Google Analytics event tracking is an advanced feature that allows you to track a specific user’s interaction/activity (link clicks, downloads, form submission and video plays) with a web page element.
Events that do not generate pageviews when they occur.
#1 Events that generate pageviews when they occur.
For example, clicking on an internal link on a webpage generates a pageview.
#2 Events that do not generate pageviews when they occur.
For example, following users’ interactions do not generate a pageview when they occur:
Clicking on an external link
Loading of Ajax/Flash content
Downloading a file
Playing a video
Pausing a video
Reposition timing within a video.
Buffering of a video
Progress of a video
Scrolling a web page
Clicking on a form button
Interaction with a gadget
Clicking on an image
Abandonment of a form field
Sharing/printing a blog post, article
Adding items to a shopping cart.
Clicking on a button, etc.
When to use Google Analytics event tracking?
By default Google Analytics (GA) can not track any event that does not generate pageview when it occurs.
You can track such events only through event tracking or virtual pageviews.
The rule of thumb is, track those types of users’ interactions, using ‘event tracking’ which either do not generate a pageview when they occur or which are not equivalent to a page being viewed.
Structure of Google Analytics events
An event in Google Analytics is made up of:
Event Category
Event Action
Event Label
Event Value
What is Event Category in Google Analytics Event Tracking?
The ‘event category’ is the name assigned to the group of similar events you want to track.
You can use any value of type ‘text’ as an event category. This is basically the element the user interacted with on the web page, for example, video.
How to see the values of Event Category in Google Analytics?
If you have already set up event tracking then you can see the values of the ‘event category’ in Google Analytics by following the below steps.
Step-1: Login to your Google Analytics account.
Step-2: Click on the ‘Behaviour’ tab available on the left-hand side.
Step-3: When you click on the ‘Behaviour’ tab you will see a drop-down like the one below.
Step-4: Select ‘Top Events’ from the options.
Note: Google Analytics report event category as a dimension in its reports.
What is Event Action in Google Analytics Event Tracking?
The ‘Event Action’ is the name assigned to the type of event you want to track for a particular webpage element.
You can use any value of type ‘text’ as an event action. This is the action taken by the user on a web page.
For example, video play, video pause, video progress, etc.
How to see the values of Event Action in Google Analytics?
If you have already set up event tracking then you can see the values of the ‘event action’ in Google Analytics by following the steps below:
Step-1: Navigate to Behavior > Events > Top Events reports of your GA reporting view.
Step-2: Click on the ‘Event Action’ primary dimension:
Note: Google Analytics report ‘event action’ as a dimension in its reports.
What is Event Label in Google Analytics Event Tracking?
The ‘event label’ is the name assigned to the web page element, whose users’ interaction you want to track.
You can use any value of type ‘text’ as an event label.
An Event label can be a title of a video, title tag of a web page, name of a gadget, name of the downloadable file, etc.
How to see the values of Event Label in Google Analytics?
If you have already set up event tracking then you can see the values of the ‘event label’ in Google Analytics by navigating to Behavior > Events > Top Events and then click on the ‘Event Label’ primary dimension:
Note: Google Analytics report event label as a dimension in its reports.
What is Event Value in Google Analytics Event Tracking?
The ‘event value’ is the numerical value assigned to the event you want to track.
You can use any value of type ‘number’ as an event value. However, you can not use any value of type ‘text’ as an event value.
For example, an event value can be any number that represents a download time, length of the video footage played, or some monetary value.
How to see the values of Event Value in Google Analytics?
If you have already set up event tracking then you can see the values of the ‘event label’ in Google Analytics by navigating to Behavior > Events > Top Events:
Note(1): If you want to assign a monetary value to a tracked event then use the ‘event value’.
Note(2): Google Analytics report event value as a metric in its reports.
Following are the best practices for Google Analytics event tracking
Track those types of users’ interactions as events which either do not generate a pageview when they occur or which are not equivalent to a page being viewed.
Do not omit ‘Event Action’ while setting up event tracking in Google Analytics.
Specifying field values in the correct order is important when hardcoding the event tracking code.
Use the correct data type for your field values while setting up event tracking.
