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Tracking document downloads in Google Analytics

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Tracking document downloads in Google Analytics

So I’ve taken the code and modified it a little to make it just for
file downloads, and to cover more file extensions that the original.
This will track the following file types:

The result – some unobtrusive javascript, to use simply download the js file,
place it somewhere on your webserver and paste the following code
directly above your standard Google Analytics tracking code (which by
the way, should be as near the end of the <body> tag as possible).

<script src=”/js/taglinks.js” type=”text/javascript”></script>

(Don’t forget to replace the ‘/js/taglinks.js’ with the correct path to the javascript file)

Hey presto you’ve now got tracking for all downloadable files!

UPDATE: I’ve update the Javascript so it won’t
throw a wobbly if there are anchor links on the page, also some new
file types have been added (see above).

UPDATE: The script now tracks external links as well as document downloads.

Local Explorer interactive map

Check out washingtonpost.com’s new Local Explorer interactive map.
You can map information on recent area home sales, crime incidents,
schools, fire and police stations, restaurants, bars, hospitals, movie
theaters and more. Local Explorer also has facts and figures, local
news, classifieds and upcoming events that will help take users further
inside area communities.

http://www.cyberjournalist.net/news/004238.php

User-Generated Content Still Spooks Media Execs

57% of senior executives in the media and entertainment industry point to the rapid growth of user-generated content as one of the top three challenges they face today, according to the results of a research study released in April by Accenture. Accenture’s definition of user-generated content, for the purpose of this study, included amateur digital videos, podcasts, mobile phone photography, wikis, and social media blogs.

While those surveyed expressed concern about user-generated content, they are less apprehensive about the future.

According to the research,

The research also shows that

When asked which content type has the highest growth potential over the next five years,

http://www.cyberjournalist.net/news/004199.php

washingtonpost.com has launched a new feature that pulls together all of a users’ contributions to article comments or discussion boards on an individual’s MyPost page.

On the site’s blog, Karl Eisenhower, Assistant Managing Editor for Newsroom Operations & Hal Straus, Interactivity and Communities Editor, writes:

Our goal is to provide you with a home base on the site, a page where you’ll be able to both share and track your thoughts over time. When you post a comment to an article or discussion group, you’ll be able to get to your MyPost page by clicking on your MyPost ID just above the comment or by clicking on your ID where it appears in the top left corner of the washingtonpost.com home page.

Other readers will be able to browse to your MyPost page from your comments and, once there, view what you’ve had to say or ask to message you by sending a “friend request”. You’ll see those requests on your page — they won’t be visible to others — and may choose to accept them, turn them down or ignore them.

You’ll be able to exchange messages with readers you’ve accepted as “friends” on the site, and those messages will appear on your page. By default, only you and your friends will be able to see them, although you can open them up to any site visitor by changing the settings in the Profile section of your page. You can also tell others about yourself in your Profile by uploading a photo or filling in a brief bio.

MyPost isn’t intended to be MySpace or another general social networking site, but a feature that will make washingtonpost.com more useful to you and others. We’ll be adding features to MyPost over the next few months and hope you’ll email us with your comments and suggestions.

washingtonpost.com launches My Post

Hitwise US News and Media Report (Excerpts)

by LeeAnn Prescott

The market share of visits to the top 10 News and Media websites
declined by 3.8% from March 2006 to March 2007, indicating that news
consumption is beginning to fragment as users expand their range of
news sources to non-traditional news websites.

Search engines, portal frontpages, and news aggregators
were the leading sources of traffic to News and Media websites in March
2007. The share of visits to News and Media websites from search
engines increased over the past year, with traffic from Google
increasing by 29.7% for Print websites and 35.9% for Broadcast Media
websites.

News and Media Landscape

In March 2007, there were 8,001 websites within the News and Media
industry, which accounted for 3.31% of all US Internet traffic, or 1 in
30 Internet visits. The market share of visits to the News and Media
industry declined slightly year-over-year, from 3.43% of all US visits
in March 2006.

