Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Track your Netvibes Public Pages with Google Analytics.

A returning question from participants in workshops and courses about using RSS & Personal Start Pages & Netvibes, is "How can I track the use of the Public Page (Universe) by Netvibes?) And what about the use of the Search & News widgets?"

I am still looking for a good answer for the widgets tracking, because Netvibes is not offering tracking of individual widgets at this time, and I haven't heard any talk about it.
So for this, we can only see the downloads from the eco.netvibes.com or widgetbox.com sites.
(Google is offering -for their own gadgets- a manual for gadget tracking.
Maybe some geek can/did try and mash this up to make it work for other widgets ...?)

I DID find a way to keep track of the use of the Public pages!
  • Create a Google Analytics account
  • Add a website profile for the Netvibes Universe (i.e. http://www.netvibes.com/digicmb). This only works if you use the for the basic url.
  • If you put the Google Analytics code (make sure you use the Legacy Tracking Code (urchin.js) and not the other one)
  • Copy the Legacy Tracking Code (urchin.js) code into a new html widget in the first Tab van your Public Page (via Add content; Essential Widgets; HTML
  • Nothing else is needed in that widget. You can change the title, but that's all. Nothing will show in the widget.
  • Google Analytics will recognise that the code is installed and will start.
  • I found out it actually also tracks use of the other pages ánd widgets, but it lists them in such a terrible way (with internal codes and widget ids, instead of just the title of the tab or widgets) that is absolutely useless.

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