Follow naming conventions for event tracking.
Use Google Tag Manager to track events.
Avoid event tracking from negatively impacting your website bounce rate through non-interaction event.
Avoid using duplicate ‘event action’ names across categories.
Plan out your even tracking structure in advance before you set up event tracking.
Best Practice #2: Do not omit ‘Event Action’ while setting up event tracking in Google Analytics.
If you are using analytics.js library to set up event tracking then specifying ‘event category’ and ‘event action’ is mandatory. Whereas, specifying ‘event label’ and ‘event value’ is optional.
Example:
ga(‘send’,’event’,’videos’,”,’chappy’,100); // incorrect because ‘event action’ is missing.
ga(‘send’,’event’,”,’Play’,’chappy’,100); // incorrect because ‘event category’ is missing.
If you are using the analytics.js library then default values of eventCategory, eventAction, eventLabel and eventValue fields is ‘(not set)‘.
If you are using the global site tag (gtag.js) then specifying the ‘event category’, ‘event label’, and ‘event value’ is optional. However, specifying ‘event action’ is mandatory.
Example:
gtag(‘event’,” , { ‘event_category’ : ‘videos’, ‘event_label’ : ‘Chappy’ }); // Incorrect because ‘event action’ is missing.
Note: If you are using the gtag.js library then the default value of the ‘event category’ is ‘engagement’ and the default value of the ‘event label’ is (not set).
Best Practice #3: Specifying field values in the correct order is important when hardcoding the event tracking code
Consider the following event tracking code:
ga(‘send’, {
‘hitType’: ‘event’,
‘eventCategory’: ‘videos’,
‘eventAction’: ‘Play’,
‘eventLabel’: ‘chappy’,
‘eventValue’: 100
});
You can also write this line of code without using any field names:
ga(‘send’,’event’,’videos’,’Play’,’chappy’,100);
Here, Google Analytics will automatically assume that:
event category is ‘videos’,
event action is ‘Play’
event label is ‘Chappy’
event value is 100
When you do not specify field names, you then need to supply field values in the following order:
Since field values are executed in the order in which they are supplied, if I changed the order, my event tracking will work differently or worse won’t work at all.
For example:
ga(‘send’,’event’,’Play’,’videos’,’chappy’,100);
Here ‘Play’ will be treated as an event category and ‘videos’ will be treated as an event action.
Another example:
ga(‘send’,’event’,’Play’,’videos’,100);
here 100 will be treated as event label instead of event value.
To avoid this issue, you can leave the ‘event label’ field empty:
ga(‘send’,’event’,’Play’,’videos’,”,100);
Best Practice #4: Use the correct data type for your field values while setting up event tracking
The eventCategory, eventAction and eventLabel fields accept a value of type text. Whereas, the eventValue field accepts a value of type integer.
So following event tracking codes are going to create tracking issues:
ga(‘send’,’event’,videos,’Play’,’chappy’,100); // incorrect because ‘event category’ accepts value of type text.
ga(‘send’,’event’,’videos’,’Play’,’chappy’,’100′); // incorrect because ‘event action’ accepts value of type integer.
Note: There is no hard and fast rule regarding what data you put into ‘event category’, ‘event action’, ‘event label’ and ‘event value’ as long as you are assigning values of type text to ‘event category’, ‘event action’ and ‘event label’ and values of type integer to ‘event value’.
Best Practice #5: Follow naming conventions for event tracking
Use descriptive names for event categories, event actions, and event labels. So that just by looking at the name, a user can understand what type of data is being collected.
Likewise, use consistent names for event categories, event actions, and event labels.
So if you are using ‘videos’ as an event category, then do not use ‘video’, ‘Videos’, ‘VIDEOS’ as an event category.
Otherwise, you will end up creating several different event categories in Google Analytics that all hold the same type of event data.
One of the best ways to use consistent names is by using only lowercase letters for event categories, event actions, and event labels.
Best Practice #6: Use Google Tag Manager to track events.
There are two methods to set up Google Analytics event tracking:
#1 Hard code the Google Analytics event tracking code on your website that tracks a specific user’s interaction (aka event) with a web page element.
