We’ve just released the first version of our Google Analytics Premium plugin! It contains custom dimension tracking, which allows you to track pageviews per author, per category, per post type and more and of course, comes with our first-class support. You can read a bit about what the plugin does below or buy it right now.
“Custom dimensions”? What’s that?
Custom dimensions allow you to track extra parameters with each pageview. For instance, you can track the author of each post or page that receives a pageview and based on that see how many pageviews specific authors get. Or you can track the category or post type and see page views split out by those. Or you can track all of those. We’ve got five custom dimensions you can track right now:
- Author
Tracks pageviews per author, so you can compare authors or even pay authors based on the number of pageviews their articles received. - Category
Tracks the posts category, this allows you to easily see which categories are doing best on your blog and you might want to publish more in. - Post Type
Tracks whether the page viewed is a post, page or any custom post type. We use it for instance to have custom reports for our plugins pages (which are a separate post type). - Logged In
Tracks whether the viewer is logged in or not, this is especially useful on BBPress / BuddyPress type sites where you have a lot of logged in users. - Published at
This tracks the publication time of the post or page, allowing you to compare not just months, but for instance check in december whether the posts you wrote in january or those you wrote in february did better in december.
In the “old” Google Analytics there was a feature called custom variables, which allowed tracking of these things. This was replaced by custom dimensions in Universal Analytics, which are more powerful but in truth most people won’t notice the difference. The tracking code and logic changed though and you now have to create every custom dimension you want to track in the Google Analytics admin.
Because you have to create custom dimensions in the Google Analytics admin, we knew we’d get a lot of support questions if we just released this into the wild. We’ve already created two help docs that should assist you, one on setting up custom dimensions, and one on where to find the custom dimension reports in Google Analytics.
We’ve got a couple more custom dimensions planned already, but if you’ve got suggestions for metadata you’d like to track, by all means share it in the comments.
Support for our Google Analytics plugin
The fact that we now have a premium version of our analytics plugin also means that we’re now, for the first time ever, offering support for this plugin. Our support team has grown steadily in the last few months, now covering all time zones and even answering emails on the weekend. We now solve 95% of customers issues within one day!
Want great support and custom dimensions? Buy GA Premium now!
Check out the updated page for the Google Analytics plugin and buy it right now:
This post first appeared on Yoast. Whoopity Doo!