Is there any way to tell if people have opened a Google Drive document that you have shared?

I sent out links (read-only) to a number of people and am curious if there is a way to see whether people are actually going out and viewing that document. I understand it likely won't have names for everyone/anyone that looks at it, but I'd be interested at least in knowing how many "hits" it got to make sure that at least some of those I sent it too actually looked at it.

45.9k 18 18 gold badges 96 96 silver badges 296 296 bronze badges asked Feb 23, 2011 at 20:11 559 1 1 gold badge 5 5 silver badges 18 18 bronze badges

3 Answers 3

This page describes a method to do so.

It suggests to add a blank image to the document which can then be counted using statcounter.com

answered Feb 23, 2011 at 21:58 Paul Rowland Paul Rowland 184 1 1 gold badge 1 1 silver badge 8 8 bronze badges

It looks like editing the HTML of a document is no longer supported, and there does not appear to be a menu option for inserting a gadget in a document either. Gadgets are however supported in spreadsheets.

Commented Sep 20, 2012 at 14:19

I posted an updated answer basing on Paul's to workaround the "no HTML editing is there any more": webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/12798/… (moderators here suggested me to post as a new answer rather than to edit Paul's)

Commented Oct 3, 2013 at 16:19

Looks like this doesn't work at all any more. Now Google Docs Presentation seems to retrieve image-by-URL once upon inserting, and therefore no pixel-based web site tracking tools work at all.

Commented Oct 8, 2013 at 11:38

Update 2013-Oct-4: Looks like this doesn't work anymore. Now Google Docs Presentation seems to retrieve image-by-URL once upon inserting, and therefore no website tracking tools work anymore.

Update 2014-Jan-11: Seems to be working for Sheets but not Docs

Any web site analytics tool can help. For example, www.statcounter.com (it's free):

  1. Go to statcounter.com and register for a free account.
  2. Under “Install Code”, choose the following options: Invisible Counter -> Google Pages -> HTML only counter. Statcounter will now generate some HTML code enclosed in a tag. Strip everything except the URL in the IMG tag, it looks like this: http://c46.statcounter.com/3732481/0/e1fdff4b/1/
  3. Open the Google Docs document that you want to track.
  4. In Google Docs menu, choose: Insert > Image > By URL > Paste an image URL here: . Insert the above URL.

Currently, it works at least for Documents, Spreadsheets and Presentations.