Does downloading the HTML content of a webpage with VBA fire Google Analytics events?

Question

I'm wondering whether Google Analytics events are fired if I'm scraping data from a webpage using VBA scraping script? I'm not using browser simulation, I'm using MSXML2.XMLhttp object with a GET request.

For example

Set XMLreq = CreateObject("MSXML2.XMLhttp")
With XMLreq

    url = "url_of_website"
    .Open "GET", url, False
    .send
    Set HTMLdoc = CreateObject("HTMLFile")
    HTMLdoc.body.innerHTML = .responseText

End With

Does this fire Google Analytics data back to the server?

Possible duplicate of http://stackoverflow.com/questions/136682/how-to-disable-javascript-in-mshtml-htmldocument-net — NineBerry, May 02 '16 at 00:04

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered May 01 '16 at 23:48

4

Using MSXML2.XMLhttp to download a web page does not trigger Google analytics events, since no JavaScript code is executed this way. But when you then load the web page into the HTMLDoc object, JavaScript can be executed and Google analytics events might be triggered depending on how Google Analytics is embedded into the web page.

answered May 01 '16 at 23:48

NineBerry

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OK thanks @NineBerry So is there any way to parse the downloaded HTML without firing Javascript such as GA? – Brendan Gooden May 01 '16 at 23:50
You might try the proposal in the linked question to set designMode to "On". – NineBerry May 02 '16 at 09:24

Does downloading the HTML content of a webpage with VBA fire Google Analytics events?

1 Answers1