You can use Google Analytics to track your help center traffic. Google Analytics is only available for your help center if you are on a Guide Professional or Guide Enterprise plan and have converted your theme to a custom theme. Google Analytics is a third-party, non-Zendesk service.
Google Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 360 end of life
Google is sunsetting Google Universal Analytics on July 1, 2023 and Google Analytics 360 July 1, 2024. This means that Google Universal Analytics users who want to continue using Google Analytics must migrate to Google Analytics 4 prior to that time.
Data from Google Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 360 is not migrated to Google Analytics 4 dashboards. Therefore, Google recommends that you run Google Analytics 4 alongside Google Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 360 to ensure you’ll have historical data in Google Analytics 4 when Google Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 360 stop processing data. To use both Google Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4 to monitor your help center, you must add both tracking IDs (see Adding your help center to Google Analytics).
Adding your help center to Google Analytics
To use Google Analytics to track your help center traffic, you must set up your Google Analytics account and then add your Google Analytics tracking ID to the help center.
To set up your Google Analytics account
To track traffic via Google Analytics, establish a Google Analytics account (if you don’t already have one), then add your help center to that account.
For instructions on each of these tasks, refer to Google’s support documentation for your Google Analytics platform:
- [GA4] Set up Analytics for a website and/or app
- Set up Analytics for a website (Universal Analytics)
- In Guide admin, click the Settings icon (
) in the sidebar. - Under Integrations, select the option to enable Google Analytics and enter your tracking ID.
Note: If you are transitioning from Google Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4, you must add the tracking ID for both products. If you are only using Google Analytics 4, you can just add the Google Analytics 4 tracking ID.
- Click Update on the upper-right side of the page.
Using Google Analytics with your help center
See the following resources on using Google Analytics to create the best self-service experience possible for your customers:
- Google Analytics and your help center - Part 1: Asking the right questions
- Google Analytics and your help center - Part 2: Measuring the effectiveness of search
- Google Analytics and your help center - Part 3: Tracking customers' actions
- Google Analytics and your help center - Part 4: Fine-tuning your help center
- Google Analytics and your help center - Part 5: Capturing your help center user data
Alternative analytics for your help center
If you're not using Google Analytics, you can implement any tracking code directly in the code of your theme by pasting the tracking code snippet into the document_head.hbs theme template file. This is available if you are on Guide Professional or higher or Suite Growth or higher and have converted your theme to a custom theme.
You can also use Google Tag Manager to implement your tags see Using Google Tag Manager with your help center.
Supporting opt-outs
Laws in certain jurisdictions (for example, the California Consumer Privacy Act) may require that end users be given the opportunity to opt-out of Google Analytics or other third-party tracking, including through the use of a universal opt-out mechanism such as Global Privacy Control (GPC). For more information on ways to comply with these requirements, see Implementing cookie consent in your help center.
40 Comments
As per above, can Zendesk confirm that GA4 support is on the roadmap?
I made a Minerva interactive step-by-step guide to help you walk through enabling Google Analytics in Zendesk. This is for those using Universal Analytics Tracking IDs and not the updated Google Analytics 4. Minerva is a guide that shows you where to click, and what to do next, so you can set this up on your own account. You can follow the link here for the step by step instructions:
https://www.minervaknows.com/howto/minervateam-zendesk-com-enabling-google-analytics-in-your-zendesk-help-center-yyevv1psvxbc.html?utm_source=forums&utm_medium=dan&utm_campaign=zendesk
@... sadly that doesn't work for the new Google Tag assets. Perhaps you could clearly label it as legacy Google Analytics configuration?
Hi Joel, thanks for taking a look and pointing that out. I have updated my comment to make it clear. Thanks again!
Can you use a G code on the light version of the zendesk guide?
Hey @...! A G- code will not work; a UA- code is required.
Hi. I converted our Google Analytics property to the old style with the UA code. I entered and enabled it in Guide settings. However, I can't see any activity beyond the homepage. Any ideas why? Anything I can try?
Hey @...! It can take a day or two for data to show up in Google Analytics dashboards/reports after adding the tracking ID in Zendesk Guide. That being said, activity beyond the homepage is expected to be captured.
@... Yes it did start showing up now! Thanks for checking in. Now just trying to get the custom dimensions captured correctly.
Ive read this thread multiple times and keep trying different things mentioned in the comments. I'll comment on that thread in a couple days if I haven't got it sorted.
