Analytics Trackers Update

Publishers have asked for a more clear and complete set of article data to more easily and consistently evaluate the performance of their Instant Articles. Today we're updating and simplifying how we support trackers in Instant Articles to help publishers better understand their traffic. This update contains recommended changes for publishers but does not effect publishers using the previous implementation of analytics trackers.

With this update, third party analytics trackers will load more quickly, have better parity with web tracking and more flexible testing options. Here is how the tracker support allows for some of these improvements:

Parity with web trackers

We now offer a defined set of Instant Articles specific data that publishers can access with their trackers. Using this packaged set of Instant Articles data brings the URL trackers to parity with the Javascript trackers for the data available.

For JavaScript tracking codes, that data is available in the new ia_document JavaScript object. For URL trackers, the data is available as query parameters.

More flexible testing “endpoint”

We introduced a way for publishers to test their trackers in a web browser. In addition to the regular way of testing an Instant Articles tracker (opening the article in the Pages Manager app), we now also provide an endpoint for faster testing while developing or debugging your trackers.

Below is an example of a tracker URL that, tested in a browser, would simulate testing in the Instant Articles environment:

www.ia-tracker.fbsbx.com/instant_article_test?url=<share-url>
    

Learn more about adding and testing analytics trackers in your Instant Articles in our developer documentation.

We're excited for publishers to use the data and flexibility from this update to better measure and understand their Instant Articles traffic using their own analytics tools.