Google Actions click tracking - google-schemas

Does the Google Actions [google-schemas] provide any tracking/analytics to clicks? I can track these clicks on the processing (URL) page, but I was wondering if there was anything built-in.

No, no specific tracking/analytics is provided with Google Actions.

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Webhooks triggered by Google Assistant

I noticed that IFTTT.com is using a Google Assistant integration that allows them, basically, to set up for each of their users some kind of "trigger words" that trigger a call to a webhook. I searched a lot in the API docs and found no proper way to do the same, only ways to set up conversations or IoT interactions.
I kind of want to build something similar to the IFTTT integration with a way to programmatically set up actions via an API (not via the dashboard).
Is it possible to do or is this just a custom development Google made for IFTTT?
In my researches I found out about something called "Direct actions" but it does not seem to exist anymore in the Google Assistant Doc. Can you help me with that?
I don't know if my questions are very clear, please tell me if they are not
Thanks in advance for your help
Have a good day
Here's similar options to the IFTTT integration:
Create routines in the Google Home app. That will allow you to create custom commands that activate one or several actions.
Create a smart home action. It's a type of direct action, as opposed to a conversational action, and will let you directly invoke the Assistant for a subset of commands.
You could also create a conversational action. While it would not give you the same direct control, you can still run actions quickly by doing a deeper invocation, ie. "Ask my test app to do an action". It would also give you much greater flexibility over the input.

Hackathon project regarding Twitter

I will be attending my first hackathon this upcoming weekend, and plan to create a Twitter-based Chrome extension. Basically, when someone wants to tweet or reply to something, and they click the 'tweet' button, it will open up a pop-up modal that asks them some questions about their tweet (so as to encourage them to be mindful about what they post). Within the modal, there will be a button that then publishes the tweet.
So, to sum it up, my modal will be an intermediary in the process of posting a tweet.
What technologies will be useful in implementing this? Specifically, how can I implement the feature in which someone clicks the tweet/reply button, and it opens up my web app's modal on the same screen? Correct me if I am wrong, but I think this is called event capture? Does this have anything to do with Web Intents?
Thanks!
I have done similar things on other sites. A high level overview of what you should try doing:
Find out how twitter sends tweets, the "tweet" button has a "js-send-tweets" class, I would start by investigating that. They probably have a piece of js listening to the button press.
Once you figured it out you can override that function by injecting your own script to the page after twitter's. This way when you press tweet your function will execute.
You should write your own logic in there then add twitter's function logic too which would conditionally execute based on the user's action.

Custom user tracking or 3rd party service for page referral analytics

The question I'm trying to answer for a set of users is how other users end up on their page. There are about 5 different ways a user can end up on your page. For example, they could have searched your name, clicked a link from a newsfeed or received an e-mail with a link to your page.
What is the best way to accomplish tracking these events? I'm initially inclined to create a table to track this. Each link would send an async event to the server to be added to the table. However, I'm also aware that there are many tracking services out there such as Google Analytics and Mixpanel. I've looked at their docs briefly and they don't seem to fit my need.
Am I missing something? Is it worth it to create a "custom" even tracking system to accomplish this?
It is not worth creating your own service. Plus you cannot add async link to search engine result pages or emails (that would require tracking code that you cannot implement in search engines or that would not be executed in mail clients).
Web analytics software tracks traffic sources by analyzing the incoming traffic via its http headers. If there is a referrer set the traffic will be attributed to, well, the referring site, unless the traffic is included in a list of known search engines in which case it will be attributed to organic search traffic etc.
In most systems you can customize source attribution by adding query parameters in the url (obviously this will not work with search engines and the like, since you cannot add parameters to organic search results). For example with Google Analytics you can add custom campaign parameters in email links or advertising campaigns. If people click on those links the parameter value will be send to GA and the source/medium/campaign information will be set accordingly (e.g. traffic from web mail clients would usually be attributed as a referrer, but campaign parameters allow to attribute the link to your mail campaigns).
There might be reasons to create your own system, but channel attribution is not one of them; GA and every other system I know of has this thoroughly covered.

Simple way to get surrounding area name like Facebook?

Hi all,
In Facebook app, when adding a new post, the app show surrounding area name.
This way of sharing place is cool, since it's automatically, and users don't need to choose from a list of venue names like Instagram app.
What is a quick way to get the same result as Facebook app?
I've used similar things before through services like google maps api.
https://developers.google.com/maps/
You can pass them a lat and long and get various bits of info back.
I'm not sure if that is now a paid service though. It wasn't when I last used it but I think it changed.
There may be other similar services available.
A more specific page from Google maps api...
https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/geocoding/#ReverseGeocoding
I found that iOS have a built-in api CLGeocoder, this is more convenient to use than Web API:
- (void)reverseGeocodeLocation:(CLLocation *)location completionHandler:(CLGeocodeCompletionHandler)completionHandler;
This return you CLPlacemark with places, and areas.
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/CoreLocation/Reference/CLPlacemark_class/Reference/Reference.html
Here's a detailed comparison of all the geolocation solutions - Foursquare, Facebook, Google etc etc - http://crschmidt.net/blog/archives/463/working-with-place-apis-aka-how-i-spent-my-spring-vacation/
But this is actually what you are looking for if you intend to use Facebook Graph APIs for "places" - https://developers.facebook.com/docs/tutorials/ios-sdk-tutorial/show-nearby-places/
Specifically step 3 (https://developers.facebook.com/docs/tutorials/ios-sdk-tutorial/show-nearby-places/#step3)
Now that you have the current location, use it with the
FBPlacePickerViewController object to show the place picker when the
user taps on the ''Where are you?'' menu option.

Tracking users' clicks and page visits in Rails

I would like to monitor users' page visits and clicks in my Rails app to make recommendations. My questions are:
Is there a Rails gem for this, or Google Analytics is the standard? If latter is true, then how should I link a page visit to a particular user profile?
It is typical in Rails to have a section in application.html.erb, which is shared for all pages. If I add Google Analytics pageview tracking code to in application.html.erb, will it be able to track all individual pages?
There are other ways, but the vast majority probably use Google Analytics. Several gems exist that help you integrate with GA to get at the data. See here: https://www.ruby-toolbox.com/categories/Web_Analytics.
Based on your first question, it seems you may want more insight than GA can provide. I've used ClickTale (http://www.clicktale.com) and Woopra (http://www.woopra.com) before, to good effect. This article lists several other alternatives, too - notice the high marks for Clicky: http://imimpact.com/web-stats-alternatives-to-google-analytics/.
Google Analytics (and almost all of these others) will take care of your second question automatically whenever the user loads a new page, since it keyed by URL. That means that, although you put the GA script code in a single place, each unique page is tracked individually.
If you have AJAX requests that change that page without changing the URL, you'll need to dig in to the GA script API. Essentially you'll need to push a new url (possibly with a # in it) whenever you want to track an AJAX-driven link/button click. See here: http://davidwalsh.name/ajax-analytics
I am biased, but I would recommend checking out impressionist, if you need to integrate the page views into the app in real-time. With analytics you will always have some lag time and you are also relying on an external dependency. Impressionist is good if you need this kind of control, but if you are just looking for simple metrics and don't need to pull them into the app, then analytics is probably the way to go.
Check out Ahoy, at https://github.com/ankane/ahoy. With just a few lines of code in your app, you can track page views and tie them to user accounts.
You can further customize Ahoy to track custom events, both the client (with JavaScript) and server.
Ahoy does not depend on any third-party services.

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