#2 Use Google Tag Manager to track users’ interaction with the web page elements.
The advantage of using GTM to track events is that it is easier to use and is scalable.
So if you want to track clicks on the buttons across your website in one go without manually adding the event tracking code to each and every button, you can easily do that via Google Tag Manager.
Best Practice #7: Avoid event tracking from negatively impacting your website bounce rate through non-interaction event
The ‘nonInteraction’ event is used to designate an event as interactive or non-interactive. This field object can have a value of true or false.
The default value is false, which means by default an event is considered interactive and impacts the bounce rate calculations.
If you want to make an event non-interactive so that it doesn’t impact the bounce rate calculations then set the nonInteraction value to true.
The {‘nonInteraction’: true} is used to designate an event as non-interactive. You can also use {‘nonInteraction’: 1} to designate an event as non-interactive.
ga(‘send’, ‘event’,’videos’, ‘play’,’Who lets the dog out’,10);
ga(‘send’, ‘event’,’videos’, ‘play’,’Alien vs predator’,10);
The disadvantage is that the unique events are incremented by unique action names.
So if a user clicks on two different videos say ‘spiderman-2’ and ‘Aliens vs predator’ which have the same action name ‘play’, then, in that case, Google Analytics will report only one unique event, even when the user clicked on two different videos.
Best Practice #9: Plan out your even tracking structure in advance before you set up event tracking
Before you implement event tracking:
#1 Determine in advance, all of the web page elements (like videos, gadgets, images, external links, etc) you want to track and the type of users’ interactions (aka events) you want to track for each web page of your website.
#2 Create a hierarchy of event categories, event actions, and event labels that is scalable. So that you don’t need to frequently change the names of event categories, event actions, and event labels to hold different types of event data.
#3 Use an Excel Spreadsheet to decide the names of all your event categories, event actions, and event labels in advance. Then work with your report users, to make sure that your hierarchy is understandable:
In order to set up Google Analytics event tracking, follow the steps below:
Step-1: Determine in advance, all of the web page elements (like videos, gadgets, images, external links, etc) and the type of users’ interactions you want to track for each web page of your website.
Step-2: Create a hierarchy of event categories, event actions, and event labels that is scalable. So that you don’t need to frequently change the names of event categories, event actions, and event labels to hold different types of event data.
Step-3: Use an Excel Spreadsheet to decide the names of all your event categories, event actions, and event labels in advance. Then work with your report users, to make sure that your hierarchy is understandable.
Step-4: Choose one of the following methods to set up event tracking in Google Analytics:
Hard code the Google Analytics event tracking code on your website that tracks a specific user’s interaction with a web page element.
Use Google Tag Manager to track users’ interaction with the web page elements.
Event Tracking Setup Method #1: Hard code the Google Analytics event tracking code on your website
Let us suppose you want to track clicks on a download button (embedded on a web page on your website) in Google Analytics via event tracking.
Follow the steps below:
Step-1: Navigate to the web page (via Google Chrome web browser) which contains the button you want to track via event tracking.
Step-2: Right-click on the button and then click on ‘Inspect’ from the drop-down menu:
Step-3: Find your button code. It is going to look something like the one below:
Here, onClick is a mouse event handler. It executes a method/function (called ‘ga’) in response to click on the button. This event handler is used to tie the event tracking code to the button.
Step-15: On the right-hand side, under ‘Active users’, you will see ‘Event category’ and ‘Event action’.
You should now be able to see your event category and event action values being reported.
If you don’t see your event category and/or event action then it means your event tracking is not set up correctly.
Event Tracking Setup Method #2: Use Google Tag Manager to track users’ interactions (aka events) with the web page elements.
This is the recommended method to track users’ interactions with web page elements as it is easier to use and is scalable.
So if you want to track clicks on the buttons across your website in one go without manually adding the event tracking code to each and every button, you can easily do that via Google Tag Manager.
Let us suppose you want to track clicks on download buttons embedded on dozens of web pages on your website via event tracking.
Follow the steps below:
Step-1: Navigate to the web page (via Google Chrome web browser) which contains the button you want to track via event tracking.
