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I am willing to use Google Analytics to track stats about usage of my Client/Server application (no Browser on the user computer!).

So I guess if anyone ever tried to craft requests to __utm.gif from serverside code.

I have found some information on the request and relevant cookies at google website but there are no details on the cookies values passed in the "utmcc" variable.

I understand that I will not be able to "craft" some of the information which Analytics server derives from the request itself (one for all: the source IP address!). I can't generate requests from the Client computer.

Does anyone have experience with this scenario? Any detailed information or resource? Any working code snippet (any language will do! :)?

Elnur Abdurrakhimov
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Pokot0
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    Does your app behave like a website? Most of what google analytics provides is very much related to tracking websites. You'd be going to a lot of trouble to use a hammer to turn a screw. – Hardwareguy Jun 22 '09 at 14:56
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    You are correct! It does not! I have done this consideration myself but have found that for my requirements I can map the "Visitor/Visit" paradigma to my application and it will work fine (Visitor is the login, Visit is each time the software is launched). Moreover Google Analytics has some advanced "Event Tracking" functionalities which can be easily mapped to client application actions. After all: web applications behave very much like desktop applications nowadays! :) – Pokot0 Jun 22 '09 at 15:18

7 Answers7

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I asked a similar question recently and somebody gave me a link, and I found another from the same site:

http://www.vdgraaf.info/wp-content/uploads/image-url-explained.txt
http://www.vdgraaf.info/wp-content/uploads/urchin-image.txt (included here)

Google's Analytics code is provided in the form of a JS library, ga.js. When a tracking function is called from this library, a request is made to a gif file on the GA servers at either of the following URLs:

http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif //from http pages
https://ssl.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif //from https pages

The following are parameters that may be used in the request to provide GA with detailed information:

?utmwv=1 //Urchin/Analytics version
&utmn=634440486
&utmcs=UTF-8 //document encoding
&utmsr=1440x900 //screen resolution
&utmsc=32-bit //color depth
&utmul=nl //user language
&utmje=1 //java enabled
&utmfl=9.0%20%20r28 //flash
&utmcr=1 //carriage return
&utmdt=Linklove » The optimum keyword density //document title
&utmhn=www.vdgraaf.info //document hostname
&utmr=http://www.google.nl/search?q=seo+optimal+keyword+density&sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1B3GGGL_nlNL210NL211 //referer URL
&utmp=/the-optimum-keyword-density.html //document page URL
&utmac=UA-320536-6 //Google Analytics account
&utmcc= //cookie settings
    __utma=
                    21661308. //cookie number
                    1850772708. //number under 2147483647
                    1169320752. //time (20-01-2007) cookie first set
                    1172328503. //time (24-02-2007) cookie previous set
                    1172935717. //time (03-03-2007) today
                    3;+
    __utmb=
                    21661308;+ //cookie number
    __utmc=
                    21661308;+ //cookie number
    __utmz=
                    21661308. //cookie number
                    1172936273. //time (03-03-2007) today
                    3.
                    2.
        utmccn=(organic)| //utm_campaign
        utmcsr=google| //utm_source
        utmctr=seo+optimal+keyword+density| //utm_term
        utmcmd=organic;+ //utm_medium

Remember that the &utmcc values need to be URL encoded.

The links in this answer have proven to be a little unreliable, so here are some other resources that might be useful:

