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Analytics ​

Analytics is a privacy-first, cookieless web analytics module. One script tag gives you real-time pageviews, visitors, sources, and conversions — with no cookies, no consent banner, and no personal data collected. It is independent of Conversations and Reactions and has its own one-line embed.

html
<script defer
  src="https://gabden.com/analytics.js"
  data-gabden-analytics="YOUR_SITE_KEY">
</script>

Copy the exact snippet (with your real site key) from Dashboard → your site → Analytics → Installation. Put it in the <head> or before </body> on every page you want to measure.

Install ​

The script is tiny, loads with defer so it never blocks rendering, and sends one lightweight request per pageview. There is no verification step — data begins flowing the moment a real visitor loads a page carrying the tag.

Each pageview is keyed to the page's canonical URL: the script reads <link rel="canonical">, falling back to the current URL without its fragment. Events are only recorded for pages on your registered site domain.

Verify it works ​

  1. Publish a page with the tag and open it in a normal browser (not a preview that blocks scripts).
  2. Open Analytics → Live in the dashboard. Your visit appears within a few seconds under "online now."
  3. If nothing shows up, confirm the site key matches the one on the Installation page, that the script isn't blocked by your Content Security Policy, and that an ad/tracker blocker isn't stripping it.

Custom events ​

Track anything that matters — a signup, a purchase, a form submit — by calling the global gabden() function:

js
gabden('signup');

Add an optional detail string to break one event into variants:

js
gabden('signup', 'newsletter');
gabden('purchase', 'pro-plan');

The function is queued, so it is safe to call before the script finishes loading. Named events roll up in Reports → Events and can be promoted to Goals to measure conversions.

Goals ​

A Goal is a named conversion — either a custom event (from a gabden(...) call) or a URL a visitor reaches (e.g. /thank-you). Create goals under Analytics → Goals. Each goal shows completions and a conversion rate against your visitor total, so you can see which pages and campaigns actually drive results.

Auto-captured activity ​

Two kinds of interaction are tracked automatically, with no extra code:

  • Exit Link Activity — clicks on outbound links to other domains.
  • Download Activity — clicks on file links such as PDF, ZIP, MP3, and other common document and media types.

Both appear on the Visitor Activity page, so you can see what visitors open and where they leave for without instrumenting anything by hand.

A note on ad clicks: ad networks such as Google AdSense render inside cross-origin <iframe>s, and browsers deliberately prevent any page script from seeing clicks inside another origin's iframe. Gabden therefore cannot (and by design should not) track ad clicks — they are not counted as exits. Ordinary sponsored or affiliate links that are real <a> tags on your page are counted as Exit Link Activity like any other outbound link.

The dashboard ​

Analytics is organized into focused pages:

  • Live — who is online right now, updating in real time: active visitors, the pages they are on, and where they came from.
  • Reports — the full picture for any date range: pageviews and visitors over time, top pages, sources and channels, countries (with flags), devices, browsers, referrers, UTM campaigns, and events.
  • Visitor Activity — its own page for behavior, led by Visitor Paths: each real visitor journey shown as a chain — the country they were in, the source they came from, the pages they walked in order, and where they left (an outbound link or a file download). Journeys are reconstructed from an internal, monthly-rotating visitor fingerprint (a one-way hash of IP + browser that is never stored and cannot be reversed), so nobody is tracked long-term. The same page also has tabs for Page View Activity, Keyword Activity, Came From Activity, Download Activity, and Exit Link Activity.
  • Bot traffic — automated visits, separated into good bots (search engines, monitors) and bad bots, and kept out of Live and Reports so your numbers reflect real people.
  • Goals — your named conversions and their rates (see Goals above).
  • Ask AI — a chat that reads your live analytics and answers questions about your traffic in plain language. It only answers traffic questions.
  • Import — bring historical data in from a CSV export. Import is a Plus feature.
  • Installation — your site key and the ready-to-paste embed snippet.

Sources and channels ​

Every visit is attributed to a channel so you can see where your audience comes from:

  • Direct — no referrer (typed URLs, bookmarks, some apps).
  • Organic search — Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, DuckDuckGo, and other engines.
  • Social — links from social networks.
  • Referral — links from other websites.
  • Campaigns — traffic tagged with UTM parameters (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, …), grouped so you can measure each campaign.

Bot traffic ​

Automated crawlers and scrapers are detected and split from human traffic. Good bots (search engine crawlers, uptime monitors) and bad bots are shown on their own Bot traffic page and excluded from Live and Reports. Your pageview and visitor figures stay clean without any configuration.

Why Googlebot may not appear ​

Gabden Analytics is a cookieless script that runs in the browser (with a <noscript> pixel fallback), so it can only record a crawler that actually loads something from Gabden. Many crawlers — Bingbot, Baiduspider, YandexBot, AhrefsBot and similar — fetch that pixel and show up on the Bot traffic page.

Googlebot is different, and its near-absence is expected. Google crawls in two steps: it first fetches your raw HTML without running JavaScript or loading the pixel, then renders the page later in a separate, budget-limited service. Neither step reliably reaches an in-browser analytics script — so Googlebot rarely appears here. This is a limitation of all client-side analytics (Google's own Analytics excludes Googlebot from its reports too), not a detection gap: when Googlebot does reach us it is identified correctly.

For a complete record of Googlebot's crawl activity, use your server access logs (or Google Search Console's Crawl Stats), which capture every request at the server regardless of JavaScript.

Data retention & Plus ​

  • Free tier keeps 30 days of raw event history. Live, Reports, Goals, and auto-captured activity all work within that window.
  • Plus unlocks longer history via daily rollups, and enables CSV Import.
  • If you cancel Plus, there is a 30-day grace period before history older than the free window is purged, so you have time to export or re-subscribe.

Privacy ​

Analytics is built to be measurable without being invasive:

  • No cookies. Nothing is written to the visitor's browser, so no consent banner is required.
  • No personal data. IP addresses are never stored. An IP is used only in-memory to compute one-way visitor hashes, and nothing that could identify a person is kept:
    • A monthly-rotating hash groups a visitor's pageviews and reconstructs their journeys. It resets every month, so no one is linked long-term.
    • A separate monthly hash is used only to tell new vs returning visitors apart within a rolling ~30-day window, then it resets. It is one-way and never stored as an IP.
    • Neither hash is a cookie, works across other websites, or survives its rotation window — so no one is trackable long-term or cross-site. This is the standard privacy-first way to report returning visitors without identifying anyone.
  • No cross-site tracking and no fingerprinting. Visitors are never followed from one site to another, and no device fingerprint is built.
  • Bot traffic is separated so reports reflect real people.

Because it is cookieless and stores no personal data, Analytics is GDPR-friendly and does not require a cookie-consent prompt. See Privacy and security for how this fits the rest of Gabden.

Content Security Policy ​

Allow the Gabden script and API:

http
Content-Security-Policy:
  script-src 'self' https://gabden.com;
  connect-src 'self' https://gabden.com;

Plans ​

Analytics is available on every plan. The free tier includes real-time Live, Reports, Goals, auto-captured activity, bot separation, and 30 days of history. Plus adds longer history and CSV Import.

Privacy-first website engagement.

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