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 download page 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.
You can also use gas hosted on cdnjs.
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(['_gasTrackForms']);
_gas.push(['_gasTrackOutboundLinks']);
_gas.push(['_gasTrackMaxScroll']);
_gas.push(['_gasTrackDownloads']);
_gas.push(['_gasTrackYoutube', {force: true}]);
_gas.push(['_gasTrackVimeo', {force: true}]);
_gas.push(['_gasTrackMailto']);
(function() {
var ga = document.createElement('script');
ga.type = 'text/javascript';
ga.async = true;
ga.src = '//cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/gas/1.10.1/gas.min.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 it supports.
So go check official documentation for the GA Tracker.
Additionally GAS support a couple more features.
_gas.push(['_gasTrackForms', opts])
Form Tracking will trigger events every time a user submits a form or changes a form field.
parameters
- String opts.category : The event category (default value is: "Form Tracking")
_gas.push(['_gasTrackMaxScroll', opts])
Fire events with the Max-Scroll percentage value for every page the user views.
parameters
- String opts.category : The event category (default value is: "MaxScroll")
_gas.push(['_gasTrackOutboundLinks', opts])
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
parameters
- String opts.category : The event category (default value is: "Outbound")
_gas.push(['_gasTrackDownloads', opts])
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'
parameters
- String opts.category : The event category (default value is: "Download")
- String opts.extensions : Comma separated list of additional extensions to track.
eg:
_gas.push(['_gasTrackDownloads', {
category: 'File Downloads',
extensions: 'torrent,gz,mp4,wav'
}]);_gas.push(['_gasTrackMailto', opts]);
Tracks clicks on links with href="mailto:...".
parameters
- String opts.category : The event category (default value is: "Mailto")
_gas.push(['_gasTrackVimeo', opts])
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.
After you enable it the following events will be tracked. 'play', 'pause' and '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.
parameters
- String opts.category : The event category (default value is: "Vimeo Video")
- boolean opts.force : Add required parameters to video "src" causing the video iframe to reload. (default value is: true)
_gas.push(['_gasTrackYoutube', opts])
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.
After you enable it the following events will be tracked: 'play', 'pause', 'finish' and '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.
parameters
- String opts.category : The event category (default value is: "Youtube Video")
- boolean opts.force : Add required parameters to video "src" causing the video iframe to reload. (default value is: true)
- Array opts.percentages : Percentages to track in addition to the default events.
eg:
_gas.push(['_gasTrackYoutube', {
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'.
_gas.push(['_gasMeta']);
This function should be called before _trackPageview. It will look for
Custom Variables as meta elements with name="ga_custom_var". It will also
look for metas with name="ga_vpv" to be used as virtual pagepaths for
_trackPageview. Note that ga_vpv will only be aplied when _trackPageview is
called with no parameters.
For metas to control customVars the parameters are the same as calling
_setCustomVar but they are delimeted by a caret (^).
eg:
<meta name="ga_vpv" content="/virtual_url" />
<meta name="ga_custom_var" content="1^Category^Trucks^3" />
<meta name="ga_custom_var" content="2^SignedIn^true^2" />
<meta name="ga_custom_var" content="3^A/B^Original^2" />_gas.push(['_gasMetaEcommerce']);
Will look for ecommerce transactions as meta elements. The parameters are the same as calling the javascript functions but must be separated by a caret (^).
eg:
<meta name="ga_trans" content="1234^Acme Clothing^35.97^1.29^5^San Jose^California^USA" />
<meta name="ga_item" content="1234^DD44^T-Shirt^Green Medium^11.99^1" />
<meta name="ga_item" content="1234^DD45^T-Shirt^Red Medium^11.99^2" />_gas.push(['_gasHTMLMarkup']);
Will enable HTML markup to define events and social hits. It uses attributes for setting events and social actions.
For events the required attributes are x-ga-event-categoy and
x-ga-event-action.
eg:
<div x-ga-event-category="Video"
x-ga-event-action="play"
x-ga-event-label="Video Name"
x-ga-event-value="0"
x-ga-event-noninteractive="false"
>
<a href="(...)">Play Video</a>
</div>For Social Actions the required attributes are x-ga-social-network and
x-ga-social-action.
eg:
<div x-ga-social-network="Pinterest"
x-ga-social-action="Pin It"
x-ga-social-target="/targeturlTest.aspx"
x-ga-social-pagepath="/basePagePath.php"
>
<a href="(...)">Pin It</a>
</div>GAS changes the behaiour of some functions that are defined on the official documentation to make it easier to implement some very common cases.
This feature help you implementing cross-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 and then
call _gasMultiDomain
_gas.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-1']);
_gas.push(['_setAllowLinker', true]);
_gas.push(['_setDomainName', 'mysite.com']);
_gas.push(['_setDomainName', 'myothersite.com']);
_gas.push(['_gasMultiDomain', '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.
Note that calling _setDomainName multiple times is not supported by _gaq.
GAS respects the settings for _setAllowAnchor that you set.
So if you set it to true all future calls to _getLinkerUrl, _link and
_linkByPost used by gas will include the boolean true for the
opt_useAnchor parameter.
_gas.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-1']);
_gas.push(['_setAllowLinker', true]);
_gas.push(['_setAllowAnchor', true]);
_gas.push(['_setDomainName', 'mysite.com']);
_gas.push(['_setDomainName', 'myothersite.com']);
_gas.push(['_gasMultiDomain', 'click']);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']);GAS support changing the page title.
_gas.push(['_trackPageview', {
page: '/my_page',
title: 'My Page Title'
}]);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.