Google Analytics Site Search: Setup Options

Written by Benjamin Mangold

There are a number of ways to setup Google Analytics Site Search depending on the way your website functions and the URLs your search function creates.

Site Search: Option 1

Perform a search for 'analytics' on your website and look at the URL.

What do your Site Search URLs look like?

If the resulting URL looks like one of the following:

http://www.example.com/search?q=analytics
http://www.example.com/index.php?id=search&term=analytics
http://www.example.com/search.asp?search_term=analytics&id=ac9024

You can follow our steps to setup Google Analytics Site Search.

Site Search: Option 2

If the resulting URL looks like one of the following:

http://www.example.com/index/search/analytics
http://www.example.com/search.php/keyword/analytics/id946
http://www.example.com/searchterm/analytics

Because Site Search reports are processed before filters are processed you cannot simply create a filter to modify your Site Search URL within Google Analytics. Instead you need to modify the tracking code on the search results page to dynamically pass the search term using a virtual pageview (see 'option 3 below').

If you or your web developer is unable to modify the tracking code on the search results page, then you might want to consider one of the following filters to at least make the Top Content report easier to scan for internal search terms. Remember, that this does not allow you to use the Site Search reports within Google Analytics.

Site Search: Option 3

If the resulting URL does not contain the keyword you searched for then you will either need to modify your search form or modify your Google Analytics Tracking Code to create a virtual pageview.

For example you search for 'analytics' and the URL of your search results page looks like:

http://www.example.com/search
http://www.example.com/index.php?id=search
http://www.example.com/search-results.asp

View the source of a page on your site that contains the search input, if your form looks something like this:

<form name="gs" method="post" action="search.php">

Then try changing the method to 'get'. Your source code should look something like this:

<form name="gs" method="get" action="search.php">

If you now perform a search you should see a URL along the lines of those in 'Option 1'.

If you are unable to modify the form method or the change does not provide the search parameter in the URL then you will need to modify the Google Analytics Tracking Code to dynamically create a URL that is correctly structured for Site Search.

For example:

<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-123456-1");
pageTracker._trackPageview('/search?q=analytics');
} catch(err) {}</script>

The keyword ('analytics' in the example above) will need to be dynamically passed to the tracking code for each term that is searched. Talk to your web developer if you need help achieving this, you can then look at 'Option 1' because you are creating a virtual pageview for http://www.your-site.com/search?q=analytics

Goal Abandonment Rate in Google Analytics Explained

Written by Benjamin Mangold

So what is Goal Abandonment Rate in Google Analytics? And what do those numbers mean anyway?

Inside Successful Seminars

Written by Georgie Wren

I joined the Mangold Sengers team recently as a Marketing Intern with a specific role in Client Engagement. My involvement in the planning, marketing and organization of our most recent Google Analytics seminar included attending the seminar. Shared learning is part of the environment at Mangold Sengers and was reflected in the way the seminar was conducted. Despite being very new to the role, I had the opportunity to put my marketing skills to good use from day one, communicating to various organizations the significance of using Google Analytics to its full potential - something most organizations either don't seem to know how to utilise or simply don't have the resources.

Part of my job at the seminar was to record the questions and collate the participants' feedback. The feedback speaks for itself. Participants of all abilities found the seminar inspiring as well as giving them solid, practical insights into the benefits of Google Analytics for setting and tracking goals, tagging campaigns to measure results and for developing overall website improvement strategies. They also learned the relevance of using Google Analytics to complement Google AdWords and Google Website Optimizer as a means to thoroughly measure, evaluate and improve their marketing initiatives. One participant remarked: "This course opened my eyes to the amazing features of Google Analytics. I believe any company without Google Analytics would be at a loss. It is essential!".

My own learning from the seminar, from marketing to attending, is already proving invaluable as we go into overdrive for our upcoming Google Analytics Seminars for Success in Sydney on the 16 and 17 April and in Melbourne on the 14 and 15 May. We are all working incredibly hard to make Australia's first Google Analytics Seminars for Success a great success! Drawing on experience and feedback from our most recent seminar and suggestions made by participants in past seminars the approach at Mangold Sengers is to make continuous improvements to add extra value and benefits for participants. We are holding the Sydney event in a new venue, the UNSW CBD Campus, which offers great facilities, specially selected for this seminar. I am very much looking forward to working further at Mangold Sengers, already I have been exposed and involved in various aspects of the business and I have been given the opportunity to use my knowledge in a practical context.

