JavaScript

New Google Analytics.js Snippet Tips

Sam Deering
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Once again the Google Analytics snippet is changing (evolving) into something bigger and better… Let’s take a look…

Default New Analytics.js Script

This is currently in beta.

I saw HTML5 Boilerplate have been clever and renamed the vars.. it now reads b,o,i,l,e,r … hehe..

Don’t break you current tracking objects, simply rename the ga to whatever you’ve been using such as __gaTracker.

(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){
(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),
m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)
})(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','__gaTracker');
__gaTracker('create', 'UA-XXXX-Y');
__gaTracker('send', 'pageview');

Testing on localhost

In some cases you might want to test analytics.js from a webserver running on localhost. To set analytics.js cookies, you need to disable the default cookie domain using:

ga('create', 'UA-XXXX-Y', {
  'cookieDomain': 'none'
});

Tracking your hash urls on your web apps. you can set the page url like this. Add that to your page templates.

OR

Don’t forget to remove the send from your main snippet. So it now looks like this:

To capture a new event simply add this when you want the event tracked

ga('send', 'event', 'category', 'action', 'label', value);

Where label and value are optional.

For example, 

ga('send', 'event', 'register', 'currentUser');

GA Basic Config: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/

GA Advanced Config: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/advanced?hl=es