Monitoring views of published Google Documents with Google Analytics

9th January 2010

Google AnalyticsBrowsing this morning, I discovered that you can track views of your published Google Docs using your Google Analytics account.

A published Google Doc is one that you have chosen to openly share with anyone on the web.

To switch on tracking of your published Docs, go into your Google Docs account, choose Settings then the Editing tab.

Select the checkbox next to Use Google Analytics to track the number of visits to your published documents and paste in your Google Analytics tracking code (here’s the tip on how to find your tracking code):

Screenshot: editing tab in Google Docs settings

Views of all documents published from this account will now appear in your Analytics reports.

How to publish a document

To publish a Google Doc, go to Share > Publish as a web page:

Publish Google Doc as web page

Next choose Publish document:

Screenshot: interface to start publishing a Google Doc

Limitations

Note that this feature currently tracks published documents only. At the time of writing, tracking isn’t available for spreadsheets or presentations.

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