Hi Yitzchak,

I was just looking at this yesterday on the Google Analytics site.  It's a way to define custom variables at either the page, session, or visitor level:

http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/tracking/gaTrackingCustomVariables.html

Joel Marchesoni 
Tech Support Analyst
Hunter Library @ Western Carolina University
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-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Yitzchak Schaffer
Sent: Monday, November 23, 2009 7:01 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Web analytics for POST data

Alejandro Garza Gonzalez wrote:
> 1) You *can* use GA and some Javascript embedded in your III pages to 
> log "events" (as they´re called in GA lingo). The javascript (depending 
> on your coding wizardry level) could track anything from hovers over 
> elements, form submission, "next page" events, etc.

Hi Alejandro,

Thanks for a great suggestion.  I tried poking around at it; it seems to 
me like Events aren't built for what I'm really interested in doing, 
namely systematic exploration and analysis of the search sessions.  IOW, 
let's say a form looks like

t=finn
a=twain
l=circ,reserve

It looks like I could log this as three separate events, or one; but 
either way, how would one analyze this?  I'm not interested (solely) in 
how many times this particular query was entered.

I started looking at ways to funnel the params into my own tracking 
script, the prototype of which just writes a line to a text file with a 
JSON serialization of the form data; but I'm not a JS ninja, so I'm 
still trying to figure out how to get around the XSS problems.

Ruddy III turnkey...

-- 
Yitzchak Schaffer
Systems Manager
Touro College Libraries
33 West 23rd Street
New York, NY 10010
Tel (212) 463-0400 x5230
Fax (212) 627-3197
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