Step-2: Right-click on the button and then click on ‘Inspect’ from the drop-down menu:
Step-3: Find your button code. It is going to look something like the one below:
Step-7: Click on the ‘Triggers’ link and then click on the ‘New’ button to create a new trigger:
Step-8: Name the new trigger ‘Check for clicks on the download button‘
Step-9: Click on ‘Choose a trigger type to begin setup‘:
Step-10: Click on ‘All Elements’:
Step-11: Click on ‘Some Clicks’:
Step-12: Click on ‘choose built-in variable’ from the drop-down menu:
Step-13: Select ‘Click ID’:
Step-14: Enter the id of your button element in the text box next to ‘equals’ and then click on the ‘Save’ button:
Step-15: Click on the ‘Tags’ link and then click on the ‘New’ button to create a new tag:
Step-16: Name your new tag ‘Send click on the button download to GA as event’:
Step-17: Click on ‘Choose a tag type to begin with’:
Step-18: Select ‘Google Analytics: Universal Analytics’ as a tag type:
Step-19: Select ‘Event’ from the ‘Track Type’ drop-down menu:
Step-20: Set ‘Category’ to ‘guides’, ‘Action’ to ‘download-cro’, ‘Label to ‘cro-beginners-guide.pdf’, ‘Value’ to 10 and ‘Non-Interaction Hit’ to ‘True’:
Step-21: Click on the checkbox ‘Enable overriding settings in this tag‘ and then enter your GA tracking ID:
Step-22: Click on the ‘Choose a trigger to make this tag fire…’:
Step-23: Find and click on the trigger ‘Check for clicks on the download button’:
Step-24: Click on the ‘Save’ button to save your new tag.
Step-25: Click on the ‘Preview’ button on the top right-hand side:
When you click on ‘Preview’ to enter preview mode, it opens in a new window with the Start Tag Assistant and information about the GTM container entering debug mode, as shown below.
Step- 26: Enter the website URL in the box provided and click on ‘Start’.
Step-27: Refresh the web page that contains the button you want to track. You should now be able to see the GTM debug console window at the bottom of the page:
Step-28: In the GTM Preview window, you will see a screen like below that will show us that debug mode is connected. Click on ‘Continue’.
Step-29: Now, navigate to the page where you have a download tracking option and click on the button and you should be able to view the tag firing in the console as shown below.
If you don’t see your tag listed under the ‘Tag Fired’ section then it means your tag is not firing and you did something wrong while setting up your tag or trigger.
Step-30: You can also validate if the values passed in the events are as expected by clicking on the tag, where you will be able to see the summary of the tag fired.
Step-31: If the tag is firing then click on the ‘Submit’ button on the top right-hand side:
Step-32: Enter ‘Added a new tag to track clicks on ‘download’ buttons as version name and then click on the ‘Publish’ button:
How to make sure that Google Analytics event tracking is working?
There are four methods through which you can make sure that event tracking is working as intended:
By looking at the real-time events’ report.
By using Omnibug Chrome extension.
By using Google Tag Assistant.
Through Google Developer Console
Method #1: By looking at the real-time events’ report.
Trigger the event you are tracking (via GA event tracking code) and then look at the real-time events report to check whether the event data (category, action, label) is being passed to Google Analytics:
Method #2: Using Omnibug Chrome extension
Before following this step, make sure you have downloaded the Omnibug Chrome extension from the Chrome Webstore.
Trigger the event you are tracking (via GA event tracking code) and then open the Omnibug by following the control command ctrl+shift+I and click on the Omnibug tab.
Validate the event’s event action, category and label under the ‘Events’ section.
Method #3: Using Google Tag Assistant
Trigger the event you are tracking (via GA event tracking code) and then click on the Google Tag Assistant extension and click on the property ID. You will see the events fired on the page.
Now, click on the events and you can see the event details in the Tag Assistant extension as below:
Method #4: Through Google Developer Console
The fourth way to see the real-time firing of events is through the ‘Google developer console’.
Trigger the event you are tracking (via GA event tracking code) and then look at the Google developer console to check whether the event data (category, action, label, value) is being passed to Google Analytics:
I prefer to use this method, as the developer console provides much more detailed information about fired events than the real-time event’s report.