Georgie Wren, Client Engagement

Labels: Google Analytics, Google Analytics Authorized Consultant

New Features Added To Motion Chart

Written by Daniela Fernandez

The Google blog (Motion Chart Scavenger Hunt Followup) revealed new motion chart features, comments on the changes have already been posted. Here, there are some of the changes I discovered and their possible benefits.

1. Data Selection

The first new feature easy to find is the select/deselect option. It is possible to select 0, 1 or more items from the list, making easier to know which information is displayed.


2. Bar chart

At the top-right side of the graph you can find a new tab to see the same information shown in the bubble graph but this time as a bar chart. When you move from one type of graph to the other, some information about the new settings is kept such as the elements selected, and opacity, but not the zoom in/out property.


3. Zoom in - Zoom out

Now it is possible to zoom in the information shown in the bubble and bar chart. The steps are explained in the tool in order to Zoom in.

a. Put your mouse in the chart area.
b. Hold down the left mouse button and draw a rectangle over the items you want to zoom in.
c. Release the left mouse button.
d. In the menu that pops up, select 'Zoom in'.



4. Bubble opacity

In my opinion one of the most useful new features is the ability to manage the bubble opacity. At the right side of the graph there is a tool icon[], clicking in there you can find a slider from 0% to 100% to define how opaque do you want the items that are not selected. In the next 2 images you can see the same element with using the opacity in 0% and in 50%.





5. Tools advanced

Finally, there is an option for advanced users that shows a piece of code to be embedded in flash code.



Those who have previously used the motion chart can notice that there was also a change in the way to show the color dimension bar. Before it was placed horizontally, now it is vertical, making easier to see the scale in numbers but taking more space in the page.



Some of the benefits I have discovered so far are:

1. Hide/Show Information: The rule used to manage the opacity is very useful when you don't want to show some information. You can select the items you want to display and set the opacity to 0% or if you want to see all the bubbles without any difference between the selected and unselected, you can setup the opacity to 100% e.g. imagine that you need to record the behaviour of three dot points to show them in a presentation and you want to hide irrelevant information related to the other points. Well, with the new select and opacity option it is possible, you only have to select the dot points you would like to show and set the opacity to 0%. Then, click on the "play" [] button to see the chart in action during the period of time selected.

2. Clean Graph: Also the opacity is useful to clean the screen in order to understand better the graph when you are using the trail option and you want to see only the information of one, two or other specific number of bubbles.

3. Using bubble opacity and zoom in together help to focus on information that you really want to see and avoid distractions.

4. Zoom in small Data: The "zoom in" is really useful for those cases where you have the dimension size setup and some small bubbles or overlapped compared to other data. In the previous version when this happened you had to leave the dimension size set to "same size". However, now it is possible to have different sizes and for those we are interested in just use the zoom in functionality.

5. Quick Data Selection: The selection feature is useful when you want to show information quickly about some specific data. It is easier to select from the list of the 10 first items displayed in the right side rather than check every element in the graph. If we want to reset that, we just need to click in the option "deselect all" which is enabled once we have selected at least one item from the list.

These are just some of the benefits of the new features. I'm pretty sure you will find more, specially when you start playing with the tools together e.g. bubble, zoom in, trails and different size dimension together.

I think the motion chart is a utility that allows us to visualize different data in one single graph. There is only one more feature I would like to have to give 10 points to this tool, and it is the option to change the range of date without going back to the normal report located in the menu.

Labels: Google Analytics, Motion Chart, new Google Analytics features

Google Analytics Kicks Microsoft Analytics

Written by Benjamin Mangold

Almost 1 year ago I wrote a brief article about why Microsoft Analytics sucked and today Microsoft have announced the end of Microsoft Analytics. Competition in the web analytics market place is essential and as feature sets increase, greater competition drives innovation and creative thinking.



Microsoft Analytics has remained clunky and more importantly slow - way, way too slow! So it does not come as a surprise that Microsoft has had to rethink the analytics front.

Microsoft's announcement raises 2 interesting questions:

1. How closely is search engine marketing tied to web analytics innovation?
2. Where are web analytics tools, like Google Analytics, heading?

I am not going to dwell on the first question - maybe you have some thoughts you would like to add on that topic. So I will move on to my (current) Google Analytics wish list.

Google Analytics Wish List

Google Analytics Site Overlay

The current site overlay feature is easy to hate, but aside from making it functional, I would love to see each link tracked independently and lets apply custom segments.



