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I added google analytics to a google site with the hopes of being able to record what people are clicking on (what resources are being used and not being used) in order to better optimize the page in the future, however, it seems as if only events are being clicked without any descriptor of what is being clicked or what page is being viewed. Is there a way to change this so I see what pages people are traversing, what specific resources people are utilizing? See below.
Google Analytics is tracking mostly clicked links or loaded pages. If you want to track more details you would have to use JavaScript to log each button press and/or any other activity. JavaScript would be invoked by a button click, you would have a function to log this specific click and then do the base activity that has been provided to that button. JS can call your API or PHP file to log anything you want, for example you can log whole form details to a file when a button is clicked or anything has changed on the webpage (ListBox changed selection).
The other way is to track requests in server's logs - Apache2, nginx, IIS. Each request is logged in logs so you can tell which IP at what time has requested a specific file. But this does not tell about clicked buttons (if it is not loading anything from the web server).
Google Analytics is what you will encounter, as it's the latest Analytics version of Google. The previous version is called Universal Analytics and can still be used.
Both Universal and Google Analytics offer similar data to users, although Universal Analytics gives more in-depth information about user behavior, so fits better your needs.
Universal Analytics events is described as:
This article explains how to use Tag Manager to set up Universal Analytics event tags that are triggered in response to clicks on links, clicks on other types of elements, at timed intervals, and when a forms are submitted.
As this might change in the future, here is just the main information.
Link clicks
There are two common methods shown here for how to send click event information to Google Analytics:
- Use a separate trigger and tag for each type of link.
- Use a single tag with a regular expression to handle all click data.
Clicks on any element
Use this technique to measure clicks on elements other than links. This includes clicks on images, elements, or any other item on the page accessible by the DOM.
Timed intervals
Measure timed intervals when you need to understand time on page when no events are triggered.
Form submits
This technique will cause a tag to fire every time a form on a web page is submitted.
Universal Analytics requires additions to every page whose activity you wish to track.
