Track file downloads

If your site contains a price list, license agreement, or other files, you can track how often users download them.

To do this, you need to set a special goal in Yandex Metrica. You can create this kind of goal:

• For any file on the site. This goal will work for the most popular type files:

  • Document
  • Text
  • Executable file
  • Presentation
  • Applications
  • Compressed file
  • Video
  • Audio

  Supported extensions:

  3GP 7Z AAC AVI APK CSV DJVU DOCX EXE

  FLAC FLV GZ KEY MIDI MKA MKV MP3 MP4

  MPEG MOV MSI OGG PDF PKG PPS PPT PPTX

  RAR RTF TXT WAV WMA WMV WMF XLSX ZIP

• For a specific file. In this case, specify the name of the file with or without an extension. For example, file or file.pdf. Yandex Metrica will search for it in links.

  You can specify any file extension for this goal. If you have an uncommon extension, check in the console whether the goal supports it.

How to check that

1. In the browser's address bar, append the _ym_debug=2 parameter to the URL of the page that contains a download link, and then open the page in the browser.

   http://example.com/?_ym_debug=2
   

2. A debug panel will appear at the bottom of the page. To open it, click .

3. Click the download link on the page.

4. Information about conversions will appears in the Console tab.

   Everything is correct if there's a string of the following format: File. Counter 12345. Url: https://example.com/download/price.nameshop, where the value of Url is the file download link you specified when creating a goal.

   

To learn more, see Checking a goal.

The goal is achieved when the user clicks on the link to the file. To view goal statistics, use the Conversions report and add the goal to other Yandex Metrica reports.

To create a goal manually:

1. In Yandex Metrica, go to the Goals page in the left menu.
2. Click Add goal.
3. In the Name field, enter a name for the goal to create.
4. Select the File downloads goal type.
5. Select which files to create a goal for. If you chose Specific file, manually enter the name of the file with or without an extension in the field. For example, file or file.pdf. Make sure the spelling matches.
6. Click Add goal. The created goal will appear in the list of goals. Yandex Metrica will start collecting statistics on it within a few minutes.
7. You can check if the goal is working in the Conversions or File downloads report. If everything is correct, data should appear in these reports. To check this, perform a conversion action on the site. If the Don't count my sessions filter is set in the tag settings, check the goals on the site in the browser's private mode (for example, Incognito in Yandex Browser).

Restrictions

• This type of goal can’t be used in Multi-step goals.

• The service registers a user reaching the same goal on the same counter no more than once per second.

• During a single user session, the service can register up to 1000 offline conversions and 400 online conversions created for the tag.

• If you edit the tag or a goal, all the previously collected information does not change.

• If you delete a goal, information collected for it is no longer available in reports.

Learn more

• How to create a report for a goal
• Revenue by goal

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