Tracking File Downloads

Conversions Overview

Each client is going to have different goals. Some clients will consider a phone call the most important action a user can take on their site while others will think a contact form is more important. Because of this, I’m going to show you how to track them the top ones. You can choose to include or exclude any of them from your SEO strategy.

File Downloads

You can track downloads of files such as PDFs, Images, Excel files and Word documents.

Creating File Download Events Using Google Tag Manager

  • PDF
  • Excel
  • Word
  • Images

Google Tag Manager

First you have to use Google Tag Manager to set up event tracking.

Event Name Category (equals to) Action Label (regular expression)
All File Downloads File Download (.pdf|.doc|.docx|.xls|.xlsx|.png|.jpg|.jpeg|.svg|.webp|.gif)
PDF Downloads PDF Download (.pdf)
Spreadsheet Downloads Spreadsheet Download (.xls|.xlsx)
Document Downloads Document Download (.doc|.docx)
Image Downloads Image Download (.png|.jpg|.jpeg|.svg|.webp|.gif)

File Download Goals in Google Analytics

When creating the file download goals in Google Analytics, there are several that you can create which are helpful. Here’s a simple overview of the event categories and event labels you can use to track all file downloads, PDFs, spreadsheets and documents.

Goal Name Category (equals to) Action Label (regular expression) Value
All File Downloads File Download Leave Blank Leave Blank
PDF Downloads PDF Download Leave Blank Leave Blank
Spreadsheet Downloads Spreadsheet Download Leave Blank Leave Blank
Document Downloads Document Download Leave Blank Leave Blank
Image Downloads Image Download Leave Blank Leave Blank

I’ve already create these goals in Google Analytics for you. You can import Google Analytics Goals using these links:

Import Google Tag Manager Container

For this to work you need to replace these fields.
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