I run a news-style website where different authors contribute content. How can I track the amount of hits/visits/etc. based on the author of the node being viewed? I am not interested in who is doing the viewing (as I understand user segmentation works) but rather who created the content being viewed. I can do this manually of course by looking at the individual urls being viewed, but it'd be great to see this simply arranged by user.

Jason

P.S. unrelated question: given the speed of google servers compared to my own, can I really expect a performance boost by caching the ga.js file locally, given that it is not cached (ie. aggregated and gzipped) properly by drupal anyway?

Comments

hass’s picture

hass commented
Status: Active » Fixed

In general this is technically possible, but I'm blocking personal identifying information. You are not allowed by google rules to track user identifyable data and an author is user identifyable information. I'm not suppting you in breaking privacy rules.

Anonymous’s picture

Anonymous (not verified) commented
Status: Fixed » Needs review

Sorry for hijacking this post,

First, I highly appreciate your care for users privacy, like you I think it is important safeguard visitors privacy vs. this module features, but I think you have misunderstood Janson request.

But IMHO Tracking [author-name] token with Custom Variables at Page-level doesn't break Google privacy rules.
Knowing who wrote an article that a visitor is reading it is not a Visitor Personal Identifiable Information (PII), it is like tracking which category an user is visiting, it is information about the page not the user.
Please, correct me if I'm wrong,

hass’s picture

hass commented

http://www.google.com/intl/en_uk/analytics/tos.html

8.1 You will not associate (or permit any third party to associate) any data gathered from Your Website(s) (or such third parties' website(s)) with any personally identifying information from any source as part of Your use (or such third parties' use) of the Service. You will comply with all applicable data protection and privacy laws relating to Your use of the Service and the collection of information from visitors to Your websites. You will have in place in a prominent position on your Website (and will comply with) an appropriate privacy policy. You will also use reasonable endeavours to bring to the attention of website users a statement which in all material respects is as follows:

“This website uses Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. (“Google”). Google Analytics uses “cookies”, which are text files placed on your computer, to help the website analyze how users use the site. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States . Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website, compiling reports on website activity for website operators and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage. Google may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process the information on Google's behalf. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google. You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser, however please note that if you do this you may not be able to use the full functionality of this website. By using this website, you consent to the processing of data about you by Google in the manner and for the purposes set out above.”

The bold sounds like a very clear statement to me. Google does not allow you to track any data with personal identifying information. How can you be sure not to break a local law? Maybe your author is in Germany and than you need to care about the German laws.

armanschwarz’s picture

armanschwarz commented

Thanks for your replies. Let me rephrase my request to comply with the TOS. How can I track based on content created by specific roles. For example, I might have a set of authors responsible for the "business" section of my site. How do I track the views on pages created by a particular role of user?

hass’s picture

hass commented
Status: Needs review » Fixed

This is possible with latest dev and token module.

Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.

hass’s picture

hass commented
Issue tags: +privacy
rongok’s picture

rongok commented
Version: 6.x-3.0 » 7.x-2.0
Issue summary: View changes
Status: Closed (fixed) » Active

According to the example in this link: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs..., it looks like Google has allowed tracking pageview based on the author. How can I track hits on pages created by a particular author? I tried creating a custom dimension with [node:author] as value, but I got this error: The Custom dimension value #1 is using the following forbidden tokens with personal identifying information: [node:author].

hass’s picture

hass commented
Status: Active » Fixed

I think #3 still stands and here in Europe we think more than ever that privacy is an important concern. I guess the writer of this lines is not aware of privacy rules and only give some stupid examples. Always keep in mind that privacy has only a very limited value in US.

Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)

Automatically closed - issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.

funana’s picture

funana commented
Status: Closed (fixed) » Active

Hello,

I am very sorry to re-open this (would it be better to one a new one for this?) but I have to ask again for the very same feature.

All we want is to track how many page impressions the articles of a certain author generate. This does not violate any laws nor the Google Analytics TOS imho. It is nothing else than a view counter for authors.

In fact Google Analytics themselves published exactly this use case as an example:
https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs...

I apologize again for re-opening this issue and I appreciate that you are concerned about privacy. I would just be very thankful if you could rethink this issue.

Thank you very much

hass’s picture

hass commented
Status: Active » Closed (fixed)

@funana: You can join #2037595: Change regex on Term ID privacy warning / Allow taxonomy tokens in dimensions to get these fails positive whitelisted.