GAS is a wrapper around the Google Analytics Tracking API from Google. It tries to add new functionality while keeping the same API.
GAS is not an official Google library and GAS developers are not affiliated with Google.
To install GAS download the script from dist folder and put it somewhere on your website. Also install the basic snippet on every page of your website. Be sure to change the Account Number (UA) and the correct gas.js file location.
The basic snippet looks like this:
<script type="text/javascript">
var _gas = _gas || [];
_gas.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-YYYYYY-Y']); // REPLACE WITH YOUR GA NUMBER
_gas.push(['_setDomainName', '.mydomain.com']); // REPLACE WITH YOUR DOMAIN
_gas.push(['_trackPageview']);
_gas.push(['_trackForms']);
_gas.push(['_trackOutboundLinks']);
_gas.push(['_trackMaxScroll']);
_gas.push(['_trackDownloads']);
_gas.push(['_trackYoutube', {force:true}]);
_gas.push(['_trackVimeo', {force:true}]);
(function() {
var ga = document.createElement('script');
ga.type = 'text/javascript';
ga.async = true;
ga.src = '/gas.js';
var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
})();
</script>
There's no need to include the ga.js file. GAS will load that file for you. That snippet will enable the common features of GAS.
GAS is based on _gaq from Google and as such supports all methods and directives it supports. So go check official documentation for the GA Tracker.
Additionally GAS support a couple more features.
Form Tracking will trigger events every time a user submits a form or changes a form field.
_gas.push(['_trackForms']);
This is all you need to enable it.
Form tracking accepts a paramter to customize the event category. If you don't set this parameter it will use the default category "Form Tracking". The paramter must be a javascript object.
eg:
_gas.push(['_trackForms', {category: 'Form Events'}]);
Hooks are a handy feature if you want to monitor or change values of a call to one of the function from _gaq. You can use it as a filter to lowercase values, or to trigger events to another tool every time a pageView is fired. You can assign multiple Hooks.
_gas.push(['_addHook', '_trackPageview', function(page){
console.log(page);
if(page.toLowerCase){
page = page.toLowerCase();
}
return [page]
}]);
_gas.push(['_trackPageview', '/Home.aspx']);
The above Hook will print the pushed page to the browser console and will return the page lowercased. So the actual value sent to GA is the lowercased page. This may be helpful for sites in asp, where lowercase and uppercase don't matter and will save you the work for creating a GA profile Filter.
Here's another handy Hook for Events. Event values must always be integer values. The Hook bellow will try to round floats or convert strings to integers when possible. This should avoid a bad value from canceling the Event.
_gas.push(['_addHook', '_trackEvent', function(cat,act,lab,val){
if(typeof val == 'string'){
val = parseInt(val, 10);
}
val = Math.round(val);
return [cat, act, lab, val]
}]);
You can also cancel a call returning false from a Hook.
_gas.push(['_addHook', '_setVar', function(val){
_gas.push(['_setCustomVar', 1, 'userType', val, 1]);
return false;
}]);
The above Hook will intercept and cancel any call to the, now deprecated,
_setVar. It will then trigger a call to _setCustomVar with an
equivalent value.
This feature help you implementing Multi-domain setups. It will find and tag
all links to other domains and mark them with the _link or _linkByPost
function. You just need to push all domain names with _setDomainName.
_gas.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-1']); _gas.push(['_setAllowLinker', true]); _gas.push(['_setDomainName', 'mysite.com']); _gas.push(['_setDomainName', 'myothersite.com']); _gas.push(['_setMultiDomain', 'click']);
The above snippet can be used in either mysite.com or myothersite.com.
It will know the right one to use for each case and all other domains pushed to
_setDomainName will be used to discover links between the sites.
The nice side effect is that you can have the same snippet for both websites.
This will fire events with the Max-Scroll percentage value for every page the user views.
_gas.push(['_trackMaxScroll']);
Max-Scroll tracking accepts a paramter to customize the event category. If you don't set this parameter it will use the default category "Max Scroll". The paramter must be a javascript object.
eg:
_gas.push(['_trackMaxScroll', {category: 'Scroll Tracking'}]);
This function will look for any outbound links on the current page and will trigger an event when the link is clicked. It bounds to the mousedown javascript event
_gas.push(['_trackOutboundLinks']);
Outbaound tracking accepts a paramter to customize the event category. If you don't set this parameter it will use the default category "Outbound". The paramter must be a javascript object.
eg:
_gas.push(['_trackOutboundLinks', {category: 'External Link'}]);
GAS support changing the page title.
_gas.push(['_trackPageview', {
page: '/my_page',
title: 'My Page Title'
}]);
Easier handling of multi-account setups. You can fire an event to all accounts or just to one of the accounts you configured,
_gas.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-1']); _gas.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-2']); _gas.push(['custom._setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-3']); // This will be sent to all 3 accounts _gas.push(['_trackPageview']); // This pageview goes only to account UA-XXXXX-3 _gas.push(['custom._trackPageview']);
To enable Download Tracking just include the following call on your snippet.
_gas.push(['_trackDownloads']);
GAS will track the following extensions by default: 'xls,xlsx,doc,docx,ppt,pptx,pdf,txt,zip,rar,7z,exe,wma,mov,avi,wmv,mp3,csv,tsv'
You can set additional extensions to be tracked if you want by passing a parameter to _trackDownloads. You can also customize the category for the Download events, otherwise the default "Download" category will be used.
_gas.push(['_trackDownloads', {
category: 'File Downloads',
extensions: 'torrent,gz,mp4,wav'
}]);
You can track Vimeo video events. You must be using the iframe method of embedding videos.
The browser must support HTML5 postMessage. That means it won't work on ie6 and ie7.
_gas.push(['_trackVimeo', {force: true}]);
After you enable it the following events will be tracked.
- play
- pause
- finish
You should append to the video URL the parameter api=1. The embedding code should look like this:
<iframe id="player_1" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/7100569?api=1" width="540" height="304" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen></iframe>
If you don't provide the api parameter than GAS will force a reload on the iframe adding this parameter.
If you only want to track some videos (not all) on your site you can omit the 'force' parameter and GAS will only track the Videos that already have the api parameter. Then you can enable this parameter only in the videos you want to track.
You can track Youtube video events. You must be using the iframe method of embedding videos.
The browser must support HTML5 postMessage. That means it won't work on ie6 and ie7.
_gas.push(['_trackYoutube', {force: true}]);
After you enable it the following events will be tracked.
- play
- pause
- finish
- error
You should append to the video URL the parameter enablejsapi=1. The embedding code should look like this:
<iframe width="640" height="510" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/u1zgFlCw8Aw?enablejsapi=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
If you don't provide the enablejsapi parameter than GAS will force a reload on the iframe adding this parameter.
If you only want to track some videos (not all) on your site you can omit the 'force' parameter and GAS will only track the Videos that already have the enablejsapi parameter. Then you can enable this parameter only in the videos you want to track.
_trackYoutube also support a second optional parameter. It should be an Array of integers and define percentages to fire an event at:
_gas.push(['_trackYoutube', {
force: true,
percentages: [25, 50, 75, 90]
}]);
This will setup Youtube Video Tracking so that events will be fired at 25%, 50%, 75% and 90% in addition to the other standard events, 'play', 'pause', 'finish', ...
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