File download goal not triggered; why?

Support & Bugs
1

I am running Matomo selfhosted on my website embeetle.com
Page visits are reported correctly.

Now I have tried to add a goal, to count the number of downloads of our embeetle.zip file. I used Settings > Goal > Add a new goal and entered a goal name, destription and trigger. The trigger is "file
Pattern contains: embeetle.zip ".

I created the goal several weeks ago, and I am sure that many people downloaded the embeetle.zip file. Still, the goal conversion count remains at zero.

Is there anything else I need to do to activate this goal? For example, do I need to add any javascript code to the download link https://embeetle.com/downloads/Windows/embeetle.zip ?

2

Have you also integrated click tracking? Without clicktracking it will not be possible to track the click on the download. The best way is to use the matomo tag manager.

Greetings

3

I don’t know what click tracking or the tag manager are.

I have now activated the tag manager, but still don’t understand how to use it or what click tracking is. Could you point me to the relevant documentation and/or give me some hints? I am just a beginner with Matomo.

4

Hi,

here is the documentation auf click tracking: Event Tracking User Guide - Analytics Platform - Matomo and maybe this video can help you: YouTube

But without the click tracking you can see your downloads in this report: How does Piwik track downloads? FAQ - Analytics Platform - Matomo

Greetings

5

Under Behaviour > Downloads, it says "There is no data for this report. "

I checked the FAQ, and tried the 3 options suggested there:

  1. There is no ‘onclick’ on the download link; it is a plain a-tag, so the problem is not an onclick handler returning non-false:
    <a href="/downloads/Windows/embeetle.zip" class="button bluebtn">&nbsp;
      <i class="fas fa-download fa-fw"></i>&nbsp;&nbsp;Embeetle
      <span class="version-windows"></span> for
      &nbsp;&nbsp;<i class="icon-windows"></i> Windows&nbsp;&nbsp;
    </a>

  1. As suggested by the FAQ I increased the tracking delay:
    _paq.push([‘setLinkTrackingTimer’, 2000]);
    Still "There is no data for this report. "

  2. I tried the Manually record a click as a download link, but still "There is no data for this report. ". This is the link I tried, copied from the documentation, except that I changed the file to be downloaded. Should the class still be piwik_download, or should it be matomo_download?
    <a href='/downloads/Windows/embeetle.zip' class='piwik_download'>Link I want to track as a download</a>

Any other suggestions?

6

In dashboard > behavior > downloads, should new download events be shown immediately after a download (assuming I select today’s date at the top and reload the page), or is there some delay?

I have added a very simple test page to the website, containing only Matomo initialization code and a download link. I copied the html below; it is at Embeetle IDE download test. Is there anything wrong with this code?

<html lang="en-US">
<head>
    <title>Embeetle IDE download test</title>
    <meta charset="UTF-8" />
    <!-- Matomo -->
    <script type="text/javascript">
      var _paq = window._paq || [];
      /* tracker methods like "setCustomDimension" should be called before "trackPageView" */
      _paq.push(["setDomains", ["embeetle.com"]]);
      _paq.push(['trackPageView']);
      _paq.push(['enableLinkTracking']);
      _paq.push(['enableHeartBeatTimer']);
      (function() {
      var u="//matomo.embeetle.com/";
      _paq.push(['setTrackerUrl', u+'matomo.php']);
      _paq.push(['setSiteId', '1']);
      var d=document, g=d.createElement('script'), s=d.getElementsByTagName('script')[0];
      g.type='text/javascript'; g.async=true; g.defer=true; g.src=u+'matomo.js'; s.parentNode.insertBefore(g,s);
      })();
    </script>
    <!-- End Matomo Code -->
</head>
<body>
  <a href="/downloads/Windows/embeetle.zip">Download</a>
</body>
</html>

Is there anywhere where I can check that the download link is actually detected by Matomo?

I guess I am making some stupid beginners mistake somewhere, but I have no clue how to start debugging. I know html and javascript, but I don’t have the time to learn and debug Matomo code.