URLS are top keywords in GA?
-
Hey Moz,
For some reason on my father's website, michaelpadway.com, the top 2 keywords from organic are complete urls from his site. This doesn't makeugh sense to me. Any ideas?
-
Yes, it's definitely a "thing" with less tech-savvy users.
It seems most common among my mom's generation - 60+ years old and not terribly familiar with technology.
-
Hi Spencer,
As others said, as an IT guy I see so many people just go to Google and type a url then click whatever it gives them. I've even seen people go to Google and type Yahoo.com shake head
-
Like EGOL and Dirk say, this is a pretty common behavior now especially with so many browsers featuring a search from the URL Address bar feature. I sometimes wonder if it's not also due to Google's handling of (not provided) and their move towards masking more search terms.
One question, are these top keywords the same in Google Webmaster Tools for your dad's site, or are you looking at just analytics? I'd give GWT a try as it usually shows a lot more in the keyword department.
-
I agree. I am old enough to do this.
-
I see this a lot on our sites which are targeting a more senior audience (60+). Some of them have little experience with internet and some of them just seem to be unaware of the fact that you can put an url in the address bar. Their only way to navigate the internet goes through google (or bing) which in most cases is the default page in their browser.
Based on this article http://www.wsj.com/articles/uneasy-rider-boomer-deaths-in-motorcycle-crashes-jump-1419210199 I guess they make a big part of your father's audience...
-
I get a lot of full URLs as keywords.
I think that people copy / paste them into the search box, or just type them because they are simple
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Submitted URL marked 'noindex'
Search Console is giving this issue for near 100 pages of my website. I have checked the Yoast plugin settings. We haven't used any meta robots tag for these pages, neither have these pages been disallowed in robots.txt. Previosuly this issue was for some 20+ pages. I tried to reindex them by submitting the urls again. Now the count has risen to 100+. There is also this "Submitted URL blocked by robots.txt" issue for pages which are NOT disallowed in robots.txt. Can anyone please suggest me a solution here?
Reporting & Analytics | | Reema240 -
Vanity URL vs domain URL
Hi guys, Our CEO is having an interview with a known broadcaster on radio. During the interview he will mention a specific URL www.example.com/marketingcampaign that we want track on Google Analytics, therefore behaving like a vanity URL redirecting to the actual URL www.example.com/resources/primary-keyword-2018. Would this work the same way a vanity URL in terms of tracking or not such as following guideline here ? I am asking because vanity URLs are supposed to be completely different domain name that gets purchased and in our case it is the same domain name just with a different URI. thanks guys!
Reporting & Analytics | | Taysir0 -
Where to find "Keywords that Sent Organic Search Visits" in Google Analytics?
Hi everyone, Tried searching for this answer but couldn't find it. In the new analytics, I can see that there is a graph that shows the number of unique keywords that brought traffic to our site sorted by weeks. I can't seem to find this data in Google Analytics. I can only find the number of visits but not sorted by how many keywords, instead it is just # of visits from all of the keywords. Thanks in advance. SZ
Reporting & Analytics | | swzhai0 -
How To Determine ROI For Specific Keywords
I have been looking through our analytics, and nealy all our conversions are from (not provided) keywords. I am trying to find the keywords that are performing best and also to determine the return I am getting from SEO efforts. I have been told the "not provided" keywords are due to people being logged into Google when they browse. However, this doesn't make sense to me. How is it that only the keywords that convert are "not provided"? Can anyone help with this?
Reporting & Analytics | | inhouseseo0 -
Has anyone noticed a dramatic drop in direct visits year over year in GA across multiple sites?
I monitor about 10 websites in GA. Many of these sites are in a stable phase of their lifecycle. I've noticed this year that direct visits on all my sites and even friends sites have dropped by 20-60%. Has anyone seen any explanation for this or noticed this when compared to previous year? In every instance I have no penalties, notices, anything and the drop is made up completely of "direct visits".
Reporting & Analytics | | bradwayland0 -
New GA interface - Number of conversion by source
Hi Guys, Hope this is an easy one for a GA ninja. In the new GA interface, how can I view the number of conversions by source, instead of the default conversion rate by source. For example, if I want to view the number of conversion from Adwords. I'm looking at Goals > Source / Medium > Google CPC and looking at Goal Set 1. However all data is expressed in percentages. Thanks in advance!
Reporting & Analytics | | David_ODonnell0 -
Strange 404 Error URL
Can anyone help determine how a URL like "www.mycompany.com/lago_www.bad-nsfw-content.com" would appear on the "not found" crawl error list in Google Webmaster Tools? The "www.bad-nsfw-content" site has nothing to do with our company and I don't how it would get associated with our site.
Reporting & Analytics | | pbhatt0 -
Creating a Filter in GA to track Parent Category
I don't know if the title makes sense, but here's my question... Our newspaper website has multiple categories like World, Sport, Entertainment etc. Now, a story, belonging to the entertainment section maybe published on the entertainment page but is likely to have a slot somewhere on the Home page as well as other pages. The same goes for stories in sport etc. However, the url displays the date folllowed by the post title and thats it, no category name. Now, a user may end up going to a detailed story that belongs to the entertainment section (from the home page or any other page) without actually having visited the entertainment page. However, for tracking purposes, we want to see how many hits we got on the entertainment page and any story belonging to that particular section. So, my question is how do I go about creating filters that can help me track category page and detail story hits as one? Or, should I ammend the url structure (keep in mind we are using wordpress for our news website) to include category after the date and would this solve my problem of tracking? I asked a similar question recently but maybe I did not explain myself clearly. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | RishadShaikh590