{"id":98663,"date":"2025-02-20T04:03:24","date_gmt":"2025-02-20T04:03:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/analytics\/gtmtips-send-page-visibility-state-to-google-analytics\/"},"modified":"2025-02-20T04:03:24","modified_gmt":"2025-02-20T04:03:24","slug":"gtmtips-send-page-visibility-state-to-google-analytics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=98663","title":{"rendered":"#GTMTips: Send Page Visibility State To Google Analytics"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

One of my pet peeves about Google Analytics<\/a> has to do with nomenclature. For example, a User<\/strong> isn\u2019t really a user but a browser instance<\/strong>, and Direct<\/strong> traffic isn\u2019t necessarily \u201cdirect\u201d at all, but rather just traffic that has no discernible source. But being so invested in content<\/strong> analytics, my biggest gripe has to do with Pageviews<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

A Pageview<\/strong> in Google Analytics is collected when a hit with the hit type pageview<\/code> is received successfully by the Google Analytics endpoint. This hit is dispatched most often with a JavaScript library such as Google Tag Manager<\/a> or gtag.js<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The problem with the name is that it doesn\u2019t really tell you at all whether the page was viewed<\/em> or not<\/strong>. It just tells you that a line of JavaScript was executed on the page.<\/p>\n

Luckily, pageviews aren\u2019t typically at the top of the list of Most Actionable KPIs, but you still see them being referenced especially in journals that rely on clicks rather than engagement.<\/p>\n

With this #GTMTips<\/a> post (my one hundredth!<\/strong>), I want to show you an extremely simple way of adding this crucial metadata of page visibility to your Google Analytics hits, so that you can segment your data for qualified<\/em> pageviews, and maybe even ignore<\/em> events that happen when the page is not visible.<\/p>\n


\n X<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n The Simmer Newsletter<\/strong>\n <\/p>\n

\n Subscribe to the Simmer newsletter<\/a> to get the latest news and content from Simo Ahava into your email inbox!\n <\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Tip 100: Send page visibility state as a custom dimension to GA<\/h2>\n
\n

<\/p>\n

\"Send<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The steps are simple:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \n

    Create a Hit-scoped Custom Dimension<\/strong> in Google Analytics<\/a>, and make note of its index.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  2. \n

    In Google Tag Manager, create a new JavaScript<\/strong> variable for document.hidden<\/code> (see below).<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  3. \n

    Then, still in GTM, edit your Google Analytics Settings variable<\/a>, and add a new Custom Dimension with the index from step (1) and the variable from step (2).<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    This is what the JavaScript variable<\/strong> looks like:<\/p>\n

    \n

    <\/p>\n

    \"Document<\/p>\n

    <\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

    Note the Format Value<\/a> settings. You need to cast<\/em> the Boolean true<\/code> and value<\/code> (returned by document.hidden<\/code>) into their string counterparts \"true\"<\/code> and \"false\"<\/code>. Otherwise analytics.js has the annoying habit of converting Booleans to 1<\/code> and 0<\/code> which makes the reports difficult to intepret.<\/p>\n

    The document.hidden<\/code> property is nicely supported by all the major browsers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    You don\u2019t have to add the Custom Dimension to all your hits, but I personally think it makes sense. Why qualify just the pageviews? Events can happen \u201coff-viewport\u201d too, and it might make sense to focus only on the ones that happen in an active browser window. This is what the Google Analytics Settings variable would look like, assuming the index of the Custom Dimension is 13<\/code> and the variable name is {{document.hidden}}<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

    \n

    <\/p>\n

    \"Custom<\/p>\n

    <\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

    Finally, I\u2019m not illusioned enough to think that this somehow \u201cfixes\u201d anything. Collecting visibility state<\/em> doesn\u2019t guarantee that the user is actually viewing<\/em> anything, as they might be fetching their cup of coffee or dozing off in front of the screen. But I\u2019m pretty convinced that this is an improvement<\/em> especially when you want to consider pageviews<\/strong> to be true to their name.<\/p>\n

    So, that\u2019s one hundred GTM tips<\/strong> all done. And it took me almost five years. I promise to get the next hundred done much, much faster!<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    One of my pet peeves about Google Analytics has to do with nomenclature. For example, a User isn\u2019t really a user but a browser instance, and Direct traffic isn\u2019t necessarily \u201cdirect\u201d at all, but rather just traffic that has no discernible source. But being so invested in content analytics, my biggest gripe has to do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":98666,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12033],"tags":[12765,1531,14492,4347,11285,5296,2135],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-98663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analytics","tag-analytics","tag-google","tag-gtmtips","tag-page","tag-send","tag-state","tag-visibility"],"yoast_head":"\n#GTMTips: Send Page Visibility State To Google Analytics - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=98663\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"#GTMTips: Send Page Visibility State To Google Analytics - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"One of my pet peeves about Google Analytics has to do with nomenclature. 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