SharePoint 101: installing Google Analytics

A more basic post, but hopefully helpful to someone out there. Also, a more in-depth response to my article on Microsoft’s “Get the Point” blog.

To install Google Analytics in your SharePoint 2010 environment, my approach is to use the Master Page. There are two basic steps here, so it shouldn’t take you more than a few minutes.

• Step 1: Get tracking code
• Step 2: Edit Master Page

Step 1: Get tracking code

It’s important when you are copying your tracking code from Google Analytics that you have set up your account correctly. Because SharePoint is often run on https, you’ll want to make sure it doesn’t make a non-secure call to Google Analytics. If you’ve set up your site in Google Analytics to use the correct protocol (http vs https), then the tracking code should reflect it. In general though, your code should look like this:

<script type="text/javascript">// <![CDATA[
var _gaq = _gaq || [];
 _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXXXX-X']);
 _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);

(function() {
 var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
 ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
 var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
 })();
// ]]></script>

Step 2: Edit Master page

1. Open SharePoint Designer
2. Go to Master Pages
3. Right-click on your Master Page and click “Edit  File in Advanced Mode”
4. Scroll all the way to the bottom (just above the closing ‘body’ tag)
5. Paste the tracking code

Done!