Secure (SSL) Google Analytics

By  on  

Google Analytics is a tremendous tool, especially when your customer wants an eCommerce website. Analytics is even more powerful when your customer uses Adwords to drive in traffic.

Google provides the following code for you to add to your page footer so that Analytics can grab statistics:


The problem with this is that if you're pulling this code in on a secure page, a security warning will pop up mentioning that the page is loading both secure and non-secure items. How do you prevent this issue (as well as trust issues with the user)? Simply import the secure version of Google Analytics:


For websites that have some pages secure and others not HTTPS protected, I recommend always calling the secure version of Google Analytics' urchin.js.

Recent Features

  • By
    Welcome to My New Office

    My first professional web development was at a small print shop where I sat in a windowless cubical all day. I suffered that boxed in environment for almost five years before I was able to find a remote job where I worked from home. The first...

  • By
    9 Mind-Blowing Canvas Demos

    The <canvas> element has been a revelation for the visual experts among our ranks.  Canvas provides the means for incredible and efficient animations with the added bonus of no Flash; these developers can flash their awesome JavaScript skills instead.  Here are nine unbelievable canvas demos that...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Simple Image Lazy Load and Fade

    One of the quickest and easiest website performance optimizations is decreasing image loading.  That means a variety of things, including minifying images with tools like ImageOptim and TinyPNG, using data URIs and sprites, and lazy loading images.  It's a bit jarring when you're lazy loading images and they just...

  • By
    HTML5&#8217;s placeholder Attribute

    HTML5 has introduced many features to the browser;  some HTML-based, some in the form of JavaScript APIs, but all of them useful.  One of my favorites if the introduction of the placeholder attribute to INPUT elements.  The placeholder attribute shows text in a field until the...

Discussion

  1. Nice post! Google Analytics has a new tracking code option, ga.js instead of the urchin.js, that handles the ssl component. Here’s a look:

    var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
    document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
    
    
    var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-xxxxxxx-x");
    pageTracker._initData();
    pageTracker._trackPageview();
    
    
  2. muddy

    The answer to my ssl headaches! Didn’t think to check if Google Analytics offered a secure tracking code. Will be so happy to say goodbye to that annoying “non-secure” pop-up.

    Thank ya thank ya thank ya.

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!