rant about my passion for the big three, FYI the big three for me is Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing (PPC) and Web Analytics. I work for a well known web and mobile interactive firm called Constratus (www.constratus.com) and I’m responsible for what was mentioned before for our clients.

The industry has been making headlines for the last two years in leaps and bounds, I’m here to rant about what is going on in our industry and what I’m up to… so enjoy, if not email me and complain.
- B

Constratus