Andy E
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  • interesting stuff! i will do some tests and let you know what I have found. Thanks! – Pokot0 Jul 07 '09 at 15:40
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    it worked like a charm. I have just tested basic functionality for the time being, but definitely seems promising! Thanks! BTW: Here is the link to the original article for anyone who might be interested: http://www.vdgraaf.info/google-analytics-without-javascript.html – Pokot0 Jul 10 '09 at 13:00
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    the links are dead unfortunately. – Maurice Flanagan Sep 22 '09 at 15:47
  • Tried right now. Seem to work fine. Maybe a temporary disrupture! – Pokot0 Jan 27 '10 at 16:19
  • @ZJR: it's had its ups and downs, maybe it's down for good this time. I'll see if I can find another resource — I've pretty much forgotten everything in the almost two years since this answer! – Andy E Mar 11 '11 at 09:38
  • Situation still similar, anyway, but while urchin is gone, now google kind-of released server side code (PHP,Perl,Java,ASPX) that interacts with `__utm.gif` (gotta still check how well it interacts, but seems promising) – ZJR Mar 12 '11 at 00:44
  • Interesting links, I tried to find some info from Google Analytics page about this before, I am still confused – Is Learning English Apr 07 '11 at 05:43
  • Are utmccn, utmcsr, etc, parameters of the __utmz parameter ??? (who is itself a param of utmcc) – billy Nov 10 '11 at 20:27
  • Let's try to reopen this old post. I'm doing server side GA in c# on .Net and I'm almost there but I have a prob: My situation is that the page I want to track ("trackme.aspx") is iframed several time (let's say 3) in a single page "test.html". So when someone visits test.html I get three simultaneous hits to trackme.aspx. At this point, as the requests are simultaneous, I'm not able to have &utms= set correctly when I make the request to the 1x1 gif. That's because: 1. I check for the user cookie (it is the same for all three requests) and get the pageview from there [continue] – Pietro Oct 23 '12 at 11:03
  • 2. Add one to the pageview counter 3. I push the cookie with the updated pageview These for request A, B, and C. Obviously the order is not a clean A1, A2, A3, B1, B2, B3, C1, C2, C3 but could be A1, B1, A2, B2, C1, C2, A3, B3, C3. So I get the pageviews counter to be +1 instead of +3. Any ideas how to solve this? – Pietro Oct 23 '12 at 11:05
5

you might want to give http://code.google.com/p/serversidegoogleanalytics/ a try. its working for me (in combination with zend framework for the http request).

schellmax
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  • Very nice project. Exactly what I was looking for (i wonder if it was already available when I first submitted this question!). Anyway, it seems to be in its early stages and only a limited number of attributes of the pageview can be set (no OS, no Flash version, etc). Thanks for the link!!! – Pokot0 Oct 19 '09 at 18:57
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Years after this question was posted a new method emerged.

Google Analytics now has a measurement protocol. You should favor this because it's supported and documented, unlike the other solutions that try to emulate a protocol that is not fully supported.

In order to use it you need to create a new Web Property that is Universal Analytics enabled.

Full details about the Measurement Protocol in the developer docs.

Eduardo
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1

From inspecting my cookies in firefox for a site that is a known user of google analytics I see it stores 3 values (all 3 start with 2 underscores):

  • __utmc - 9 digit integer (probably)
  • __utma - very long integer with periods thrown in (starts with 9 digits above)
  • __utmz - long string period seperated (starts with 9 digits from utmc)

My guess is utmc is your tracking session id.

Hardwareguy
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1

As an alternative, if you are on AWS, you can use custom metrics in CloudWatch, very easy to use but you need to take care of every thing, depending on what you want to achieve with "server-side" metrics it may be exactly what you need.

Ali
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0

Interesting requirement...

Your best bet would probably be to attempt to reverse engineer the google analytics javascript a little...

With firefox, and firebug, go to a web site that uses google analytics then open firebug and look at the GET that is submitted to google analytics. If you can then create an HttpRequest with those same parameters and headers you should be able to fool google analytics into thinking you're coming from a web page.

Michael Wiles
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  • Yes! That's the hard way! :) I was hoping someone already went down that path! Anyway, I will report here any finding if I will need to go with reverse engineering. Thanks! – Pokot0 Jun 22 '09 at 15:20
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Embed the script in an HTML page with variable placeholders for page title and such, then load the page in an embedded IE instance server side. The GA script allows you to track page events by specifying parameters to the main tracking function, so all you'd have to do is keep the template HTML page in memory, replace the placeholders, and load the page in the embedded IE instance. The IE instance would parse and execute the javascript like it were a normal page and bingo, you've got your tracking.

This is theoretical, of course, and not tested.

Chris
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  • Thanks Chris, this is an interesting approach. I have done some thinking and I think it needs to be a little more complex than what you explain. In order to track visits/visitors correctly (and most likely for many other functionalities) you need to preserve cookies for different users. So I would need to save cookies serverside and use the same cookieset everytime the same user triggers an event. I will do some more thinking and maybe some tests using http://lobobrowser.org (I have java serverside) or selenium using different profiles. – Pokot0 Jul 07 '09 at 15:37