Google Analytics API - Get page view information for specific URLs

Question

I am looking to implement a page view tracking system on one of my websites.

The website is a directory where suppliers can advertise their services. Suppliers have a unique profile page on the site, e.g mysite.com/directory/abc-profile.html

The idea is that suppliers can log in to their account area on the site and view stats on how many people are visiting their profile. Ideally I want to display this as :

Total views | Total today | This week | This month | This year

It does not matter if the data is not completely up to date.

I already have Google Analytics tracking code installed on the site. Is it possible to use the Google Analytics API to retrieve this data? If so, what kind of query do I need to make? I had a look on the documentation but could not figure whether the functions allow this or not.

I am using PHP and MySQL on the server.

Answer 1

Yes - you will need to use the Google Analytics API for this. I would suggest checking out the Query Explorer to get a feel for the queries you will need to create.

You will require numerous queries to get all the data you need (adjusting the starting date): - Total Views - This Year - This Month - This Week (i.e. last 7 days - from which you could also get Total Today).

Here is an example query:

https://www.googleapis.com/analytics/v3/data/ga?ids=ga:1234456789&dimensions=ga:pagePath&metrics=ga:pageviews&filters=ga:pagePath==/about-us.html&start-date=2013-10-15&end-date=2013-10-29&max-results=50

Alternatively, you might want to consider www.embeddedanalytics.com (disclosure - I work with them). We have a service/platform that allows website owners to embed GA based charts/statistics without having to learn the GA API. We have a CMS version which will do exactly what you need (where you script the call to pass the page path). We have done something like this with a number of podcast sharing sites.