#2815 – Google Analytics Error

Hi

The most common error is to not use the same Google account as the one attached to the Analytics accounts, but then you get a 404 error, not a 400, as you get. This seems to be related to GZIP compression. I can also see what looks to me like some Chinese characters.
What kind of hosting are you running on? shared? VPS? what's the language on it?

Rgds

Hi

This not something happening in Joomla or sh404SEF. It's a communication problem between Joomla/PHP and the googe servers. Somehow the request get scrambled it seems.

- Do you have curl installed?
- do you have firewall and/or PHP logs you can look at?
- is there anything (compression, filtering) done to outgoing requests?

The URL we are trying to reach is https://www.googleapis.com/analytics/v2.4/

Rgds

Hi

Checking the Google API list, I don't even find the API your trying to call listed.

This is the Google Analytics reporting API, v2.4
It's expected to get a 404 if you just try to load it in a browser.

This is working in thousands of servers setup, and not on yours, lets not divert to unrelated things.

Something is interfering with the communication to Google servers here. There are 2 possible explanations at this stage:

1 - it's something part of the Joomla setup: a plugin, a component,etc
2 - it's something on the server setup

To decide between each, I can suggest the following: install akeeba backup, if you don't already have it. Make a backup, I can then download it and install it on a local machine, where I can debug the PHP. When we do that, two things can happen:

a - it works, when then know the problem is on the server
b - it doesn't work: as I have the actual copy of the running Joomla site, I can then debug step by step and find the root of the problem.

Please let me know how to proceed.

Rgds

Hi

It seems you have replied by email at [email protected]? This email address is not used for support, and not read by the same persons, so it delays processing a lot, as you can see.

Our IP address is xxxx

Rgds

Hi

I have checked your (PHP) configuration and found that you use IonCube PHP loader. We have found this to be an issue in that case on other sites. Can you disable it, even if only temporarily?

Rgds

Hi

OK, despite that I downloaded the site and did a few tests. It's pretty weird: things don't work with your property ID (UA-xxxx), but work fine as soon as I use some of ours. I tested with our previous site Id, and then with the current and I have no problem displaying stats.
Are you sure this web property ID is valid? Google rejects it as soon as we ask for details of the account. It does not say 'not authorized" or something, but it simply reject the request as invalid.

Rgds

Hi

Sorry, I mixed up my explanation: things don't work with your UA: UA-xxxx

The UA mentioned above, UA-xxxx, is our own, and it works fine, displaying Analytics on our site, or on our local machine.

Even on your own server, when using our UA, things start to work: instead of having a 400 - bad request error, we get instead a 403 - Forbidden, which is expected, as we have not done the autorization, as per this screenshot:
[xxxx]

The first request to Google, the one that fails with a bad request error, is the one asking for details about the account ([xxxx] in your case, and it seems that's where the problem lies.

Rgds

Hi

I have no knowledge of why Google would reject this request, it's fine everywhere, and only fails with your specific account. I don't remember any setting or thing you have to enable so that your account can be accessed through the Google Analytics API, and haven't met anything like that since we started displaying analytics results, about 7-8 years ago.

What I noticed on your site is that you have 2 analytics snippets. You seem to still have the old ga.js being called by some javascript inserted in your pages:
[xxxx]

As this is the old, deprecated version of the google snippet, maybe it does something to your account, preventing it to work? Maybe you can try for a few hours, with another Analytics account?

Rgds

Hi

It's something on Google's side. This UA has a history, and somehow the analytics API access is denied.

Rgds

Hi

I will leave this ticket open in case you need to add something. It will automatically close in 2 weeks, if not further comment is made.

Best regards

Hi

Yep, that doesn't make sense either: if our code was at fault, this would have shown up at least in a few of the tens of thousands of sites using sh404SEF for analytics, so i'm afraid they are just passing the ball here, but there's little we can do I guess.

Closing this ticket now, feel free to open a new one as needed. If you do so, please mention this ticket number in the new one.

If you created any superadmin account for us, be sure to delete or block it now to avoid unnecessary risk in the future.

Be sure to also check out wbAMP, our new Accelerated Mobiles pages plugin for Joomla - the next big thing is SEO, direct from Google themselves!

Rgds