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
-
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
-
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?
-
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
-
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.
-
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
-
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.
-
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:
For an Organic result it will be:
And for Google news it will be:
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)
-
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.
-
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
-
Google publishes the same URL in both news and universal search. That will not help.
-
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.
-
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
-
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!
-
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
-
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.
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
-
Google Tag Assistant showing Error
Hello, I am using google tag assistant extension in chrome and it is giving me one error for google tag manager at my checkout step 1 and error is -
Reporting & Analytics | | devdan0 -
Direct Traffic Spike
In February, I transferred an HTML site to a WordPress Platform. Since then, Direct traffic has spiked to nearly 400% since the WordPress transition. The Direct traffic spike took roughly 2 months before it started to kick in. Does anyone know what this could be attributed to?
Reporting & Analytics | | SteveZero120 -
Google Webmasters DNS error
Hi, In my webmaster tools I have a yellow triangle stating that there is a DNS error that is preventing Google crawling my sites. The site is indexed and I have checked fetch as Google and that seems ok but the triangle is still there every time I check it. The whois sites all have the correct information and point to Hostgator who I am using. I have contacted them and they said everything seems ok. Should I just carry on as normal with my link building as the site is indexed or investigate even further? Cheers, Stuart
Reporting & Analytics | | stuart420 -
Google Places Account
Hi, I'm doing Google maps optimization for my local clients, so she uses same login for personal Gmail and Google places, is there a way to change a password for Google places, without giving away her password that she uses for personal Gmail? Thanks for help.
Reporting & Analytics | | tonyklu0 -
Tips for migrating Google News traffic?
We are about to relaunch a site that gets a lot of Google News traffic. We are not changing domain, but the site structure is changing greatly, with the URLs of both news index pages and articles being shaken up. Obviously, we've 301-ed every page to its closest equivalent on the new site. We've also got a news sitemap. As we are not changing domain, is there anything further we need to do to help protect our Google News traffic. On a related note, does anyone have a relaible way of measuring traffic from Google News listings in universal search?
Reporting & Analytics | | Dennis-529610 -
Google Analytics - In-Page Analytics
I had a strange thought waking up this morning, and was curious to hear other people's opinions on it. In Google Analytics, under Content > In-Page Analytics, Google shows what links on your site pages get clicked and how many times plus other metrics. Do you think they use that data for ranking back links so-to-speak? What I mean is, say I had a back link to my site on example.com, and example.com had google analytics installed. Google can see through google analytics whether my link has been clicked on. Say that my link gets no clicks, do you think that Google would use that metric against my site deeming it "not popular" or "not a good resource", even if example.com was a very popular site? And it could work the other way. Say my link got thousands of clicks on example.com, do you think that Google might use that to promote my site? I couldn't find any other discussion on this anywhere, so am not sure if people have already thought about this.
Reporting & Analytics | | THB0 -
Google Secure Search Announcement: How do you think this will play out?
So, I read this post on the Google Blog and then this commentary about it. Wondering what some of you veterans think about how this will impact results. I always remain logged out for queries and use several different software tools to check when I run an analysis. Since social influences are becoming a bigger factor, do you think this is going to create some issues in data? What are your thoughts?
Reporting & Analytics | | TheARKlady0 -
Google analytics advanced segments
Ok, I need help with a simple (although, for some reason, I'm having trouble with it) advanced segment. Dilemma**:** All of our techs have a backend cookie that they use to log into our website. I want a way toexclude all visites where the landing page contained this in the url:/backend/cookie.php?username= Advanced Segment: We have a lot of techs and each one of them has a different "username=example". So how can I set up an advanced segment where it will exclude any visit where the visitor came in one a landing page containing /backend/cookie.php?username=
Reporting & Analytics | | NerdsOnCall0