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On October 16th Google announced it’s beta program for the new Google Analytics Tracking Code called ga.js. This new tracking code will replace the old urchin.js which was the sole remaining component of Urchin that Google had not re written since they acquired it in 2005.

The new ga.js includes features such as a event tracking (so you can see how users interact with dynamic elements such as Ajax and Flash without artificially inflating your page views), outbound link tracking (so you can track the clicks to links outside of your domain), and finally ga.js will track site search activity if you’re using Google custom search on your site. This will allow you to see what users are searching for on your site – the keywords used, and the pages accessed.

Here is a little more from the Google Analytics posting:

We’ll begin a limited beta test of the new Google Analytics Event Tracking capability. These new reports are designed to help you understand how people use and interact with Ajax, Flash and multimedia on your site without artificially increasing your page-view metrics. In order to provide a way for you to define and track a wide variety of applications and interactions, there will be a new tracking module called ga.js. Using ga.js on your site instead of urchin.js means you can continue to take advantage of the latest advanced tracking enhancements (such as Event Tracking) as we release them. Although we suggest everyone upgrade to the new JavaScript, if you aren’t interested in Event Tracking and you’re already getting all the information you need from Google Analytics, you don’t need to change your tags.

Not everyone needs to upgrade yet though – it’s still in BETA. According to Google they will not be retiring the old urchin.js code for another 18 months or so. We’ll be sure to migrate customers to the new tracking code only when the time is right!

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