Can we use google analytics for Internal website?

Question

I have an Intranet application which is accessible from within company firewall. To track some specific pages, I want to implement Google Analytics in my Intranet application. This application is accessible from outside only when user system has some specific certificate installed. Is it possible to implement Google Analytics in my Intranet application? Will this Google analytics work inside company firewall? How Google analytics work i.e. what is the actual flow of google analytics?

Answer 1

In order for Analytics to generate reports for your corporate intranet usage, your corporate network must be able to reach the Analytics JavaScript file (analytics.js).

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Your intranet must also be accessible through a fully qualified domain name such as http:// intranet.example.com. The Analytics JavaScript won't work if your intranet can only be accessed using a domain name that isn't fully qualified, such as http:// intranet

Ref: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1009688?hl=en

In your example, if a person without the certificate you mentioned can still reach the domain (that is, there is a public DNS entry for the domain name) even if they get an 'access denied' or similar message, the tracking should still work.

Answer 2

Yes, Google analytics can be used for internal web applications too. Please visit this URL which will clear your doubts. If you click on the given link and able to access analytics.js file from your internal network you can use Google analytics for your internal applications protected from corporate firewall.

Please note that after implementation, tracking data would be available around 24 hours only. So, you need to wait for 24 hours first. Even if you are not able to view the tracking data, please visit this link. You will find the possible reasons behind not working your analytics code.

Answer 3

Google Analytics requires that you place a script on each page you wish to track. Whenever a page with the script is loaded, the script runs and sends data to GA, so your users must be connected to the internet as well as the intranet for their usage statistics to register. One security issue to consider is the titles of your intranet's pages will be sent externally across the intranet, which your IT security may have an issue with.

For basic intranet analytics, I'd recommend starting with Piwik which is open source and installs on your server.

It will give you a lot of initial usage data and if your customer decides they want more, you can look into more sophisticated products.

Answer 4

Google Analytics is Software as a Service and runs on the Google Servers. If your clients cannot reach the Google server than you cannot send tracking data and Google Analytics will not show anything. You may need to adjust your firewall rules to let calls to the Analytics servers pass (are you that you want a third party javascript to send data from your intranet to the internet, though ? There might be legal ramifications, too, after all implementing a script basically means to hand control of the clients to a third party).

If the server for your intranet is connected to the internet you could collect all hits in a log and pipe this to Google Analytics.

However Google Analytics might not be the best choice. You most certainly do not need campaign data, you probably do not have ecommerce in your company and depending on your type of company geo data and technology data might not be relevant (after all you probably know what computers your employees use and where they are). And for a page counter a self hosted solution will do just as well.