How-to: Enable page speed tracking in Google Analytics

The latest version of Google Analytics has a very nice feature called “Page Speed”. You’ll see the new tab underneath the content section…

I wondered why i had no data under site speed. After some research I found that I needed to modify the GA javascript to include a directive for page speed. You’ll need to add _gaq.push(['_trackPageLoadTime']);   to the inline  javascript as shown here..

<script type="text/javascript">
  var _gaq = _gaq || [];
  _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-858386-1']);
  _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
  _gaq.push(['_trackPageLoadTime']);

...continued...
</script>

After you save your modified file(s), you should begin to see data within 24 hours. Google tracks a small sample of pageviews and averages them all. You’ll see a page by page breakdown of speeds and how many times that page was sampled. This is helpful for finding outliers.

Pros: Nice data over time in a GUI with 2 seconds of work. Breakdown of individual page speeds.

Cons: Using this method fires an additional request to google for a second tracking pixel. Generally you shouldn’t notice this addition.

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Posted in Computers & Internet, Sysadmin, Web Development