The problem with event tracking (and there's a little javascript you can use also) to track downloads, is it only tracks the downloads that come from your website.  For example, there are many websites that link to the Travel Expense form (UM 1612), and those would not be tracked by event tracking (or the other method) with GA.

There's also the issue of how long it will take to add the tracking code to all our internal pdf/doc/xls file links on our website.  I've added it to the page that lists all the forms - and allows people to search for forms, but have not added it on individual form, and other document links on our site.

Eva


On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 4:18 PM, Theresa Tichich <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
I really liked the Urchin reports for the amount of finite detail they provided but GA offers a lot of easy, built in functionality.  At one point I was using both to try and figure out what was really happening on our web sites.

Eva,
You can do "Event" tracking for reporting PDF and document downloads.  We use it to track when someone clicks an outbound link from our site. 

I found this page which walks you through creating an event for downloads:

On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 3:52 PM, Eva C Young <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
In general I like Google analytics better - except for the inability to obtain accurate reports on hosted pdfs, word documents, excel documents and power point documents.

Eva


On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 3:41 PM, Andria Waclawski <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
As I understand it (and I know some of you out there know much more than I do), a key difference lies in Urchin’s analysis of server log files and GA's javascript tagging. While Urchin may give richer results (because it can access more data), GA allows for advanced segmentation, benchmark analysis, and event tracking.

Maybe that doesn't help with the interpreting discrepancies part...

/Andria


On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 3:23 PM, Ann Nordby <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Hi: 
Can anyone advise me on how to interpret Google Analytics numbers versus Urchin? 

Urchin is telling me that our website's visit numbers dropped significantly over the past year, while GA says we had significant growth. GA's absolute numbers are lower, of course, but the trends are totally different. 

Can anyone advise on which to believe, how to interpret, etc? 

Apologies for cross posts; I know both groups use these tools. 
Thanks. 
Ann
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Eva C Young
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Web:  http://www.policy.umn.edu