Save Tracking information from server side code instead of javascript

[Suraaj]

I am using Google Analytics javascript code for tracking hits on web
pages on my website.There is one problem though is a user is logged in
I bypass the page and take them directly to the pdf. The .Net code is
redirecting them without the whole page load. In this case the client
side html rendering is not done as the user is directed from server
side even before reaching to the client side rendering stage. Due to
this reason that web page hits are not recorded in Google Analytics. I
was searching for a API which I can call from server side page load
even which can save the page hit before redirecting but unfortunately
the Google Analytics API only retrieves data but does not allow to
save data by explicit calling in the code.

Is there any way or is there any API i can use to save the page hit
programmatically instead of putting in javascript?

Regards,
Suraaj

[Atani]

x2

I'm also looking for a way to record an event in GA without
JavaScript. The use case is similar to the one Suraaj reported:

User searches on google.com for a set of keywords and clicks on a
direct file download link instead of a landing page link. I'd like to
be able to record the download "Event" in the Analytics account even
though the browser never loads an HTML page and never executes the
Analytics Javascript.

Is this possible?

Thanks,
Joel

[Nick]

Hi,

Currently there is no supported way. (not to mention this is a group
for data export and not tracking)

But GA works by persisting values to represent a visitor and session.
Ideally you would want your server side downloads to be for the same
visitor, within in the same session as being tracking by the user on
your site. So you'd need a supported way to read our ga.js tracking
cookies and then reconstitute that data on your server to send to GA.
Both steps are currently not available.

But this is a great use case.
-Nick

[Atani]

Thanks for the response, Nick. Is there another google group related
to the Tracking side of Google Analytics code? I'm wondering how
other folks facing my use case may have tackled it without running
afoul of Cloaking rules, etc.