PDF Analytics intercepts any request for a. PDF Analytics – A simple settings page, with just three fields to complete The solution was to build “PDF Analytics”, a plugin for WordPress that makes those visits visible in Google Analytics for the first time.
None of this traffic was measurable though. I’ve seen this firsthand with several clients, that had PDF documents ranking competitively in Google. Restaurants also favour PDF files for their food and drink menus, but cannot see if anyone downloads or reads them. Even those that do convert, usually link to and promote a PDF version of the information. These institutions do not want to convert their PDFs into webpages, as they cant be easily controlled, versioned, and compliance checked. Important information, data, forms, product/service details and brochures, all get delivered in PDF format. This only records a small fraction of views though, and none of the traffic from search engines, email clicks or links from third parties.įinance, insurance and public sector websites are particularly affected by this problem. In the past, the recommended solution was to tag internal links to these files, so that Google Analytics could assign a view/touchpoint. Images, videos, Microsoft Office documents and PDF files do not execute JavaScript and fall into a black hole. The reason for this issue is that Google Analytics uses JavaScript to track visits, which only works on web pages. Unlike previous generations of Web Analytics packages that relied on Log File data, GA cannot see traffic landing directly on your other media files, including the enterprise and public sector favourite, PDF. But one major downside in how Google Analytics works, is that it can only track visits to the HTML pages on your website 2. With 7 out of 10 websites using Google Analytics 1, it clearly holds the title of the most popular Analytics platform.
Google Analytics – Realtime Dashboard showing traffic to an example PDF file How do you track Google Analytics data on PDF files? Please note I can not provide any support or troubleshooting for this plugin. It’s free, and unlike other solutions, captures 100% of traffic (including Direct and Organic Search). TL DR – I’ve created a WordPress plugin that tracks PDF views on your website, in Google Analytics.