There are many ways to customize Google Analytics to make it more useful. These Google Analytics Customizations can range anywhere from adding a filter to your profile all the way to modifying your Google Analytics tracking code in order to create new functionality that is not available in the core Google Analytics product. This page is designed to share some common customizations that you can apply to your Google Analytics account in order to have new functionality.
Disclaimer: Read This Before Customizing Google Analytics
Please note that all of these Google Analytics customizations are not supported by Google and they are not recommended to users who do not have a complete understanding of the implications of customizing their Google Analytics installation. Proceed with caution before applying ANY customization to your account and make sure you adhere to the following rules:
- Create a brand new profile in GA for your customization. Do not use your existing main profile
- Never apply a Google Analytics customization to your main GA profile for any account/web property/domain. NEVER DO THIS
- Apply your customization to your BRAND NEW PROFILE and test that it is working properly on your site. Also test that data is tracking properly using Real Time Analytics
- Confirm that you did not violate step #2
A Roundup of Google Analytics Customizations
There are thousands of customizations that have been applied to Google Analytics over the years to deliver an enormous amount of additional functionality to the product. While this page shows many customizations, I am focusing on sharing quality over quantity. In order to be listed here, a customization must be:
- Compatible with a current version of the Google Analytics tracking code (or easily modified to match the code)
- Unique compared to other customizations on this page
- Truly useful to someone looking to extend Google Analytics further
If you have a customization that you feel should be listed here, please contact me or Tweet to @jeffalytics
Track 404 Errors in Google Analytics from Blue Fountain Media
While you are likely tracking the 404 (page not found) errors received by your site in your server logs or even Google Webmaster tools, these reports may not always be at the top of the minds of your analysts or core business users because they don't have access to those reports. I have felt this pain for years and Alhan Keser at Blue Fountain Media have made our lives easier by creating an easy to implement method for tracking 404 errors in Google Analytics.
Google Analytics Rank Tracker by Justin Cutroni
In January of 2013, Google Analytics advocate Justin Cutroni announced A New Method to Track Keyword Ranking using Google Analytics. Using GA event tracking and JavaScript to identify when a referring visit is coming from a search engine, this script fires an event with the category of RankTracker each time that a search referral is identified.
Here is the JavaScript for the GA Rank Tracker that you can install on your website.
Track Image Search in Google Analytics by AJ Kohn
Have you ever looked at your organic search keywords report in Google Analytics, then tried to searched for that keyword on Google, yet your site is nowhere to be found? There is decent chance that this is happening because your site is actually ranking/receiving traffic through image search results.
In March of 2013, AJ Kohn released a guide on how to use filters to track Google Image search in Google Analytics. Simply create a new profile in Google Analytics, apply the filters listed in the article, and you will be able to distinguish between Google search and Google Image search!
This method works for Bing and Google Universal Search as well.
Let's Make This List Even More Comprehensive
Do you know of a great Google Analytics customization that's not listed? Is one of these customizations out of date? Let me know via the contact form or Tweet to @jeffalytics
