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JyotiSharmaV
Community Advisor
JyotiSharmaVCommunity Advisor
Community Advisor
September 28, 2022
Solved

Report on pdf links

  • September 28, 2022
  • 1 reply
  • 3532 views

I am using the "Download Link" Dimension to report on pdf links like data sheets, app notes, guides and manuals that are getting downloaded by users on my site. Doing like shown in below screenshot. However, I don't know why I am seeing some pdfs in "Page" Dimension also. Can you tell how to report on pdfs

 

 

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Best answer by Jennifer_Dungan

@jennifer_dungan I dont see any manipulations as such. For reporting can you pls help and suggest how should we see pdf downloads? 

 

Should we just measure downloads using the Download Link dimension? And should I use the instance metric or unique visitor metric for correct data points?


Well, as far as the "PDF" downloads are concerned, the Download Link dimensions should be fine.

 

Instance or Unique Visitor have relevance... depending on what you are trying to see...

 

For instance, if you want to know just how many users are downloading PDFs... using UVs would rollup all the unique visitors as a de-duplicated total (when looking at a breakdown of all the PDFs)... however, it will not give you the raw today of downloads (or tell you if the same person ends up downloading the same PDF multiple times). If you are trying to get a sense of how many users are accessing this content, this would be a good way to pull it.

 

Using Instances will tell you in absolute terms how many PDFs were downloaded, including ones that were downloaded multiple times by the same user....

 

They are both correct and legitimate metrics to use... it really depends on what you are trying to report on.

 

However, I am still concerned that you mentioned you have PDFs showing up in your Pages Report... that sounds like something is still wrong, and that you could have inflated PVs... but it's so hard to diagnose without seeing it.....

1 reply

Jennifer_Dungan
Community Advisor and Adobe Champion
Jennifer_DunganCommunity Advisor and Adobe Champion
Community Advisor and Adobe Champion
September 29, 2022

Without seeing your implementation of tracking PDFs, it would be hard to say for sure... 

 

Are you forcing a pageName value on your action via Processing Rules? Are you triggering something on your download rule that is being misinterpreted as a Page View?

JyotiSharmaV
Community Advisor
JyotiSharmaVCommunity AdvisorAuthor
Community Advisor
September 29, 2022

@jennifer_dungan I dint understand your question. Can you direct me on how can I check my configuration and where?

 

For me right now I could see pdf pages in Page as well as Download Link dimension both. Can you tell me where should they exactly be?

JyotiSharmaV
Community Advisor
JyotiSharmaVCommunity AdvisorAuthor
Community Advisor
October 3, 2022

Well that at least makes me feel better...

 

Our site doesn't have any PDFs, so I have nothing to compare it with....

 

I'm not sure what else to check at this time.... It might be "intentional" that the PDF name show in the pageName metric, but not count a page view... similar to how mobile apps track the "app name" on action clicks for some reason?


@jennifer_dungan This is how my segment for Pdf (Application notes) looks like now:

 

 

and this is how reporting looks. Can you brief me on why Page Views are Zero? And where I can check it in Analytics where pdf's are set to not show page views? Is it something because the pdfs are not html links?

 

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