The Google developer console also provides error messages in case the event does not fire. The real-time events report in GA does not provide any such information.
So if your event is not firing and you just rely on real-time events reports, then you will have a hard time diagnosing event tracking issues.
If you do not supply event category value while setting up event tracking (in the case of analytics.js), then the tracked event will not be counted in the ‘Total events’ metric and will not be reported in GA event reports.
The Google developer console will also show you the error message:
“Missing required field ‘eventCategory’ for hit of type ‘event’:
Just like the event category, the event action is also a required field.
But unlike event category, if you do not supply the even action value while setting up event tracking (in case of analytics.js), then the tracked event (without event action) will still be counted in the ‘Total events’ metric.
Google developer console will show you the error message:
“Missing required field ‘eventAction’ for hit of type ‘event’:
Understanding Events reports in Google Analytics
There are 4 event tracking reports available in Google Analytics:
Overview report
Top Events report
Pages report
Events Flow report
The events reports are available under the ‘Behavior’ menu in Google Analytics:
Events Overview report in Google Analytics
The ‘Events Overview’ report provides an overview of tracked events on your website:
Total events – It is the total number of users’ interactions with tracked webpage elements. For example, if a visitor clicks on the ‘play’ button of the same video 5 times, then GA reports total events as 5
Unique events – It is the total number of unique users’ interactions with tracked webpage elements in a web session.
For example, if a user clicks on the ‘play’ button of the same video 5 times, then GA reports total events as 5 but unique events (number of unique interactions that occurred in a web session) as 1.
Event Value – It is the total value of an event or set of events.
Avg. Value – It is the average value of an event or set of events.
Sessions with an event – These are those Google Analytics sessions in which at least one tracked event occurred.
Events/Session with an event – It is the average number of tracked events that occurred in a Google Analytics session.
Top Events report in Google Analytics
Through the ‘Top Events’ report, you can determine the most popular event categories, event actions and even labels:
The popularity is measured in terms of total events.
Event Pages report in Google Analytics
Through the ‘Event Pages’ report, you can determine the pages of your website on which the maximum number of events were recorded by GA:
Through the ‘Events Flow’ report, you can visualize the order in which visitors triggered events on your website. This report also lets you understand the events that are keeping users engaged on the website.
In order to interpret the events flow report accurately, it is critical that you use clear and consistent naming conventions for event categories, actions, and labels.
You also need to remember, that ‘event category’, ‘event action’ and ‘event label’ are reported as dimensions in GA reports. Whereas ‘event value’ is reported as a metric in GA reports:
Note: ‘event category’, ‘event action’ and ‘event label’ are ‘hit’ level dimensions. In other words, you can’t use ‘event category’, ‘event action’ and ‘event label’ as metrics in GA reports.
Note: If you are using the global site tag (gtag.js) then specifying the ‘event category’, ‘event label’ and ‘event value’ is optional. However, specifying ‘event action’ is mandatory. The default value of the ‘event category’ is ‘engagement’ and the default value of the ‘event label’ is (not set).
The following example code fires a Google Analytics Event with an action of ‘Play”, a category of ‘videos’, and a label of ‘Chappy’:
The default Google Analytics Events are the events that are pre-set with default categories and labels.
Google recommends using the default events in order to maintain consistent reporting and interoperability with future functionality.
The following table lists the default Google Analytics Events, their default categories, and default label types (if available):
For event names not listed in this table (e.g. arbitrary event names that you create), the default category is ‘engagement’ and the default label is ‘not set’.
For example, the following code fires a Google Analytics Event with an action of ‘Play’, a default category of ‘engagement, and a default label of ‘(not set)’:
gtag(‘event’, ‘Play’);
Setting up Google Analytics event tracking (analytics.js)
In order to set up event tracking in GA, you need to send an event hit whenever the users’ interaction/activity you want to track, occurs.
