Tracking hyperlink usage in Microsoft Word - hyperlink

Is it possible, using Google Analytics or a Word feature, to record what hyperlinks a reader follows when s/he is reading a Word document on a web page?

You could use something like goo.gl or bit.ly to shorten the URLs. It offers some analytics capabilities.

I'm a little unclear what you mean by reading a word document on a web page. Do you mean embedded word doc or simply a web page?
If you have access to the Word doc on the page, you could implement a unique UTM code to the linked URL(s), which should show up in your GA reporting.
Otherwise, you could see within GA source/medium reporting which website the visitor was referred from. If the source matches the website with the word doc, you can assume the visitor clicked the link. If there are multiple links on that web page, however, you won't be able to determine which exact link the visitor clicked.

Related

Get rid of old links to a retired website in Google search

I have a website that has been replaced by another website with a different domain name.
In Google search, I am able to find links to the pages on the old site, and I hope they will not show up in future Google search.
Here is what I did, but I am not sure whether it is correct or enough.
Access to any page on the old website will be immediately redirected to the homepage of the new website. There is no one-to-one page mapping between the two sites. Here is the code for the redirect on the old website:
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url=http://example.com" >
I went to Google Webmasters site. For the old website, I went to Fetch as Google, clicked "Fetch and Render" and "Reindex".
Really appreciate any input.
A few things you'll want to do here:
You need to use permanent server redirects, not meta refresh. Also I suggest you do provide one-to-one page mapping. It's a better user experience, and large numbers of redirects to root are often interpreted as soft 404s. Consult Google's guide to site migrations for more details.
Rather than Fetch & Render, use Google Search Console's (Webmaster Tools) Change of Address tool. Bing have a similar tool.
A common mistake is blocking crawler access to an retired site. That has the opposite of the intended effect: old URLs need to be accessible to search engines for the redirects to be "seen".

Integrating Google Docs API

I'm just beginning with programming, but i wanted to know if it's possible to use google docs api to make documents on another site using the google docs text editor?
Is there some sort of way i can put the google docs text editor onto a website so that we can use that for document creation instead of tiny mce?
Basically the functionality needed would be documents created, openly shared, a postable version of it (take html code) -- so it can go on the document display page, and
Of course there would be google login and everything, but i just wanted to see if this would work.
No, that is not possible, sorry.

how to find webpages which link to some specific page?

Just wondering if there's any way to search all web pages which link to some specific url? For example, all web pages containing link to example.com? Thanks
You probably might want to explore the Google Search API which allows you to use Google search results in your programs.

What does "?ref=ts" mean in a Facebook application URL?

When Facebook drives traffic to an application, it often append &ref=whatever to the query string. This is useful for figuring out which integration points are working or not. I've figured out what some of these mean. For example:
ref=bookmarks - the user clicked on a bookmark.
ref=game_my_recent - the user clicked on the upper portion of the games dashboard.
What does "ref=ts" mean? It accounts for a ton of traffic. I've viewed source on pages all over common Facebook pages and cannot find a match for ant piece of content generated by any of my applications.
Same question, posted by me on the Facebook developer forum:
http://forum.developers.facebook.com/viewtopic.php?id=54866
It means 'Top Search' (if you enter a query into the top, and then click on something, it will append ref=ts
As noted, ref=ts is appended to the url whenever a user makes a search in the Top Search input field.
Also note that people tend to copy/paste links in their website and blogs, without trimming useless GET strings.
So it is possible if you get a high number of referrers coming from the top search that they are in fact links that propagate outside of Facebook.

Add identifier to browser bookmarks

Is there a way to automatically append an identifier to a page URL when it is bookmarked in the browser, perhaps something in the document head that gives the browser a directive or an onBookmark JavaScript type of event? I'm looking for ways to further segment my direct traffic in Google Analytics (if you have other ideas for doing that not related to bookmarks, please share them as well).
Example:
http://www.example.com/article
When bookmarked becomes:
http://www.example.com/article#bookmarked
I don't think you can reliably do what you're describing. The best you could do is have a button on your pages that uses window.external.AddFavorite, and then specify your hashed address. It will work for the people who use the button, which may be better than nothing.
Keep in mind that bookmark traffic is not simply part of your direct traffic.
There is a nice demonstration in Justin Cutroni's blog how Google Analytics tracks bookmark visits and it turned out, that most of the time, bookmark visits are shown as organic (if you suppose, that people first do a Google search and then bookmark your site).

Resources