Savio.no - Blog Comments

Eivind Savio: How to Track Facebook iFrames with Google Analytics

Eivind Savio — 03.02.2012 18:12:12

Hi Mads

Clicks and visits would never be the same (and that goes for other advertising as well). The best thing to do is to compare trends.

If I click on an ad now, and a click on the same ad again before my session expires, that would be counted as 2 clicks & 1 visit.
But, the result can also be opposit if I look at a longer time frame.
If I click on your ad today, and tomorrow I visit your page again directly (direct traffic), it would be counted as 1 click & 2 visits from your ad.

Did it answer your question?

ES

Eivind Savio: How to Track Facebook iFrames with Google Analytics

Eivind Savio — 03.02.2012 17:54:11

Hi Izzy

(1) Is your framed page on another domain, or on your own domain? The answer also depends on what kind of data you want. Let's assume your framed page is on another domain, and the user first visits your domain.

If you want to know what the original traffic source was to your domain, then you would have to do cross domain tracking.
If you don't care about the original traffic source to your domain, then you would use campaign tracking.

If the framed page is on the same domain (as my framed page is), then I don't have to do anything to get the original traffic source since the GA cookie "lives" on the same domain.

(2) Have you implemented a filter that excludes the "fake" URL?

Eivind

Izzy: How to Track Facebook iFrames with Google Analytics

Izzy — 03.02.2012 04:45:25

Great article and thanks for taking your time to write this guide. I have a couple of question.

(1) Do I need to tag outbound links from my parent domain to my page that is iframed in Facebook? As per normal cross domain tracking?

(2) I'm getting double pageviews per 1 visit which isn't correct. I assume this is the redirect then the code on the page loading a second time?

Thanks!

Mads Gorm Larsen: How to Track Facebook iFrames with Google Analytics

Mads Gorm Larsen — 02.02.2012 20:27:25

Hi Elvind

I have the p3p up and running, and it is doing it's magic, I am getting IE trafic in analytics. BUT I am still seeing a lot, lot more clicks in facebooks ads, than I am seeing visit in analytics. Have you heard about this before, and what is your take on that?

This is the page - https://www.facebook.com/dettekniskefakultet?sk=app_315622871802245

Thanks for any help or advice you might offer

Best
Mads Gorm

Eivind Savio: How to Track Facebook iFrames with Google Analytics

Eivind Savio — 26.01.2012 23:34:44

Hi Brian

Not sure if I fully understand your questions. Could you please elaborate?

Eivind

Eivind Savio: Tracking Facebook Likes, Share, Send & Comments as Social Engagement in Google Analytics

Eivind Savio — 26.01.2012 18:21:08

Hi koffyn

You must provide a real AppID in your script.

FB.init({appId: 'YourAppID', status: true, cookie: true, xfbml: true});

Eivind

Brian: How to Track Facebook iFrames with Google Analytics

Brian — 26.01.2012 14:50:27

Hi Eivind,

Nice article! This is a problem that many of us have, and it is great to get help with finding a solution

One question that I have is, if we link to an external site to the redirect page to the Facebook app, will we lose all the social context in the adverts available to us?

Also will we lose metrics such as "connections" that we see in Facebook?

We have tried custom variables to track performing adverts, to ascertain source of likes and other actions. However we have had issues with inconsistent data.

Thanks for this article!

koffyn: Tracking Facebook Likes, Share, Send & Comments as Social Engagement in Google Analytics

koffyn — 16.01.2012 09:17:35

Hello Savio,

Check please my test page http://pravdaodurove.com/rini_fblike2.html

I did what you said with FB LikeBox, but still in my GA Reports all visitors are Not Socially Engaged, even if they've pushed the Like button :(

Eivind Savio: How to Track Facebook iFrames with Google Analytics

Eivind Savio — 13.11.2011 14:12:29

Hi Vlad

The answer to that is it depends on what level you want to track the traffic to your iFrame.

If you just want to track traffic sources to the iFrame, you don't need Cross Domain tracking.
However, if you want to know ex. what traffic sources your website got, and which of those sources sent traffic to your iFrame, then you would have to use Cross Domain tracking.

If the iFrame is on the same domain as your website, you will get that information anyway since the iFrame and your site is sharing cookies.

