How to measure number of visits from Google News coming from Google Universal Search (NOT referral coming directly coming from news.google.com) with google analyitcs

[Mulle]

I'm running a news site, and I have a problem of accuratly measuring which traffic is REALLY coming from google news.

I analyzed a lot of  individual articles and I come to the conclusion, that the visits, that come from the google news section in the universal search results are counted as "normal" search engine traffic in google analytics.

So if you do a Google search for a topic that includes links from Google news, you don't get an accurate referral count. As an example, if you do a search for "eBay", incorporated into the page 1 search results you may also see Google news results as well. 
If someone clicks on that Google news link that appears in Google search, it shows up in Google analytics as a referral from Google search, when it was actually from a Google news referral.

I was already checking google analytics and google news help forums and searched SEO blogs for this. But I wasn't able to find a working solution.

Can anybody help me out with this problem? Thanks so much,

Matthias

[Mulle]

Thanks so much! This indeed helped

To all of you using this method: I encountered some more Codes:

Especially "QqQIo" is quite often returned. From Context that should be as well onebox traffic.

Any ideas?

[John_Smith_]

It's possible, this is how you do it.. You're welcome: http://moz.com/blog/decoding-googles-referral-string-or-how-i-survived-secure-search?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%253A+seomoz+%2528SEOmoz+Daily+Blog%2529

[Adam.Whittles]

Hi Matthias,

Unfortunately, what you require is not possible. The harsh truth, as Brian Clifton author of Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics, states is 'that web analytics data can never be 100 percent accurate'. I'm afraid this is what you will have to come to terms with.

The only real solution, and it is not ideal, is that you will have to attribute a weighting factor to your traffic from google / referral. I'm sure with adequate market research and testing you should be able to find a somewhat accurate weighting factor that will give you some idea as to the number of referrals actually originating from Google news.

Adam.

[SourceV]

You can submit a tagged URL (e.g., domain.com.page.html?src=news) through your news sitemap, and a different one (maybe untagged), through the normal site sitemap.

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=74288

[dostojewski]

What about adding paramters to the URLs in your Google News Sitemap (NOT onpage) using the URL-Builder?

In case they are picked up (why not?) - you could easily tell apart organic hits from universal hits. Just a thought.

[SamAllen]

It looks like Google is not sending Google New universal results through a redirect tracking script, so you can tell them apart.

For a Universal search result the referrer will begin with:

google.com/search

For an Organic result it will be:

google.com/url

And for Google news it will be:

news.google.com

Set up filters to apply a custom variable to each and you can segment easily. (Don't forget to cater for all the alternative Google domains)

[lonniea]

I personally use Alexa.com or Quantcast.com to determine where clicks are from and what site they exit and land on. It also helps me determine if I lost a sale to my comptetitor or whether they've bought from me instead.

But... i must admit that i've also included tracking channels much like i do on Google adsense. This helps me narrow down the category or in this case, my channel.

works for me anyway.

[thesslstorecom]

I suggest to create a new profile for your website and add filter that includes domain having news.google.com So under this profile, you will have only those visitors who are coming from news.google.com

[KeriMorgret]

Google publishes the same URL in both news and universal search. That will not help.

[KeriMorgret]

Gustav, the poster is asking how to tell if the visit came from their site being in Google News or in a regular SERP. I don't believe this addresses that question for them.

[Gustav-Northclick]

Maybe my answer is to easy...

Use Url builder from google, then wrap that code in your links on the site.

When you look at Analytics the next time you will see the traffic coming from that "campaign"

Maybe not the best fix but it's an easy one.

Look at: http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55518

[zoicaremus]

Does the news item appear always in the search results on the same position (like 10th)?

If so you have a few more workarounds:

In Google Webmaster Tools look at the "Search Query" report. Do a localization in the desired country. Click on the desired keyword and look at the details. See if the impressions on different search results positions match the news spot.

There is a filter for Google Analytics that shows you the position in search results for that clicked keyword. Search "google analytics filter keyword position" on Google and if I remember right you'll find it. Maybe you can even adjust the filter to extract info about the news clicks.

Good luck!

[Mulle]

Hi Dan,

thanks for the workaround! I will try out, how much I can get with this solution...

Still hoping that google introduces a more robust way to analyze the data!

Thanks matthias

[DanDeceuster]

It might not be the best solution, but one idea would be to look at just your traffic from Google News. Take note of all the kewyords sending traffic. Then look at your traffic from Google search. Do any of those same keywords show up? If so I think it is safe to assume that traffic came from a click in a News result that appeared in normal Google search.

In other words, see which keywords send traffic from Google News, then just see how much total traffic those keywords sent and that's probably how much news traffic you received. Probably not the best or most accurate solution but it can help you ball park it if nothing else.