Tim Bass
07-22-2008 12:46 PM
Most readers who operate a web site are familar with
Google Analytics*(GA). GA users add a bit of Javascript on their web pages. The Javascript has tracking code that executes when visitors request web pages. The GA tracking code basically sets or updates cookies on*the user’s browser and requests a single-pixel image from the GA servers.
In the last release of the GA code, Google added Event Tracking.***In Google-speak, events are actions that visitors take on a web page that do not generate new pageviews. Examples of these events are, interacting with a Flash player, a AJAX widget or an audio player. In the old GA,*webbies could track event-data as a pageview.* However, because*event tracking*using crude pageviews is not very effective,*GA*added*new functionality they refer to as*
Event Tracking.
There are 4 components in the GA events data model;
Objects,
Actions,
Labels and
Values. GA
Objects are areas of web pages that visitors interact with, for example a video player or an Ajax widget.* The second part of the GA event tracking data model is
Actions. *
Actions are*related to an
Object, representing
Actions that visitors perform on the
Object.*
Labels further describe
Actions,*associating*context with*
Actions.***Last, but not least,*
Values are quantities associated with
Labels.
Notice how Google defines this event processing model as
Event Tracking.** Similar to the reference architecture we described in
What is Complex Event Processing?,* operations on single event objects are generally tracking-oriented,*often referred to as
Event*Refinement* in the*art-and-science of*multisensor data fusion (MSDF).*
The GA event tracking model does not (yet) incorporate
Situation Refinement, which in MSDF-speak, would be object-to-object processing, representing a higher level of interaction modelling.***
Can you provide examples where object-to-object interaction between various*objects on a single web site*represents a real-world*situational (complex event)*model?*
Taking this one step further, can you*think of some examples where object-to-object interaction between various*objects on different web sites represents a real-world*situational model?
*
Source...
