How to use traffic analytics

In this guide, you can learn to use Read the Docs’ built-in traffic analytics for your documentation project. You will also learn how to optionally add your own Google Analytics account or completely disable Google Analytics on your project.

Traffic Analytics lets you see which documents your users are reading. This allows you to understand how your documentation is being used, so you can focus on expanding and updating parts people are reading most.

To see a list of the top pages from the last month, go to the Admin tab of your project, and then click on Traffic Analytics.

You can also access analytics data from search results.

Note

The amount of analytics data stored for download depends which site you’re using:

On the Community site, the last 90 days are stored.
On the Commercial one, it goes from 30 to infinite storage
(check out the pricing page).

Enabling Google Analytics on your project

Read the Docs has native support for Google Analytics. You can enable it by:

Going to Admin > Advanced Settings in your project.
Fill in the Analytics code heading with your Google Tracking ID (example UA-123456674-1)

Once your documentation rebuilds it will include your Analytics tracking code and start sending data. Google Analytics usually takes 60 minutes, and sometimes can take up to a day before it starts reporting data.

Note

Read the Docs takes some extra precautions with analytics to protect user privacy. As a result, users with Do Not Track enabled will not be counted for the purpose of analytics.

For more details, see the Do Not Track section of our privacy policy.

Disabling Google Analytics on your project

Google Analytics can be completely disabled on your own projects. To disable Google Analytics:

Going to Admin > Advanced Settings in your project.
Check the box Disable Analytics.

Your documentation will need to be rebuilt for this change to take effect.