Following is the syntax for sending an event hit in Universal Analytics (analytics.js)
ga(‘send’, {
‘hitType’: ‘event’,
‘eventCategory’: [category],
‘eventAction’: [Action],
‘eventLabel’: [Label],
‘eventValue’: [Value],
‘nonInteraction’: true
});
Here, eventCategory, eventAction, eventLabel and eventValue are the fields used for sending event hit and ‘nonInteraction’ is a field object.
If you are not sure of the difference between a field and field object in ga() command queue function, then read this article: Introduction to Google Analytics Commands
Note: Specifying ‘event category’ and ‘event action’ is mandatory. Whereas, specifying ‘event label’, ‘event value’ and ‘nonInteraction’ is optional.
Following is an example of an event hit in universal analytics (analytics.js):
ga(‘send’, {
‘hitType’: ‘event’,
‘eventCategory’: ‘videos’,
‘eventAction’: ‘Play’,
‘eventLabel’: ‘chappy’,
‘eventValue’: 100,
‘nonInteraction’: true
});
You can also write this line of code without using any field names.
Since field values are executed in the order in which they are supplied, if I changed the order, my event tracking will work differently or worse won’t work at all.
For example:
ga(‘send’,’event’,’Play’,’videos’,’chappy’,100);
Here ‘Play’ will be treated as an event category and ‘videos’ will be treated as an event action.
Another example:
ga(‘send’,’event’,’Play’,’videos’,100);
here 100 will be treated as event label instead of event value. To avoid this issue, you can leave the ‘event label’ field empty:
ga(‘send’,’event’,’Play’,’videos’,”,100);
Another example,
ga(‘send’,’event’,’Play’,’videos’,”,100ex);
here event value is of type text. Since event value accepts a value of type integer, the code above will create tracking issues.
You can bypass all of these order rules by using field names:
ga(‘send’, {
‘hitType’: ‘event’,
‘eventCategory’: ‘videos’,
‘eventAction’: ‘Play’,
‘eventValue’: 100
});
I prefer using field names because it makes the code easy to understand. Remember:
The eventCategory, eventAction and eventLabel fields accept a value of type text.
The eventValue field accepts a value of type integer.
The default values of eventCategory, eventAction, eventLabel and eventValue fields is ‘(not set)’.
How to tie events to web page elements via event handlers?
In order to track users’ interactions with web page elements, you need to tie events to the page elements.
You can do that by using, what is called ‘event handler‘ (or ‘event listener).
Since a user can interact with a web page element via mouse, keyboard, frame or form, we can have four categories of event handlers:
Mouse event handlers
Keyboard event handlers
Frame event handlers
Form event handlers
Mouse event handlers in Google Analytics Event Tracking
The most common mouse event handler is onClick. It executes a method/function in response to click on a web page element like a button or link.
This event handler is often used to tie the event tracking code to a button/link.
Here, we are tracking the number of people who sent emails by tracking clicks on emails.
The other but less popular mouse event handlers are ondblclick,onmouseover and onmouseout. All of these mouse event handlers can be used to execute the event tracking code.
Note: You should avoid tracking highly repetitive events like mouse movements because Google Analytics can’t track more than 500 events per session.
If you want to track clicks on external links, clicks on file downloads and other buttons in Google Tag Manager, then read the following articles:
Other commonly used form event handlers are onBlur, onChange, onReset, and onSelect. All of these event handlers are frequently used for advanced form tracking.
If you want to track forms via Google Tag Manager then read the following articles:
How to scale and automate event tracking via Google Tag Manager?
The purpose of this article is to teach you the fundamentals of event tracking so that you can use this information to deploy the event tracking code via Google Tag Manager.
I certainly don’t want you, to manually add event tracking code on each and every web page element, throughout your website. That would be insane, esp. when now you have got the mighty Google Tag Manager at your disposal.
How to set up video tracking via Google Tag Manager?
Video tracking is one of the advanced applications of event tracking, where you track the player state (play, pause and the percentage of video played) of single/multiple videos embedded on a web page or across a website of any size.
However, if you want to scale and automate video tracking, then you must deploy this tracking via GTM.
How to set up scroll tracking via Google Tag Manager?
Scroll tracking is one of the advanced applications of event tracking, where you can track the length of a page scrolled by users.
