There are companies out there that claim to "integrate" data into GA. I know some phone call tracking companies in particular. Is there a way that they are uploading data to GA through the API or are they using some other method that doesn't require that?
There is no upload mechanism into Google Analytics besides manual __utm.gif calls like in the browser. Both Google Analytics APIs (Data Export and Management) are completely Read-Only.
There are a few ways these solutions work, but one of them is to generate a unique identifier for the person calling in to give the person on the other line. That code is linked to their referral information (grabbing from the cookies). Another solution is to have the customer manually input their phone number. That phone number is then dialed by the software and connected to the live person, and in the background the phone number is linked to the source information from the cookies.
Then, the person receiving the call either inputs the code it into the system, or automatically has the user's information, and at the completion of the call, depending on how it is resolved, can generate things like e-commerce transactions or particular pageviews for Goals, so it can generate __utm.gif calls with the relevant campaign and user data appended. As far as Google Analytics is concerned, the request formed is the same user. The only thing that will be different is the User Location (which is fairly inaccurate to begin with.)
ie, if I take the __utm.gif call from my computer, paste it to you, and you click it, Google will see that as an another pageview on this visit, and for most purposes ignore that the differing locations.
Well, Google Analytics works off the a tracking GIF with all kinds of data appended to it, so it can certainly be reproduced by these phone call tracking folks without a problem.
Phone call comes, request the 1x1.gif from google with tracking data suiting your needs, and the hit+data will soon register on GA.
http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?data-here&account=UA-blah&more-stuff
There are several options to send tracking data to Google analytics.
Use a library which implements the ga.js script server-side
When you use Google Analytics in the way described by Google, you include a script on your website. This script sends data from the visitors browser to the Google Analytics server.
This script has been reverse engineered and implemented in server-side libraries. Now you can send the same data from the server to the Google Analytics server. You can use PHP-GA for PHP or pyga for Python.
Use the Google Analytics measurement protocol
The Google Analytics measurement protocol is a new API to send data to Google Analytics. You can send data by sending POST requests to the API.
Related
I want to make an app for gamers that uses statistics from the games they play. I want to link Riot/ubisoft/steam/epic games/ account to my app and use the user's game data (with permission of-course). Is there a way to access that information? I was not able to find much on my own. Steam has web apis that might be able to get that information but I don't understand how much information I can get from there as well.
You need to use one of their internal APIs. Ubisoft uses its own demux API. There are several examples on GitHub on how to do that. In my case ,I am grabbing data from tracker.gg and Ubisoft. Here's a repo for my API Server .
https://github.com/alexanderthegreat96/dth-division2-api
I want to implement Whatsapp
to send information from an external application. The idea is to use this
external application to send information throughout Whatsapp.
If you can help me about the terms and
conditions and if this query is possible to develop.
There is a way through which you can send WhatsApp message from your self created application. Use this link Chat API.
But it only provides 3 days trail period and after that you have to purchase it.
The process in that is, you have to register with your google account, then scan the QR code provided(which changes after every 45 seconds). and you are set to go, they will provide you the API for : PHP, Node.JS, Jquery, CURL.
One thing more you always have to keep your phone connected with the internet everytime.
Also I found a drawback in that, i.e. they also provide API to read messages, but it is too slow, as in my condition I can see my messages of yesterday but not of today.
I have a project where I'm required to predict future user location so that we can provide him with location specific services as well as collect data from his device that would be used to provide a service for another user etc...
I have already developed an android app that collects some data but as social media is the richest in terms of information, I would like to make use of that. For example, if the user checks in in a restaurant and gives it a good review (on fb for example) then he is likely to go back there. Or if he tweets a negative tweet about a place then he is unlikely to go back there... these are just examples I thought of.
So my main issue is: how do I even get access to that information? I mean it's not like the user is going to send me a copy of every social media activity they have so how do I get it and is that even possible? Because I know fb, twitter and other social medias have security policies so I initially thought it couldn't be done and that only facebook gets access to their users' information to predict their likes and dislikes and show them adds and sponsored posts accordingly but when googling it, I found a lot of tools that claim to be able to provide that sort of data. How did they even acquire it and is it possible for me to do the same?
Facebook, Twitter, etc. have well-documented APIs that may or may not allow you to access the data.
For the APIs, see the official documentation of each, because anything I write here will likely be outdated in a year or two, as their APIs change.
