Google Analytics Fix for Turbolinks - OpenDemocracyManitoba/winnipegelection GitHub Wiki

The Problem

Rails 4 apps use Turbolinks by default. This means that links on the site don't trigger a full page load, instead AJAX is used to only refresh the <body> contents.

Our Google Analytics Javascript is in the page <body>, so each clicked link was being registered. However, the correct page path and title were not being set. For browsers that support Turbolinks the user's entry-page title/location/path were being re-used for every link visited.

The Fix

Override the title, location and page properties when sending a Google analytics pageview event.

In the Google Analytics Javascript (found within the Application Layout), instead of:

ga('send', 'pageview');

We now do:

var page_location = location.href.split('#')[0];
var page_path = window.location.pathname; 
ga('send', 'pageview', { "title": document.title, 
                         "location": page_location,
                         "page": page_path});

This way the newly fetched title, location and path are correctly set both when visiting for the first time and when visiting a Turbolink.

Reference: Google Analytics Page Tracking Docs

Other Fixes Found Online

I found a number of other fixes online that involved registering an event on the Turbolinks page:change event to properly re-send the Google the pageview. One such fix.

I'm able to get away with a much simpler fix since our Google Analytics Javascript is being re-run with every Turbolink fetched.

Add a custom footer
⚠️ **GitHub.com Fallback** ⚠️