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/204279766?page=3#comments
My organization has 3 Brands, so 3 different help center. Additionally, each help center is translated into 4 languages. Does this mean I need to enter all 12 urls as properties into Google Analytics or is there a trick I can use to just add one URL and have all help centers data populate?
I recevied this note from Google Analytics:
Universal Analytics properties will stop collecting data starting July 1, 2023. It’s recommended that you create a Google Analytics 4 property instead.
Would this means that we need to change Google Analytics property in the future if we want to connect ot Guide?
What would it means when it comes to Google Analytics/Guide connections?
Hey Tanawat Oonwattana, we followed the instructions from the second paragraph in this article and were able to quickly add the new code to the document_head.hbs template in our theme. Tracking started right away.
Not as nice as just entering a code in the Guide front end but it seems to work just as well so far.
You'll only need to use the URL of each helpcenter from each brand, just like what we have in the example in this article.
Website URL: (Select https:// from the drop-down menu) mondocam.zendesk.com/hc
The helpcenter localization shouldn't be an issue and Google Analytics should work just fine as those locales are within the same helpcenter of each brand.
Hi, now that it's official that UA is EOL and GA4 is here to stay, when will we be able to deploy natively in Zendesk without having to modify templates?
Does Zendesk support GA4?
Google's official support says Universal Analytics will be going away. No data from UA accounts are able to be transferred to GA4 accounts. When will Zendesk support the modern Google Analytics accounts?
how can I add "most viewed" articles in help center?
Per Google, GA 4 won’t be replacing Universal Analytics until July 2023. And we don't yet have a date for native, official Zendesk implementation of GA4. Always keep track of our updates page for any news regarding this.
Google introduced GA4 in July 2019. Even though UA isn't ending for another year, they're urging everyone to move to GA4 as soon as possible in order to build historical data before UA suddenly stops.
Hi All, apologies for not updating you sooner regarding GA4 support.
We intend to support implementation of GA4 for all our plan tiers and therefore I have a short survey to understand your preferences.
Please help us by giving your input in this survey.
Meanwhile I would like to highlight that you can already implement GA4 by implementing Google tag manager in the theme templates, provided that you are using a custom theme (or willing to convert) and you are not on the Suite Team or Guide Lite (Legacy) plan.
Thanks in advance for your input!
Hey all
I've been struggling with tracking this for my clients as well, and ultimately came up with a simple script that uses the Zendesk JS API to trigger events into GA4 (directly or via GTM).
You can see the full details on this blog post I've written
Integrating the Zendesk Widget with GA4 | Tracking Chef
If you have any questions on this just reply to this comment :)
Elad
Hi all, we are in the process of building the Google Analytics 4 support and we have a first iteration that we would love to put in the hands of some of our customers.
If you are interested, please sign up here :)
There's still a gap here for GA4 support for the Messaging widget. When will GA4 work with Messaging to fire events?
Hey all, we are starting to roll out GA4 support for Help Center.
See the announcement here.
Gorka Cardona-Lauridsen - that's great to have native support :)
We already embedded the GA4 snippet though - do you know how to smoothly transition from one to the other?
ie. If the snippet is in place, and we update the native tracking, will it duplicate reporting? If so, would we basically deactivate one and then activate the other to not end up with duplicates?
Same, we already paid a developer to add this to a custom template six months ago. Maybe in the future if we have other things that need changing they can make the adjustment, but we don't want to pay them again to remove it.
Gorka Cardona-Lauridsen regarding migrating to GA4, just want to confirm we're good to keep JS snippets proposed by Zendesk as is in the "Google Analytics and help center - Part 3: Tracking customers' actions article?
I'm not seeing the GA4 option on our Help Center / Guide admin yet. Any idea when the rollout of the support for the Help Center will be completed?
Hi @Gorka Cardona-Lauridsen - is there an update on the tracking of the webchat widget. i have filled out the survey and even chatted to Zendesk employees, however this was months ago and have had no update since.
My clients rely on this functioanlity heavily to track the ROI of the CX team. I would hate for this to just stop working one day.
Lila Kingsley the code you have previously implemented will not be affected by enabling GA4, but neither will it give you the same event in GA4. GA4 automatically collects the events described here. To collect any custom events see Google's documentation here.
Sally Anne Dishong We had a slight delay, but all accounts now have the feature available. Apologies for the delay.
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