Google Analytics Heatmaps

Heatmaps are loveable and useful for evaluating where people think they can click and how people are interacting with your site. It may not be eye tracking, but it is definitely effective. Crazy Egg does it well, Google Analytics will rock it.



Google Analytics Realtime Tracking

Everybody wants their data now! Yahoo can do it, so, fingers crossed Google comes to the party.



Google Analytics Client Information

Who else would love to be able to tag visitors within Google Analytics and import information you have about your clients and leads? I know I would! Imagine being able to segment based on form input fields to see your clients or leads who have registered interest in a particular product or service.



Google Analytics Custom Segments For Sites

How about using the custom segments from within Google Analytics to present particular content to particular visitors on your website. While I am in this dream, why don't we combine Google Website Optimizer and Google Analytics and allow us to input the targeted content straight into Google Analytics to present on our website? Oh, and lets keep it really easy to use and make it pretty!

Labels: Google Analytics, new Google Analytics features

Google Analytics and SEO

Written by Benjamin Mangold

Fixing Campaign Tagged URLs for Improved SEO

While attending the 2008 GAAC Summit at the Googleplex Robbin Steif of Lunametrics raised an interesting point regarding URLs that have Google Analytics campaign tags. Robbin pointed out that campaign tagged URLs can adversely effect SEO (Search Engine Optimization) as a result of duplicate content and that the _setAllowAnchor(true) function can be used to alleviate the problem.

Okay, great, but can you repeat that in English?

Basically, Google sees a page on your site and campaigned tagged URL for the same page as actually being two separate pages. Then when we come to SEO, websites and pages can be given lower priority if there is duplicate content.

We have a landing page about being a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant: www.mangoldsengers.com/google-analytics-authorized-consultant

And we have a campaign tagged link to the same page on the Google Analytics partner page that looks like this: www.mangoldsengers.com/google-analytics-authorized-consultant?utm_source=gaac-listing&utm_medium=referal&utm_campaign=google-analytics

Although these are the same page Google sees them as two separate pages, so now the question is how do I fix the problem?

How to Fix Campaign Tagged URLs for SEO

Luckily, Google doesn't index anything after a # in a URL, so basically we need to change this: www.mangoldsengers.com/google-analytics-authorized-consultant?utm_source=gaac-listing&utm_medium=referal&utm_campaign=google-analytics to this: www.mangoldsengers.com/google-analytics-authorized-consultant#utm_source=gaac-listing&utm_medium=referal&utm_campaign=google-analytics

Google does not index anything after a destination anchor (i.e. the #), so now: www.mangoldsengers.com/google-analytics-authorized-consultant and www.mangoldsengers.com/google-analytics-authorized-consultant#utm_source=gaac-listing&utm_medium=referal&utm_campaign=google-analytics will be seen as the same page by Google. No more duplicate content!

Now that you have fixed the URLs, we need to get the campaign variables into Google Analytics. This is simply achieved by using the _setAllowAnchor(true) function that Robbin mentioned at the summit.

Your GATC (Google Analytics Tracking Code) will need to be modified (you will need to replace UA-XXXXXXX-X with your Google Analytics profile ID):

<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-XXXXXXX-X");
pageTracker._setAllowAnchor(true);
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script>

If you have any questions or need help implementing SEO friendly campaign tags for Google Analytics then please get in touch!

Labels: ga.js, Google Analytics, Google Analytics Tips, SEO

Web Analytics Wednesday in Sydney

Written by Benjamin Mangold

Join us for Web Analytics Wednesday on 27 August in Sydney, Australia.

We will be meeting at Industrie from 6:00pm to 8:00pm. The event will begin with a brief panel discussion titled 'Getting Management Involved in Web Analytics' followed by networking. Light snacks will be provided and the first 20 people to arrive will receive a complementary drink, everybody attending will be in the draw for a web analytics door prize.

Industry panelists will be announced soon.

Web Analytics Wednesday is a free event, open to anyone interested in web analytics and online marketing, including professionals and vendors. Come along to discuss web analytics and network at Sydney's Web Analytics Wednesday.

Event Details

When: Wednesday 27 August 2008
Time: 6pm to 8pm
Venue: Industrie Bar and Restaurant
Where: 107 Pitt Street, Sydney, NSW 2000

Please RSVP by emailing events@mangoldsengers.com or on the Web Analytics Wednesday in Sydney page.

Labels: web analytics wednesday