Google Analytics Gets A Handle On Flash

By Doug Caverly - Thu, 11/20/2008 - 09:18

Track to your heart’s content

Flash content has long posed a lot of problems for the search and webmaster communities. Now Google – and more specifically, the newly introduced Google Analytics Tracking For Adobe Flash – intends to solve at least a few of them.

“In the past, Flash tracking was not provided out of the box, and every implementation had to be customized,” notes Nick Mihailovski in a post on the Google Analytics Blog. “Moreover, there was a lack of standards, and new developers who tracked Flash had to create their own processes to get it working.”

This new feature should help site owners figure out whether or not their Flash content is engaging visitors. A company called Sprout has tested it, and their Vice President of Engineering came away impressed.

Would-be users with fewer technical skills should be all set, too. Mihailovski writes, “We know there are many levels of experience in the Flash/Flex community so we tried to make it easy for both non-technical designers as well as seasoned ActionScript programmers to take full advantage of this Google Analytics Tracking For Flash. We’ve provided tracking libraries for both Flash and Flex . . .”

And Mihailovski’s “we,” in case you’re wondering where to send thank-you notes, includes Adobe. Google Analytics Tracking For Adobe Flash was apparently a joint project between Google, Adobe, and “a few ace third party developers.”