Event Tracking Google Style
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?
Filed under: CEP Tutorials, Complex Event, Complex Event Processing, Event Processing, Event Processing Language, Event Processing Modelling, Modelling and Simulation, Sensor Fusion, Situation Models, Systems Engineering