Through scroll tracking, you can get an insight into, how people are consuming your website content. Again, GTM is the best tool to scale and automate scroll tracking on a website.
Though it is strictly, not an event tracking application, it heavily uses the logic behind event tracking, to track various types of ecommerce events.
These ecommerce events could be:
Viewing an internal promotion campaign.
Clicking on an internal promotion campaign.
Viewing a product in a product list.
Clicking one of the product links in the product list.
Viewing a product detail page.
Adding/removing products from the shopping cart.
Starting, completing and/or abandoning the checkout process.
Asking for a refund.
In the case of enhanced ecommerce, various ecommerce events are usually tracked via enhanced ecommerce tracking code and not via the traditional event tracking code.
However, in some cases, the traditional event tracking code can also be used.
Cross-device tracking
Cross-device tracking is the most advanced application of event tracking, where you send event hits from devices other than laptops, mobiles, desktops, and tablets via measurement protocol.
So if you want to send event data from your cash register or washing machine to the Google Analytics server, you can do that by writing a script that sends the payload data to the GA server.
Frequently Asked Questions About Google Analytics Event Tracking
What is an event in Google Analytics?
In the context of Google Analytics, an event is the users interaction/activity with a web page element that is being tracked in Google Analytics. The web page element could be video, gadget, podcasts, image, button, form, scroll bar, external link, lightbox, Ajax content etc.
What are the different types of events that can be tracked in Google Analytics?
We can have two broad categories of events, one which generates pageviews when they occur like clicking on an internal link on a webpage and another which does not generate pageviews when they occur, such as clicking on an external link, loading of Ajax/Flash content, downloading a file, viewing a video, scrolling a web page, clicking on a button etc. By default, Google Analytics cannot track any event which does not generate pageview when it occurs like: clicking on an external link, viewing a video, downloading a file, scrolling a web page etc. You can track such events only through event tracking or virtual pageviews.
What is event category?
It is the name assigned to the group of similar events you want to track. For example, profitable engagement, reading, YouTube videos etc.
What is an event action?
It is the name assigned to the type of event you want to track for a particular webpage element. For example play, pause, percentage etc.
What is an event label?
It is the name assigned to the web page element, whose users interaction you want to track. Event label can be a title of a video, title tag of a web page, the name of a gadget, name of the downloadable file, etc.
What is an event value?
It is the numerical value assigned to the event you want to track. For example, an event value can be: download time, length of the video footage played or some monetary value.
What is non-interaction?
It is used to designate an event as interactive or non-interactive. This field object can have a value of true or false.The default value is false, which means by default an event is considered as interactive and it impacts the bounce rate calculations. If you want to make an event non-interactive so that it does not impact the bounce rate calculations then set the nonInteraction value to true.
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My best selling books on Digital Analytics and Conversion Optimization
Maths and Stats for Web Analytics and Conversion Optimization
This expert guide will teach you how to leverage the knowledge of maths and statistics in order to accurately interpret data and take actions, which can quickly improve the bottom-line of your online business.
Master the Essentials of Email Marketing Analytics
This book focuses solely on the ‘analytics’ that power your email marketing optimization program and will help you dramatically reduce your cost per acquisition and increase marketing ROI by tracking the performance of the various KPIs and metrics used for email marketing.
Attribution Modelling in Google Analytics and BeyondSECOND EDITION OUT NOW!
Attribution modelling is the process of determining the most effective marketing channels for investment. This book has been written to help you implement attribution modelling. It will teach you how to leverage the knowledge of attribution modelling in order to allocate marketing budget and understand buying behaviour.
Attribution Modelling in Google Ads and Facebook
This book has been written to help you implement attribution modelling in Google Ads (Google AdWords) and Facebook. It will teach you, how to leverage the knowledge of attribution modelling in order to understand the customer purchasing journey and determine the most effective marketing channels for investment.
About the Author
Himanshu Sharma
Founder, OptimizeSmart.com
Over 15 years of experience in digital analytics and marketing
Author of four best-selling books on digital analytics and conversion optimization
Nominated for Digital Analytics Association Awards for Excellence
Runs one of the most popular blogs in the world on digital analytics
Consultant to countless small and big businesses over the decade
