Detecting Windows 7 with Google Analytics

Question

This question might belong on one of the other trilogies, but it sorta seemed to be the best place.

I have google analytics set up, but it doesn't seem to detect Windows 7. I'm on Win7 myself, so I know there should be at least some number of Win7-users.

The user agent for Win7 is NT 6.1, and google analytics have detected NT users, but I'm not sure if that's a coincidence or not...

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Currently Windows 7 is detected as Windows NT.

See this issue.

You can submit a new bug here.

Answer 2

Why not just parse the user agent in the javascript block for NT 6.1?

Answer 3

Google Analytics only parses the User-Agent string. For instance, it is Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; Trident/4.0) for IE8 on Windows 7.

On Windows 7, IE8 will send the User-Agent string with the new Windows NT version token.

(If you’re curious about why Windows 7 uses the version number “6.1”: the short answer is that it improves compatibility, and the longer answer can be found over on the Windows Team Blog.)