Brian Cray's Time on Site logger

gistfile1.js

<script type="text/javascript">
// from http://briancray.com/

	(function (tos) {
	  window.setInterval(function () {

          // Every 10,000 milliseconds, calculate the time

	    tos = (function (t) {
	      return t[0] == 50 ? (parseInt(t[1]) + 1) + ':00' : (t[1] || '0') + ':' + (parseInt(t[0]) + 10);
	    })(tos.split(':').reverse());

            // Collect and send the time to Google Analytics

	    window.pageTracker ? pageTracker._trackEvent('Time', 'Log', tos) : _gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Time', 'Log', tos]);

	  }, 10000);
	})('00');

</script>

// cool, the fine tuning you suggested might look like this:

 var Timer;
 function StartTimer(){Timer = window.setInterval('PushTime()',10000);}
 function StopTimer(){Timer = null}
 tos = (function (t) {
      return t[0] == 50 ? (parseInt(t[1]) + 1) + ':00' : (t[1] || '0') + ':' + (parseInt(t[0]) + 10);
 })(tos.split(':').reverse());
 function PushTime(){
      window.pageTracker ? pageTracker._trackEvent('Time', 'Log', tos) : _gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Time', 'Log', tos]);
 }
 window.addEventListener('focus', StartTimer,false);
 window.addEventListener('blur', StopTimer, false);

//
// but if you're going to go so far as to add event listeners and such, you might switch it so that
// starttime increments your time on site value while your user is on-focus, and the PUSH doesn't happen on a timer
// but instead only happens once in a window.onunload='PushTotalTOS()'
//
// needs a bit of thought to get it right, but I really like this!

Nice suggestion, the problem is that you can't track analytics through unload. There usually isn't enough time to complete the call. Just to throw a spanner in the works :-)

Fair enough, still... the event listeners for the FOCUS and BLUR events would at least sortof tally up the time on site with the page showing. You'd probably have to add a count and only PUSH if the count MOD interval was equal to zero.

so every 1000 miliseconds the interval fires.
it increments a "timeholder" variable.
when (timeholder % 10 == 0)
push total time

that way every 10 seconds of FOCUS time, you push a new total time on site event. That would count as actual time reading the site, as opposed to time with window open.

t'was a brilliant idea you had :)