Saturday, November 21, 2009

View Your iGoogle Gadget Stats in One Place

Google released a Gadget Dashboard for iGoogle gadget developers. On this page, you can add gadget of yours by URL – for some, you may need to click on a link in a verification mail – and then see weekly stats, your gadget ratings and more.

Note though that the stats only show you how often a gadget is loaded, but that doesn’t mean the gadget is used, too... because it just happens to be loaded when the iGoogle page loads, which may be because the user just wants to perform a search, or make use of a gadget not yours (your gadget may not even be in sight during page load, pushed down by other gadgets). In that sense, when Google calls this “page view” we need not be misled to think of it as a “normal” page view like one that would happen on one’s own site.

For these reasons, for some of my gadgets, I’m using an intro screen which is in the actual module XML (hence stored and cached by Google, so I don’t need to worry about traffic), and only when the user clicks a text like “Start this game”, a page on my server will be requested. That page on my server includes a Google Analytics tracker, allowing me to see the stats where I look at my other stats anyway (in Google Analytics). Using such a start button is not a good option for non-interactive “mere display” gadgets, though, like a clock...

[Thanks BizAbh via iGoogle developer blog!]

View Your iGoogle Gadget ... by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (1+1)

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