At the same time, the number of websites ranking within the industry
increased by 12.25%, from 7,128 websites in March 2006. This concurrent
decline in market share and increase in number of websites could
indicate that the industry is fragmenting as users discover new
websites.

hitwise_graph_1.gif
Figure 1: Market share of US visits to industries, March 2006–March 2007

In March 2007, the top 10 News and Media websites, as shown in
Figure 2, accounted for 28.13% of visits to the industry. This
represents a decline of 3.8% from March 2006, when the top 10 websites
accounted for 29.24% of industry visits, again pointing to the
fragmentation of online news consumption.

The websites comprising the top 10 in the News and Media industry remain unchanged since March 2007, with the exception of Fox News replacing BBC
News in the #10 spot. Yahoo! News was the top ranking News and Media
website, and showed an increase in market share of 18.15% from March
2006 to March 2007.

hitwise_graph_2.gif
Figure 2: Top 10 News and Media websites by market share of US visits, March 2007.

Sources of News and Media Industry Traffic

Internet users navigate to News and Media websites in a variety of ways.
Hitwise Clickstream data reveals that there are three major sources of
traffic to News and Media websites: news aggregators (such as Yahoo! News, Google News and Drudge Report) search engines, and portal frontpages (such as Yahoo!, My Yahoo! and MSN). The balance of traffic from these three sources varies by sub-category, as shown in Figure 3 below.

hitwise_graph_3.gif
Figure 3: Sources of US upstream traffic to News and Media sub-categories, March 2007.

Search Engines

The Print sub-category received 23.26% of its upstream visits from
search engines in March 2007, and 64.1% of this search traffic (14.9%
of total upstream traffic) came from Google, while 17.27% came from
Yahoo! Search. The share of traffic from Google to Print websites
increased by 29.7% from March 2006 to March 2007, and increased by
35.9% for Broadcast Media websites.

This could be a result of Google more aggressively showing Google News
listings, which link directly to broadcast and print news sources, in
the main search results at the top of the page for news-related
searches. In addition, it has been reported in the past year that many
News and Media websites have made a concerted effort to drive traffic
from search engines through search engine optimization and marketing.

Search engines were an important source of traffic for IT Media – particularly sub-category leader Digg.
Digg was the #1 ranked website in the IT Media sub-category in March
2007, accounting for 12.14% of industry visits, and it received 54.51%
of upstream visits from search engines in that period.

Portal Frontpages

The Broadcast Media sub-category received the largest share of
traffic from Portal Frontpages in March 2007, primarily due to the
relationship between MSN and MSNBC.
MSN was the leading source of traffic to the Broadcast Media industry,
accounting for 12.49% of upstream visits in March 2007, and MSNBC
accounted for 64.91% of all the Broadcast Media traffic leaving the
Portal Frontpages industry.

Portals have remained steady as a source of traffic
for News and Media websites over the past year, as Internet users
continue to use personalized portals as a starting point for daily news
consumption.

News Aggregators

News aggregators
continue to play a leading role in the news industry, not only ranking
among the most visited News and Media websites, but also serving as a
significant source of upstream traffic to Print and Broadcast Media
websites. As a group, the three news aggregators listed in Figure 3
were responsible for 4.79% of traffic to Print websites and 4.54% of
traffic to Broadcast Media websites in March 2007.

Print news websites were more dependent on Google News and Drudge Report
as sources of traffic, with Google News accounting for 1.99% of Print
upstream visits and Drudge Report accounting for 2.1%. Yahoo! News,
which publishes articles from Print websites directly on its own
website, was a less significant source of traffic to the Print
sub-category.

IT Media websites, with their distinct content focus, were less
dependent on traffic from news aggregators, although IT Media received
1.18% of its upstream traffic from Google News, indicating that
followers of IT News were more likely to use Google News than other news aggregators.

Originally published by LeeAnn Prescott of Hitwise on April 2007 as “Hitwise US News & Media Report” and available for download on Hitwise website.

MTV.com redesigns, drops Flash for HTML

http://www.cyberjournalist.net/news/004180.php

About nine months ago, we went all Flash with our Web site. It was a technical marvel and it was indeed flashy. But, it was also something of a headache for a lot of users, so we were told.

Luckily, we’re also good listeners, and that’s why a few months ago we started toying with a new and improved HTML version of the MTV site. Anyone watching the live beta site has been witness to substantial evolution, from the overall look of the pages to simplified navigation, a new video player and a vastly improved internal search mechanism.

Today, we’ve gone ahead and flipped the switch. The Flash site is gone. If you were digging that, we’re sorry. We have good reason to believe that you will enjoy our content via the HTML version even more…..

