As the Windows 10 platform has been launched by Microsoft, the new Edge Browser that replaces the Internet Explorer is also being launched officially. This new browser assures to provide better support for the web standards. Though the Edge is in the wild, the tracking usage and adoption of the browser is likely to be problematic for the web developers as well as site owners due to the fact that Edge is yet to be supported in Google Analytics.
The web developers and designers consult Google Analytics frequently in order to get to know important browser usage questions of their website. The answers to questions such as “Do we need to support IE8 still? or “Are there sufficient users getting affected by the popular Chrome bug to realize a hack to fix it?” Such questions are usually answered by the browser usage report that can be run in Google Analytics.
Google Analytics offers a simple way to break down the reader base of a website by their operating system and browser and its version but Edge browser is not included. You can take a look at the Google Analytics reports to know the operating system version in Windows, and you will notice that there is no version 10 that is listed. This was discovered by analyzing the traffic history.
Currently, the Microsoft Edge is listed as a version of the Chrome browser in the Google Analytics. Each release of the browser is listed with a distinct Chrome version. You can use the website whatsmyagentstring.com to know the latest Edge UA string and also get the Chrome version listed. You will have to search the Chrome stats for the UA and you will find the Edge browser. For instance, Edge was released with the User Agent “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0) AppleWebKitChrome/42.0.2311.135 Safari/537.36 Edge/12.10136”. We expect Google to simplify this matter by adding Edge soon, but till then this should be of help.
