

Ask HN: Good Tutorials on Website Analytics tracking? - taphangum

It seems to me a fairly obscure topic that very few programmers know about.<p>i.e. how do sites like clicky and/or ad retargeters track their data?
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autalpha
If I understand your question correctly, it's "How would one go about
implementing their own analytic engine?" I have looked into this question
recently and here's what I know so far (not 100% sure of course as I'm still
looking into it)

Getting Basic Info: 1) 1x1 pixel method which request a 1 pixel image from
your server which will pass the requesting client's info. A lot of people use
this method because it's fairly simple and cross browser. 2) (I assume) guys
like sharethis/addthis etc, request a javascript on your server which would
pass all the client's information to the server per that request Tracking
things like mouse movement, page area etc would most likely require a more
customize javascript that will send data to server via ajax/page unload etc.

Storing Data: Because the data you will be collecting for analytic is HUGE.
Think much bigger than HUGE. You'll need a real big-boy set up like a
Distributed Storage/Database system. Most of the big guys use their own. Here
is where you will need to read up on key/value databases like Cassandra or
Hadoop etc.

Anyone with much more experiences and wiser thoughts, please do share and
correct me as I am still learning about this. Good luck and thank you.

------
knes
Checkout this interview of Avinash Kaushik By Andrew @Mixerbery on Web
Analytics. It should help you understand what you need to do and what tool you
can use.

<http://mixergy.com/analytics-avinash-kaushik-interview/>

