track visits from nonbrowser application using google analytics

Question

is it possible use google analytics to track visits from nonbrowser application? will ga be able to recognize custom user agents or other http headers? Anyone has experience in this area? thanks!

Answer 1

No. Only browsers execute Javascript, which is required for Google Analytics tracking. To track robots, you need to get server side logs. AWStats is a good tool for parsing Apache logs, allowing you to track robots and such.

Answer 2

Two very similar questions have already been asked:

• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/804309/how-to-trigger-google-analytics-from-code
• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1846460/cause-google-analytics-log-from-non-web-application-eg-via-webclient