How can I enable Google Analytics on a file download link?

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I’m using WordPress to present some software for download. The download links are provided via Custom Link entries in a side menu. I would like to enable Google Analytics tracking for these file downloads but I can’t see how I can add the required javascript triggers as per the example here: http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55529.

Can anyone offer a way of achieving this?

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Edit: By “Custom Link”, I mean that the file links are created in a custom menu as custom links in the Appearance->Menus area of WP3. I’m using the Atahualpa theme, if that makes any difference.

Further Edit: I’m trying the plug-in route, which will hopefully automate the process, but another possibility I’ve found is to use the “Text” widget and simply paste the menu code in there and edit in the javascript trigger on the links. This is obviously more of a pain to maintain. I would add this as a possible answer, but I can’t answer my own question, apparently.

Outcome: Thanks for the responses. I’ve ended up going with the Text widget and just hand-coding the menu for now.

I’m not sure why the answer simply pasting the info from the link I gave in the question is being up-voted as it doesn’t address how to do this in WordPress. A plugin that allows adding onclick handlers to the custom links or similar would be best, but I can’t find one and “if you had a unicorn” isn’t an answer either. I may come back to the coding suggestions but the creation of useful GA identifiers seems difficult to do automatically, which seems to lead back to effectively writing my own plugin… and surely that’s an answer to almost anything?

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4 comments

  1. You basically have to tag the <a> link

    Google Analytics provides an easy way
    to track clicks on links that lead to
    file downloads.

    Because these links do
    not lead to a page on your site
    containing the tracking code, you’ll
    need to tag the link itself with the
    _trackPageview() JavaScript if you would like to track these downloads.
    This piece of JavaScript assigns a
    pageview to any click on a link – the
    pageview is attributed to the filename
    you specify.

    For example, to log every click on a
    particular link to
    http://www.example.com/files/map.pdf as a
    pageview for /downloads/map you would
    add the following attribute to the
    link’s tag:

    <a href="http://www.example.com/files/map.pdf" onClick="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview('/downloads/map'); ">

    http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55529

    Hope that helps 🙂

  2. I was hoping you would clarify how you’re outputing these links, as per Rarst’s comment..
    That said, i’m going to assume you’re using wp_list_bookmarks to create a list of these links (there aren’t many other functions for the purpose).

    For wp_list_bookmarks there’s only one hook available and that’s called(ironically) wp_list_bookmarks, which gives you a string with the output. The following should add the necessary code onto links for you..

    add_filter( 'wp_list_bookmarks', 'add_analytics_tracking' ); 
function add_analytics_tracking( $bookmarks_string ) {
    $bookmarks_string = str_replace( 
        '<a href', // Replace this
        '<a onClick="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview('/downloads/map');" href', // With this
        $bookmarks_string // In this
    );
    return $bookmarks_string;
}

    A second option would be to use get_bookmarks (see the example on that codex page), just of course bear in mind that get_bookmarks does little to sanitize the data you’re getting back, wp_list_bookmarks will deal with sanitization for you..

    Hope that helps in some way… 🙂

  4. @Eric: I had this same issue tracking my eBook downloads on my vegan lifestyle website.

    The problem is I offer a lot of eBooks and adding the link 1-by-1 just isn’t practical for me. I Googled around and found Entourage.js:

    http://techoctave.com/c7/posts/58-entourage-js-automatic-download-tracking-for-asynchronous-google-analytics

    I like it because it has automatic file download tracking. The article has the installation details and download link. But for me, it was as simple as adding the following code snippet before my Google Analytics snippet inside the <head> tag:

    <script src="javascripts/entourage.js"></script>

    You can replace the “javascripts” directory with the location of your javascript files. Hope this helps someone. I was frustrated until I found this solution. Now things just work!