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- Perry Williams: Hello Dear, I am strongly agree with your point that the web analytics is associated with the social...
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Recent Posts
- 7 Ways to make web analytics work better in companies
- Measuring social media, influence, debate, buzz monitoring
- Web analytics winners and losers? It’s the people that make the difference.
- Simple segmentation for your website and better web analytics understanding
- Web Analytics Wednesday in London – the future of web analytics
- Digital cream: revealing debating at econsultancy’s marketing event
- Google Analytics Tip: Ecommerce tracking set up, screenshots and why it’s useful
- Reliving my customer’s experience and some nice screenshots
- Internal site search part 2
- The best charts ever and food for thought for us web analysts
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My Blogger Friends
The charming Brett Crosby from google analytics, with some fanfare, announced several new google analytics features at emetrics last week in Washington – which you will have heard about by now, being ability to report on internal site search, ajax and event tracking, outbound link tracking and new Urchin software fixed price, all of which will be launched in the next few weeks. But here I have outlined a guide to how to use and getting the most out of Site Search.
Being able to track site search is a great step forward. Internal search refers to the keywords that people use while exploring your site (not the keywords they use on the search engines such as Google). For many websites, in particular holidays, recruitment, publishing and large retailers, internal search can be the most important and used feature on the website and can account for 50% of all pageviews on the site. So this is pretty amazing stuff that a “free” analytics solution is letting us do this – I’m really excited.
How do you use Google Analytics internal search:
1. Switch on ”Site search” on your Google Analytics profile(s)
2. You can find Site search in the Content section of Google Analytics reporting interface
3. Site Search reports show you the keywords that people use and the pages from which people begin and end their searches.
4. You can also filter search on your site against site usage, conversion rates, and e-commerce activity.
MY GUIDE TO GETTING THE MOST OF SITE SEARCH
1. What do people search for and do any keywords stand out?
2. What searches results in failed searches and what proportion are failed searches?
3. Let’s do some segmenting and why it is so fundamentally important
1. Here is how to get your long tail of internal search keywords:
First, create a report of all the internal search keywords and unique visits for a 2 month (dependent on site) period and upload to excel. Grab all the keywords and visits into smoothed line chart with data points (so that you can easily see the keywords that stand out). Then try making a list of the keywords that stand out. These are words that need to be looked at carefully as they will be benefit from being presented on the site in an easy to find way so that your visitors do not always need to search for them.
2. Which searches result in failed searches
A failed search is when a visitor doesn’t find what they are looking for. For example, keyword searches on products or services that you do not offer would be a failed search as would a time sensitive product or service that is not available within the results of the keyword search made. For example, visitors that click on the back button after making a search would be classified as failed/frustrated searchers. To reduce failed searches make sure the site reflects at the minimum easy to find information on the more significant failed search keywords (this is just a quick fix and not the solution if only information is presented but is a needed first step until a good solution is found).
Then look at the percentage of all visitors that have a failed search. In addition, you can create a visitor segment where the search results page is also the exit page and compare this against all failed searches to see how many “failed search” visitors, leave the site immediately.
3. Then we segment, to confirm our suspicions and insights
Assuming we can label visitors segments with specific keyword searches, we begin to drill-down further. If on a recruitment agency site, a noticable search is for “web analyst”, we can see which were the most popular pages they visited before searching. From this, we could learn that they visited the “marketing jobs” page and the “Web jobs” page and as a result of not being to find what they were looking for, searched for the term “web analyst” and subsequently left the site. Therefore, it would appear that both of these jobs page would benefit from having information about web analyst jobs on them (until the recruitment site started posting web analyst jobs that is).
We can segment against new versus returning visitors, time spent on site, by navigation path etc. For example, we can see how these visitors came to the site in the first place by looking at search engine keywords. If there is a noticable percentage of visitors who arrived at the site after having searched for “analyst job” or “web analyst job” on search engines, then it is clear that the hopes and desires of visitors coming in from the search engines is not being met by the site – as well as a PPC (pay per click) overspend on keywords that are resulting in a high number of failed searches and exits from the site. The key is to reflect on the site what visitors are looking for, in a holistic and thorough way.
Google Analytics “Site Search” will not be offering the same level of functionality as the big paid for boys in analytics solution. But amazing that, internal site search will now be offered because it is such an important part of so many websites and not being able to track it with GA was a waste. So excited, but will wait and see once it performs when actually does launch.
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recent posts
- 7 Ways to make web analytics work better in companies
- Measuring social media, influence, debate, buzz monitoring
- Web analytics winners and losers? It’s the people that make the difference.
- Simple segmentation for your website and better web analytics understanding
- Web Analytics Wednesday in London – the future of web analytics
- Digital cream: revealing debating at econsultancy’s marketing event
- Google Analytics Tip: Ecommerce tracking set up, screenshots and why it’s useful
- Reliving my customer’s experience and some nice screenshots
- Internal site search part 2
- The best charts ever and food for thought for us web analysts
recent comments
- Perry Williams: Hello Dear, I am strongly agree with your point that the web analytics is associated with the social...
- Philip Sheldrake: Nice overview Marianina. I wanted to post a link to an article in Business Week from June about the...
- Luisa Woods: Hi Marianina, I think you make a very good point about the importance of segmentation. I like to carry...
- Eric T. Peterson: Marianina, Nice to have seen you Monday in London! I just got this post so perhaps something odd is...
- Marianina Manning: Hi Luisa, Thanks for your thought-provoking comment! I agree that new ways of looking at web...
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Web Analytics Princess by Marianina Chaplin
October 22 2007
[...] Web Analytics Princess by Marianina wrote an interesting post today on Google Analytics tip 3: new features at emetrics and my guide to GAâs Site SearchHere’s a quick excerpt Site_Search The charming Brett Crosby from google analytics, with some fanfare, … you will have heard about by now, being ability to report on internal site search, ajax and event tracking … Search. Being able to track site search is a great step forward. Internal search refers to the keywords [...]
October 22 2007
[...] Web Analytics Princess by Marianina wrote an interesting post today on Google Analytics tip 3: new features at emetrics and my guide to GAâs Site SearchHere’s a quick excerpt Site_Search The charming Brett Crosby from google analytics, with some fanfare, … you will have heard about by now, being ability to report on internal site search, ajax and event tracking … in the next few weeks. But here I have outlined a guide to how to use and getting the most out of Site [...]
October 23 2007
[...] Read the rest of this great post here [...]
October 23 2007
[...] Read the rest of this great post here [...]
October 24 2007
[...] check the full story here [...]
October 26 2007
Hi Marianina
I was wondering to label visitor segments against site search keywords. Can you give me some tips. Great meeting you at emetrics too.
Emily
October 28 2007
Hi Emily
You could on a very simplistic level, use google analytics new versus returning as visitor segments. If you would like to create individual segments based on behaviour patterns (eg personas) you would find it easier to use a paid for solution, such as clicktracks or omniture.
Hope that helps
Marianina
October 30 2007
[...] Read the rest of this great post here [...]
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