Eivind Savio: Tracking Facebook Likes, Share, Send & Comments as Social Engagement in Google Analytics

Eivind Savio — 13.11.2011 12:47:21

Hi Dasago

As long as you can implement code/script into the iFrame, interactions can be tracked.

Dasago: Tracking Facebook Likes, Share, Send & Comments as Social Engagement in Google Analytics

Dasago — 11.11.2011 01:59:57

Hello Elvind,

Do you know if Facebook interactions that are located within an iframe can be tracked?

Thank you!

Vlad: How to Track Facebook iFrames with Google Analytics

Vlad — 09.11.2011 17:46:53

Hello, Eivind,
Thanks for the great post!
I'm a bit new in all this coding stuff so maybe you could help me.
This tracking code for Facebook iFrame Tab Pages you share assumes that app itself is located on the same domain, as your main site(as lunametrics assumes)?
Suppose I have my site on domain.com and my app is somewhere on domain1.com. Shouldn't I be using Cross-Domain Tracking? Or inserting your code with my UA-XXXXX is enough?

Thanks in advance!

Lisa Wills: How to Track Facebook iFrames with Google Analytics

Lisa Wills — 08.11.2011 21:50:24

You can also use Google Analytics easily on your Facebook Welcome tab by using http://pholiofy.com. We built it on WordPress as a hosting platform for Facebook Pages custom content and each site is a subdomain of Pholiofy. You just have to set up your Google Analytics for the subdomain and then post the web id into a field in the dashboard.

Eivind Savio: How to Track Traffic from Facebook Likes, Send or Comments in Google Analytics

Eivind Savio — 07.11.2011 18:31:59

Hi Rob

Unfortunately that isn't possible since Facebook is redirecting all links. Even if it's possible to get the full referring URL, that will not help you. The full referring URL is something like facebook.com/l.php?u=http://www.yourdomain.com/TheLandingPage

What you can do to get a better understanding of the traffic is to use the solution described in this article, and use campaign tagging if you are posting links to your own site.

But you will never know which FB page that sent you the traffic.

Eivind

Rob: How to Track Traffic from Facebook Likes, Send or Comments in Google Analytics

Rob — 07.11.2011 02:06:03

Hi, great post. I was wondering if it is possible to track if a FB page sent out my link to their fans. Right now it is displayed as referral source from Facebook but not letting me know exactly which page or source it came from. Kinda difficult to say thank you to those guys that do.

Eivind Savio: Tracking Facebook Likes, Share, Send & Comments as Social Engagement in Google Analytics

Eivind Savio — 22.10.2011 11:45:59

Hi Jo_c.

I haven't experienced that issue. Works fine for meg.

Jo_c: Tracking Facebook Likes, Share, Send & Comments as Social Engagement in Google Analytics

Jo_c — 21.10.2011 00:46:35

Hi Elvind,

I tried your code above and it works for everything else except the like box.

I find that the edge.create only works with the like button but not with the like box.

Have you also encountered the same issue?

Thanks.

Eivind Savio: How to Track Facebook iFrames with Google Analytics

Eivind Savio — 15.10.2011 14:13:55

Hi Chrilles

I don't guarantee that my code is 100 % bullet proof, but I don't think there should be any issues with my solution either.

The last controlled tests I did across browsers and OS showed good results. All browsers & traffic sources were tracked correctly in that test. But for you to be 100 % sure how good the solution is, you will have to test it yourself.

Regards,
Eivind

Chrilles: How to Track Facebook iFrames with Google Analytics

Chrilles — 12.10.2011 07:55:51

Hi Eivind

VERY nice article describing a very complicated problem. Thanks for that.

Can you elaborate a little about what the status is today using your solution. Is your code 100% bullet proof or are there still some issues solving the P3P problem. Is it as good as it gets - and how good is that?

Kind regards,

Chrilles

Alexander: YouTube Chromeless Player with Google Analytics Event Tracking upgrade

Alexander — 17.09.2011 21:18:00

This is exactly what i searched for quite a while now :) But it does not work :/ I am using Max OS X Lion and tested with safari 5.1 and firefox 6

I can't see the video :/ Any suggestions?

Eivind Savio: Google Analytics Campaign URL builder with Short URL and Twitter posting

Eivind Savio — 07.09.2011 19:35:57

Thanks for your feedback, PurpleFizz.
Of course, that was what he meant. Didn't think of using the bit.ly specific QR code for URLs shortend with bit.ly.

