Sameer Parwani

Usually Google Analytics or similar tools cover so many metrics that creating your own web analytics tool is redundant. However, for certain custom metrics you might want to collect your own statistics. For example, on RateDesi Hungama I want to know how many videos are played each day.

At first, I put my counter into my web app source code (in php) within the same function that fetched and displayed the video. However, the number of videos played seemed outrageously high compared to the number of pageviews as reported by Google Analytics. Looking into my server logs, I realized over 50% of the played videos at the time were due to bots or spiders and that Google Analytics must have been excluding those visitors. So what was Google Analytics doing that I wasn’t?

Most bots collect the source code for the html of the page visited. The bot also may or may not visit hyperlinks on the page. However, they will not execute the javascript or iFrames that are included in the page. So, Google Analytics was only counting a visitor when its javascript was executed which more accurately reflected the number of visitors. But my script was incrementing the videos played counter each time the source code was downloaded.

So, to exclude such visits, you could use javascript (like Google Analytics does) or iFrames or even an image tag. Regardless of the method you choose, you will be calling back to a server side script that will increment your counter. Your statistics will now be much more accurate.