785104 - Install Google Analytics for Mozilla Hacks

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Developer Engagement :: Mozilla Hacks, task)

Description

[Robert Nyman]

This is sort of a test bug, when it comes to Do not track etc, but for metrics it would be really useful if we could install Google Analytics on Mozilla Hacks.

Comment 1

[Luke Crouch [:groovecoder]]

Does it have to be Google Analytics? What does it do that Webtrends doesn't? (Genuine question - I hardly use either.)

Comment 2

[Robert Nyman]

Basically, you can track tons of more things with JavaScript on the client that you don't have access to on the server: it could be anything from resolution to JavaScript enabled to whatever you can think of. :-)

And, they have a really good way of presenting and mining that data.

Comment 3

[Robert Nyman]

I spoke to Stormy, and I believe she and Chris More has more information about where we stand with this.

Comment 4

[John Karahalis [:openjck]]

We are already tracking Hacks with WebTrends, at least.

Comment 5

[Jean-Yves Perrier [:teoli]]

I have the impression that WebTrends could give us more information than Analytics. But, to be honnest, I would need a training w/ it to be efficient. I can only extract very basic information from their cumbersome interface.

Comment 6

[Robert Nyman]

John,

We have that, but like Jean-Yves said, getting a lot of info out from that is hard - and yeah, we probably need training on it!

Jean-Yes,

I see them as complementary, though. They have slightly different information, and if there are any discrepancies, we have something to compare them with.

Comment 7

[Luke Crouch [:groovecoder]]

(In reply to comment #6)
> I see them as complementary, though. They have slightly different information,
> and if there are any discrepancies, we have something to compare them with.

I'd like to use one or the other - not both. (DRY) If we want to use both for a time so we don't lose as much historical data that's fine, but I remember at SourceForge.net we ended up with 3 or 4 tracking services and it made pages very slow and had all kinds of user privacy problems too.

Comment 8

[Robert Nyman]

I understand what you mean, but I'd argue that the data you can get from statistics on the server-side and on the client-side are fairly different, and work good as complements (and generally, I wouldn't want to have more than two services for that, tops).

It would be interesting to test and have both and evaluate if it has any negative effect on loading times.

Comment 9

[Luke Crouch [:groovecoder]]

I'm not worried too much about loading times since we can do both calls asynchronously.

AFAIK webtrends and GA are both client-side calls.

We could use waffle to do a controlled/throttled push of Google Analytics.

I'm up for it so long as we get approval from legal. I'm afraid of how Google would track our users across the web if we used Google Analytics.

Comment 10

[Robert Nyman]

I understand that concern. Having delved into it more now, though, using Google Analytics would make things a lot better from a metrics perspective.

CC:ing Stormy who might know more about the legal part.

Comment 11

[Luke Crouch [:groovecoder]]

This is done.