In fact, we’re letting go of the idea of the site ever being “done.” Every few weeks, new features, functionality, modules and other developments will roll out on the site. Some will be minor tweaks to existing elements that may be hard to spot. Some will be major additions, such as planned community features like rating and commenting on content. Our tech folks are working overtime on that one. Plus there’s a huge list of other delicious things we want them to get to in short order, so surf around and stay tuned.

WWF – throwing the web 2.0 kitchen sink at saving the planet

I received an email today inviting me to help save the tiger by contributing a photo to an online tiger mosaic that WWF are building. When I got to the site and had uploaded my photo (which was of an actual tiger, by the way), I had a look around and it’s amazing how much they have been doing.

They have:

* RSS feeds
* A creative commons licence
* A page explaining how to use their content on your site
* A Digg this link
* An add to del.icio.us link
* Browser toolbars
* A search plug-in for Firefox or IE7
* The tiger mosaic, of course, at http://www.panda.org/how_you_can_help/campaign/endtigertrade/viewer.cfm

They’re also doing some very interesting CRM work, based on participants accumulating points for involving themselves in aggregated actions like emailing a government minister.

I have no idea who’s doing this work for them, but it’s impressive how much they’ve embraced interactivity.

http://blog.markhopwood.com/2007/04/wwf_throwing_the_web_20_kitche.html

The Participation Ladder

Forrester segmented the online audience into several different stratas – what they call a ladder of participation. They found that “Inactives” are by far the dominant group (52%). They’re followed by spectators, joiners, critics, collectors and last but not least creators. This last cluster, according to the analyst firm, dabbles in lots of different activities but few do all of them. See the chart below for more.

This is the first report I have seen that really delves into what drives and motivates people to engage with the web. It’s worth purchasing and it really has got me thinking about its impact on PR and marketing.

While extroverts get all of the attention, the thickest part of the ladder is in the vast majority of people who have no desire to participate. I imagine this number will shrink some in the years ahead, particularly as the generation that grew up with the Web enters the workforce. However, there will always be a meaty portion of the online audience that remains just that – consumers.

This got me thinking: what can the Participation Ladder teach us about PR and marketing? The answer is a lot.

If you work in either of these professions, cut the above chart out and stick it on your wall. For each program, assess where your audience sits on this continuum. Are they inactives, creators or somewhere in between? The key is to then devise the right kind of communication strategy depending on what you discover. Let’s put this into action.

For example, let’s say you have a start-up that has a new piece of blogging software that bloggers will love. Then you should execute a peer-to-peer program that primarily targets creators, collectors and critics while largely ignoring inactives. This means you can go guerrilla with peer-to-peer program that taps into social networks, blogging and other Web 2.0 communities. Place your chips there. Mainstream media coverage can help here too. Focus your attention on outlets that bloggers read.

However, if you have a tech product or service that has value say for all users, then clearly you want a broader mix that combines the best of new media/mainstream media, all while reflecting the ladder.

http://www.searchmarketinggurus.com/search_marketing_gurus/2007/04/newspapers_onli.html

According to an article on PaidContent today, newspaper companies are seeing a slowing in online ad revenue growth. This really struck me as interesting. Especially in light of a lot of smaller newspaper companies striking deals with the search engines like Yahoo to handle their online advertising.

It seems that the online version of the newspapers are increasing feeling the competition from websites by TV Stations and magazines like Time, Inc. What’s interesting to note, some of these websites from the TV Stations and Magazines, are increasingly adding Social Media pieces.

From voting on stories, to forums to discuss “hot topics” these sites are increasingly giving the “consumer” more control. However, they aren’t putting the entire reigns over to the reader. Instead they are giving their readers a “piece” of the action that creates a stickiness. This stickiness brings back the readers time and time again because of their time investment.

Granted, I’m not saying that newspapers need to totally plunge into Social Media, but it is an opportunity that is definitely worth investigating. From “sharing” local photos, to a “sound off” message board and adding voting on the top stories, or the ability to comment on articles, there’s a lot of different ways newspapers can incorporate their users into participating on their site.