If this is something that people want, I will try to fit it into my solution.

PurpleFizz: Google Analytics Campaign URL builder with Short URL and Twitter posting

PurpleFizz — 06.09.2011 13:50:19

I believe the OP was referring to the bit.ly generated qr codes. Add a '.qr' to the end of any bit.ly shortened url to see the short url QR code (and a jab at google's balls). https://bitly.com/o3RsXR.qr

Nice tool.

Eivind Savio: Tracking Facebook Likes, Share, Send & Comments as Social Engagement in Google Analytics

Eivind Savio — 22.08.2011 21:24:26

Hi Simon

Those 2 scripts runs fine together, I run them both myself.

Is it the site you are linking to you have problem with?
With re-integrated the basic GA script, are you talking about app.tabpress.com? I see you are running their Facebook Tracking script.

Simon: Tracking Facebook Likes, Share, Send & Comments as Social Engagement in Google Analytics

Simon — 22.08.2011 19:46:35

Eivind,
I implemented your code but it seems not to interact well with GA.
Maybe I wanted to do too much and also added your code from this article : http://www.savio.no/blogg/a/107/how-to-track-traffic-from-facebook-likes-send-or-comments-in-google-analytics
Maybe they are some conflicts between the 2 scripts, as a results I have re-integrated the basic GA script to see if it will track well again.
Maybe you could tell me if there are some conflicts? or if the code you first wrote is obsolete with the social tracking implementation.
Thanks for your help, these articles are great by the way :)
Simon

Eivind Savio: Tracking Facebook Likes, Share, Send & Comments as Social Engagement in Google Analytics

Eivind Savio — 22.08.2011 17:53:10

Hi Baptiste

The Twitter script I'm using comes from Yoast:
http://yoast.com/social-buttons/

The only difference between my script and his, is that he wrote that article before Social Interaction became a separate report type in Google Analytics. Because of this that article is tracking Social Interactions using Event Tracking (_trackEvent), while my SoMe.js file is using _trackSocial.

- Eivind -

Baptiste: Tracking Facebook Likes, Share, Send & Comments as Social Engagement in Google Analytics

Baptiste — 22.08.2011 16:22:45

Hey, this is a great and very helpful article.
Looking at your source, I see that in your SoMe.js file you also use a bit of code which seems to be used to track Twitter events.

Since I'm very interested BUT very new to GA and Twitter APIs, would you explain, or at least, comment the snippet you use ?

Hope you'll find time to do this, I'm rather sure it would help a lot of people :)

Cheers,
Baptiste

Eivind Savio: Tracking Facebook Likes, Share, Send & Comments as Social Engagement in Google Analytics

Eivind Savio — 13.08.2011 13:24:50

Ah crap.

Fixed and tested that the code work.

Thanks for your feedback.

Eivind

Meir: Tracking Facebook Likes, Share, Send & Comments as Social Engagement in Google Analytics

Meir — 13.08.2011 11:43:01

Thanks Eivind.

I think there is another mistype in your code - line 37 is unnecessary (you have no instruction to close anymore)

-Meir

Eivind Savio: Tracking Facebook Likes, Share, Send & Comments as Social Engagement in Google Analytics

Eivind Savio — 12.08.2011 20:27:51

Hi Meir

Unfortunately one line of my code were missing in my article:

if (FB && FB.Event && FB.Event.subscribe) {

I have updated the script in this article, and hopefully it's correct now (if not my script is "live" here: http://www.savio.no/includes/script/social-media-sharing/SoMe.js)

With that said, I also see that some of your Google Analytics script are placed in the wrong order:

_trackPageview must come after _setDomainName
Script for Tracking traffic from Facebook Like & Send as Campaign traffic must come before _trackPageview

Hope it helps.

Eivind

Meir: Tracking Facebook Likes, Share, Send & Comments as Social Engagement in Google Analytics

Meir — 12.08.2011 18:38:07

Hi Eivind,
Thanks for posting and help!
I am looking on a screenshot at the top of this article and I wish I found it long ago....
We develop native FB applications (Magento based) - this is the app I implemented your solution:
http://apps.facebook.com/rosoling/?___store=en_us

Meir