Question

Using Google Analytics with my Web Pages / Java Script application I just wonder what happens to the statistics when I run (test) the pages locally? Testing the application is done on a local web server, is this included in the statistcis?

Or, in turn, is this the keyline

_gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'mydomain.org']);

and all “recording” is restricted to mydomain.org? Any idea how this works?

Answer 1

If you set your setDomainName for a domain that doesn’t match the current domain, it will not work.

So, if its set to mydomain.org, and you’re on testing-domain.org, Google Analytics will try to set the cookies to mydomain.org and fail (because the cookies won’t be set, as you can’t set external domain cookies from JavaScript); seeing no cookies, it will not make the __utm.gif request go Google Analytics, and no data will be tracked.

The same thing will occur if you execute Google Analytics on the file:// protocol.

(The exception to the setDomainName rule is if you pass either a non-domain string like (none) or an empty string to setDomainName, which has the effect of setting the domain hash (a cookie identifier to prevent data collision) to 1 and setting the Google Analytics cookies to the domain of document.domain