CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptphpwordpressgoogle-analyticsgoogle-analytics-api
Bash
Bash

Reputation: 1618

Is it possible to record PDF downloads in another GA property?

My client's site is setup with a GA tag that's sending info to UA-XXXXXXXX-Y. They're going to add some PDF links which are hosted on another site (site B) they own. They want to track the PDF downloads in site B's analytics - another property of the same account: UA-XXXXXXXX-Z. Is there a way to achieve this?

Both site's are Wordpress.

If there's a way to get some backend code running that detects when someone hits a PDF url, I'm open to trying that. Wasn't able to get this approach to work myself.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 55

Answers (3)

lufc
lufc

Reputation: 2040

You could try:

$("a").click(function(){
    if ($(this).attr('href').includes('.pdf')) {
        ga('send','pageview',$(this).attr('href'));
    }
    return true;
});

You would need to set ga in this instance to be Site B's analytics.

POC:

$("a").click(function() {
  if ($(this).attr('href').includes('.pdf')) {
    alert('it\'s pdf time')
  }
  return true;
});
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.3.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<a href="mypdf.pdf" target="_blank">Click me</a>
<a href="myhtml.html" target="_blank">Click me too</a>

Upvotes: 0

WPZA
WPZA

Reputation: 931

You can put the PDF in an iframe and track the page it's inserted on.

As for downloads, a simple onclick="ga_event()" event could help.

Upvotes: 0

XTOTHEL
XTOTHEL

Reputation: 5208

The only way to capture "direct" downloads of PDFs is to serve the pages up through a script. Example: www.mydomain.com/getpdf.php?pdf=mypdf

The script would then use the measurement protocol https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/protocol/v1/ to send a "hit" to GA for that download, then serve up the pdf for download.

The simplest is probably to not drive directly to the PDF, but a page with a link to it and track the link clicks as events.

Upvotes: 1

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