Nathan Jackson » google

Tracking events with Google Analytics

Nathan — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 13:51:56 +0000

So, we had some hyperlinked images on one of our websites, each leading to the same page, but with a different $_GET which identifies which button this was. As far as my knowledge goes, that would have made the page duplicate (in google robot’s eyes), which then would have a minor impact on the organic page rankings.

And because organic page ranking is quite important, I thought I’d do some digging regarding to tracking hyperlinks with Google Analytics. I found lots of information regarding to tracking form buttons, flash files and allsorts but most were crowded with extra information.

The line of code that tracks this event is quite simple, and all you need to do is add it into your or your

onClick=”pageTracker._trackEvent(category, action, optional_label, optional_value)”

Category in this case was the general name for the event which happened to be ‘Buttons’.
Action in this case was what they’d done, so I named it ‘Click’.
Optional_Label in this case wa a numerical indicator dependant on which button was clicked.
Optional Value I didn’t acually use, as I didn’t see any point in assigning the button a value, as each was equal as each other.

It should look something like this:
Link text here

Sorted! Just log into your Google Analytics account, go to the website report -> Content -> Event Tracking and within a few days you’ll see some numbers

Need a hand? Just post a comment!

A new Google Favicon?

Nathan — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 19:40:58 +0000

So, I’ve just noticed a new Google Favicon… I’m not sure if i like it! Looks too busy :/ What do you people think? At least it doesn’t impact any functionality

Google Favicon as of 9th January 2009

Some useful SEO / Marketing resources

Nathan — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 18:19:58 +0000

At work I find myself trying to find more and more information about SEO and online Marketing. I don’t consider myself to be awesome at SEO, so instead of preaching I’ll direct you to those who can / do There are many websites that aid me in the daily task of this, most of which that I’ve found by using Google Reader.

First off, Google Reader is one of the most useful tools I use in a day, instead of looking around on the various sites (some which may not have updates), I just subscribe to the various news feeds via Google Reader and every time there’s a new post, It picks up on this and give me a title and a short description of the new news story. If i deem the story interesting, i click the link and there I am…onto the page – awaiting the information overload!

Why search through loads of different sites when you can just get given the latest news from the ones you pick? You’d be silly not to.

So, what you should do is to sign up to Google Reader and subscribe to a few of the following sites: (In no paticular order

If you have anything to add, go ahead and reply in the comments! I look forward to hearing from people.