The other end of the spectrum is for newspapers to strike deals with the search engines. Yahoo, seems to be really moving to capture all the newspapers it can. In the past two weeks, Yahoo sealed a deal with 250 newspapers to provide the advertising for the papers from contextual ads to HotJobs and classified listings.

Yahoo I really took notice to this when my old hometown newspaper, the Pottsville Republican Herald had an article about it’s parent company, the Times Shamrock, Inc., striking a deal with Yahoo! It’s basically the same one described in the LA Times article about the deal with 250 newspapers. I emailed the article’s author to see if I could get some kind of clarification if Yahoo! was going to help them with the banner and image ads they have on their sites, but the author never replied back. So, I’m still left wondering.

What’s interesting is that Yahoo!’s replacing Google on most of these sites. I guess Google isn’t seeing the same value in the news industry as Yahoo does. I guess for the newspapers, any help is great for them, seeing their numbers continue to fall.

How the web is/will affect journalism

(Video – worth watching 1 time at least)
http://www.robinsloan.com/epic/

Lessons From a Newsroom’s Digital Frontline
http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/06-1NRspring/p53-0601-riley.html

“What is happening is, in short, a revolution in the way young people
are accessing news. They don’t want to rely on the morning paper for
their up-to-date information. They don’t want to rely on a god-like
figure from above to tell them what’s important. And to carry the
religion analogy a bit further, they certainly don’t want news presented
as gospel. ” Rupert Murdoch
http://www.newscorp.com/news/news_247.html

A ‘Box’ that will transform media
<http://www.ft.com/cms/s/8cde5246-0aba-11db-b595-0000779e2340.html>
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/8cde5246-0aba-11db-b595-0000779e2340.html

Adapt or Die – American Journalism Review
<http://ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4111>
http://ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4111

Ultimate Guide to Online Video
<http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70767-0.html>
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70767-0.html

“…the notion of mass media is fast becoming an oxymoron.” (Alan Moore)

” [Over the next 10 years audiences will move away from the linear,
scheduled world where relatively limited number of distributors who push
their content at the viewer….] “we will instead enter a world where
content is increasingly delivered through internet- protocol- based
networks that are non-linear, on-demand and entirely self-scheduled. In
that world, the viewer – not the broadcaster – will decide what is
consumed and how.”
Lord Currie, Royal Television Society Fleming Memorial Lecture, 2004

Merrill Brown, author of a Carnegie Corporation of New York report on
media consumption says, “The future course of news is being altered by
technology-savvy young people no longer wedded to traditional news
outlets or even accessing news in traditional ways.”

“77% of Americans seek their primary news today online.”

“Jonathan Schwartz COO of Sun Microsystems believes that the 1000
bloggers at Sun have done more for his company than a billion $ ad
campaign ever could.”

“With the ease of access to programming that computers now have, younger
viewers in particular (a commercially very attractive group) may become
increasingly infrequent television users. There is for example, already
evidence that television has lost young male viewers to computers.”
John Ranelagh, Founding Commissioning Editor Channel 4 Television

“The biggest story on Thursday was Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia
that Internet users around the world freely add to and edit. Yesterday’s
entry on the London bombings was amended, edited and updated by hundreds
of readers no fewer than 2,800 times throughout the day. The entry has
photographs, detailed timelines, contact numbers, a complete translated
statement by the jihadist group claiming responsibility for the attacks
and links to other Wikipedia entries.”
Newsweek (July 9,2005)

Jeff Jarvis’s 1st law:
“Give us control and we will use it. Don’t and you will lose us.”

The end of TV as we know it: A future industry perspective (IBM
Institute for Business Value study)
<http://www-1.ibm.com/services/us/index.wss/ibvstudy/imc/a1023172?cntxt=a1000062>
http://www-1.ibm.com/services/us/index.wss/ibvstudy/imc/a1023172?cntxt=a1000062

http://www.cyberjournalist.net/online_news_and_convergence_tips/

============
Here are two tip sheets from a session at the annual conference of the
Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) on “Technology: A User’s Guide
to Software, Hardware and Other Tools Revolutionizing Journalism”:

 From Jeff South <http://spj.org/pdf/c-handouts/AUsersGuide.pdf>
http://spj.org/pdf/c-handouts/AUsersGuide.pdf
 From Amy Gahran <http://www.rightconversation.com/files/top3must.pdf>
http://www.rightconversation.com/files/top3must.pdf

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