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Tracking your dog with GPS and Google Universal Analytics

After posting on Google+ about my blog post on the measurement of offline stores with Google Universal Analytics, I got a dare by user Damion Brown from Melbourne, Australia, to track what his dog was doing using a similar method.

Damion: I’m sorry, mate. I’m afraid I have bad news and good news.

  • The bad news is: I don’t own a dog so I’m not sure as to what I’d want to track.
  • The good news is: I can give you pointers on how to do it. I have done enough tinkering in the last 2 weeks so I’ll let by blog readers do it this time around. You guys get to test (and prove) the concept yourself!

In this experiment, you will attempt the following: track your dog’s location (in 5 minute increments), in relationship to your house, with Google Universal Analytics.

I have a few ideas about that and I’ll be sharing them after the jump.

Tracking your dog with GPS and Google Universal Analytics

Measuring offline store activity with Google Universal Analytics

Hi folks,

Here is another post about Google Universal Analytics, seeing how you seem to like them 😉

Today we’re going to measure the performance of an offline store by testing 2 concepts:

  • measuring customers as they walk in/out of the store
  • measuring cash register transactions

Again, this is a proof of concept but feel free to expand upon it in your own store.

Ready? (Who am I kidding, you’re probably already giddy as a schoolgirl just reading this :D)Measuring offline store activity with Google Universal Analytics

Gmail activity in Google Universal Analytics

Hi folks,

Yes, you read that title right. As another proof of concept after server-side PDF tracking, in this post I will show you a method for measuring your Gmail activity with Google Universal Analytics.

Not that you *need* it, but it is a good example of the sort of upcoming applications for Universal!

Again, this post is not for the technically faint of heart. Still good to go? Buckle up and see you after the jump 😉

Gmail activity in Google Universal Analytics

Track PDF downloads with Google Universal Analytics – no Javascript!

In this post, I intend to share a technique / proof of concept for on-the-fly measurement of PDF files  downloads with Universal Analytics. Without Javacript.
Please note that n00bs are now strongly advised to leave this page (I can live with this bounce rate!) or continue at the risk of their own mental sanity.

Most of you have heard about the arrival of Google Analytics Universal.
This new version of Google Analytics is about:

  • revolutionizing analytics measurement with a unified protocol,
  • giving you a better, user-centric view of the customer experience via multiple platforms and devices,
  • giving you access to custom dimensions and metrics,
  • tracking offline activity (although you need *some* connectivity to send data home to the GA mothership)
Track PDF downloads with Google Universal Analytics – no Javascript!

“Recover” (not provided) keywords in Google Analytics

As a follow-up to my post on (not provided) , in this post I give you *one* of the methods I use for capturing “(not provided)” keywords in Google Analytics. Just to be clear this solution is far from perfect and you will remain frustrated. As I said in my previous post, short of a Google Webmaster Tools API, there is no (not provided) silver bullet.

“Recover” (not provided) keywords in Google Analytics

(not provided) is here to stay – deal with it

Google logo

If you work in digital analytics or SEO, by now you’ve heard about the web tracking phenomenon that is (not provided).

Since the end of 2011, Google has implemented measures to respect the privacy of Internet users on the words and expressions they use on its search engine. Specifically, Google is gradually switching searches to secure mode (SSL / HTTPS) and no longer passes referrer information to the search result website, which means that keyword information is lost.

As of now you can still know the source and medium (Google organic search), but the keyword is replaced with a useless “(not provided)” label.

The impact for marketing and SEO agencies seems enormous. Entire business models based on Google search could collapse.

Or could they?

(not provided) is here to stay – deal with it