Don't rely on web scraping. The web sites change design more often than the API, and you will likely violate the terms-of-service.
Long time ago, I took and passed the Google Analytics IQ certification test. At the time, I don't believe there were such things as Core Reporting API, Management API, and Metadata API (and probably some other Google Analytics related API's that I don't know about). Now that I am going through the Google Analytics IQ certification training course again (provided by Google, presented by Justin Curtoni?? I believe that's his name), I found that they now have Core Reporting API, Management API, and Metadata API.
I am a computer programmer by trade; so, I have no problem with programming using these API's. However, what I don't understand is, what do these API's buy me that the Google Analytics UI cannot offer? There is no reason to write a program that utilizes these API's simply because I can do it. To me, the existing Google Analytics UI has a lot of tools, reports, and other features that quite extensive. I am hoping that some of you can help me see something that I am probably missing.
The APIs are primarily for programmatic access. For example, if you need to create 1000 accounts all with the same property/view structure and then maybe add a few view filters to each of those accounts, you'll probably want to use the Management API. Doing that by hand would be a nightmare.
The same thing is true for the reporting API. Maybe you want to set up task that runs every monday morning and reports on the previous weeks data. And maybe you want to display that data on an internal dashboard for your company using some fancy charting library. You'd have to use the API to get the data.
Dashboards (executive summaries; managers often want nice visualizations instead of boring drill-downs)
Custom reports for user groups that do not have a Google Account or are not supposed to have access to full reports (e.g. Affiliates)
advanced filtering and aggregation (GA report cannot do everything)
You can combine analytics data with external data (e.g. you are not allowed to store personally identifiable information within GA; but you might store a custom key that allows you to link analytics data to customer data from you CRM or fulfillment system)
Machine-to-machine communication; I once did tracking for an airline that needed trend data on what people where searching for and what they where actually booking; that data was used to allocate/withdraw resources from busy/lame flights, and part of this was done by hooking up GA to their backend system
Take a look at the GA Partner Page. I would say the primary reason is to "liberate" GA Data from outside of GA itself. As Eike mentions, you can create dashboards and combine this data with other sources for a complete "View" of your online presence.
HI I guess there is no definite answer. Here are some things you can do with the APIs:
Automating AdWords CRO based on keyword ad and campaign performance.
Scoring leads based on Analytics data (Engagement with different items) and external data from a CRM.
Collecting unsampled data using multiple daily queries
Filtering using several dimension.
Tracking conversions for periods longer than supported by AdWords.
Looking at a funnel via segments
Analyzing funnels with non-linear structures
Create more robust alerts
Export data to BigQuery and analyse it together with data from other systems.
Create Machine learning apps for behavioural customizing your site.
Create a dashboard with data from multiple views
Use product recommendation to implements "better together" in an online store.
Automate creation of accounts and properties + their integration in a Hosting provider's console.
Cheers!!
I want to get two statistics (Visits today, visits total) from my GoogleAnalytics account.
I checked Google Analytics resources such as
https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/reporting/?hl=en
https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/reporting/core/v3/reference
But it seems pretty time-consuming to get a certain ID, oAuth and everything working.
I do not need any user authentication, just an API request from my backend (GA authentication should be provided via request url for example).
To be honest, I found myself jumping from one link to another when doing tutorial and did not accomplish anything at the end.
What is the quickest way to get everything working? If there is a nice tutorial on getting JUST basic (two numbers) stuff from GoogleAnalytics I would be very grateful (everything I see is working almost as GA itself - just with custom styles/graphs etc. I need plain and simple number returned via REST api for instance.)
Thanks for any info!
Auth is understandably complicated, but it sounds like you need service account authentication since you are querying your own data and need it to run on the back end.
The quickest way to get from zero to querying the API is to follow the Hello Analytics Guide. I have linked you to the PHP service account page. But there are examples of service accounts, web apps, and installed apps in four different languages.
But an outline of the main steps are
Create a project in the Google developer console
Within that project create a service account and download the p12 file.
add that service account email to the particular view you wish to query.
You are now ready to modify the Hello Analytics example.
Below is a simple query for the number sessions today:
function getResults(&$analytics) {
return $analytics->data_ga->get(
'ga:XXXX', // Replace with your view ID.
'today',
'today',
'ga:sessions');
}
Feel free to ask any clarifying questions in the comments section.