Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How to identify rising keywords in analytics?
-
Hi Guys
I just spotted in the Google Analytics > Traffic Sources > Search Engine Optimisation > Queries section a keyword that on the 27th Feb went from generating 35 impressions per day to 2000 impressions per day.
This was down to people searching for a newly launched product.
Does anyone know how I can identify any increases like this easily? I only came across this by accident, and I am 1 month behind the times. It would have been ideal to pick this up closer to the time so I could capitalise and write some great content on the topic.
Thanks
Paul
-
I totally dorked up the cells in step 9 - I fixed that in my answer above.
As far as the Step 10 - 11 thing, I don't think I did. I think you skipped the second half of step 10.
Here's my original text, with bold.
- Highlight the cells from H1 to H12. Grab the black square in the bottom right of the border box. Drag this selection down all the way to H2000. **Copy all your cells from A1 to H2000 and paste values to remove any formulas. We want just text now. **
---------------------
Instead of copying and paste values for Column H, I just said do the whole thing. At this point you only want text so it makes sense. I was going to edit but I think the correct step is already in there.
-
I'm glad you liked the answer. Sometimes it's difficult to take the time to write up a long answer like that but once in awhile it just happens and comes out. I had a feeling others may like being able to mess with that sort of data so why not, right?
I'll write it up soon - I think I may do a bit on "playing with your food data in Excel."
I'm going to go make a few edits to my post so it has all the right steps. Thanks! I see that I messed up my Bs and Hs. After awhile I think I lost track of typing up each step and tried to recreate in my head what I had done. lol
-
Excellent, did it, got data, very happy.
Just incase anyone else comes across this there is 1 correction to the above, and 1 missing step:
- To match keywords to their change line, follow this specifically. In H4, type =B1 This should now say your keyword. Manually type in a few of these, so go to B8 and insert the formula =B5, then do the same with B12. The formula is =B9. You should see three keywords in Column H.
should be
- To match keywords to their change line, follow this specifically. In H4, type =B1 This should now say your keyword. Manually type in a few of these, so go to H8 and insert the formula =B5, then do the same with H12. The formula is =B9. You should see three keywords in Column H.
So you only put this formula in Column H, referencing column B.
Then, between Step 10 and 11 you need to copy column H and do Paste Values, otherwise when you sort in step 11 you will end up with #REF errors.
This has yielded some excellent data for me to slice and dice.
-
WOW!
That is the most detailed response I have seen in a Q&A. Thanks for going to so much detail.
Definitely write this up as a YouMoz, as I have a feeling this would be a great interest to a lot of people, and could well get promoted to the main blog.
Right, I'm off to fire up Analytics and Excel and see what I can see.
This truly is brilliant. Thanks so much.
Keri, thanks for the heads up on the alerts blog post. I have used alerts, but for some reason I just didn't think to use these to identify changing trends in keyword usage. So I will give this a look also.
Thanks Guys
-
Ahh, the problem is that the OP changed jobs, and the new person removed those custom alerts. I hadn't realized that until just now. Thanks for letting me know, and I'll see if we can do anything to get it fixed.
-
Thanks for the endorsement Keri! Appreciate that.
From the post you linked - it doesn't look like the Grab It link works with the new Analytics. Those are great alerts to setup but maybe someone can write up a 2013 version.
TY!
-
Awesome response here! I'd also like to add we did have a great YouMoz post two years ago about essential alerts for GA that would email you when certain events happened. It's at http://www.seomoz.org/blog/7-essential-google-intelligence-custom-alerts-that-keep-me-sane.
-
Sure, you mostly care about ones that have already jumped up in impressions or clicks, right? I'm going to be very specific on the steps but this isn't as hard as it looks.
-
Go to Traffic Sources > Search Engine Optimization > Queries
-
Select a date range and then use "Compare to" and use "Previous Period."
-
Set Show Rows to 500.
-
Sort the table by Impressions.
-
Copy all the data from the table starting from "1. keyword" and finishing with the end of the table (last change%). Paste this data directly into Excel. You should have columns A-F used, it'll look very messy. Something like the attached "sorting1.jpg"
-
Find & Replace "% Change" with "Change"
-
In Column G put this formula: =IF(LEFT(B1,6)="Change","Yes!","") Copy this formula from G1 to G2000. Every line that says "Change" should now say "Yes!" at the end.
-
Copy column G and use "Paste Values" to remove the formula and leave only the "Yes!" in place.
-
To match keywords to their change line, follow this specifically. In H4, type =B1 This should now say your keyword. Manually type in a few of these, so go to H8 and insert the formula =B5, then do the same with H12. The formula is =B9. You should see three keywords in Column H.
-
Highlight the cells from H1 to H12. Grab the black square in the bottom right of the border box. Drag this selection down all the way to H2000. Copy all your cells from A1 to H2000 and paste values to remove any formulas. We want just text now.
You should see a list of keywords in column H now, every 4 cells or so. Check Sorting2 attached. The rest is very simple.
-
Sort by Column G, Sort by Values, Z to A. This should be looking valuable now.
-
Delete Rows 501-2000. All rows should be "Yes!" now.
-
Delete Columns A, B and G. Feel free to move Column E to Column A if it makes you feel better.
-
Insert a new Row 1 at the very top. Label each like this:
Cell A1: Impressions
Cell B1: Clicks
Cell C1: Avg Pos.
Cell D1: CTR
Cell E1: Keyword
- Highlight Row A and push View > Freeze Panes > Freeze Top Row. Highlight all the data, press Ctrl T to create a Table. Now you can easily sort any row and sort through your data. See sorting3.jpg attached.
It's really not as complex as it looks. Just use the two formulas, follow the steps and boom, sortable and pretty data.
(I may write this up as a YouMoz post with better screenshots, maybe a video tutorial or something, so thanks for giving us the chance to help!)
-
-
The fact that you went from generating 35 impressions per day to 2000 impressions per day, could mean that one of your pages is on the first page of a SERP that has high traffic. However, that can also mean that it is in the last spot and not driving any conversion.
To find out the keyword go to secondary dimension and select: Traffic sources > Keywords
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
-
Attribution of conversions to payment gateway in Google Analytics
Hi all, We have been having a problem for a while now where most transactions are attributed to referrals from our payment gateway Sagepay. The issue started a couple of months ago, when we finally upgraded our website to https:// for logged in users and transactions. Before, when we were using http://, transactions were attributed to the correct channel. Even weirder, we upgraded 4 websites and only 2 of them have the issue now, the other two continue to attribute transactions correctly. I added Sagepay to the referral exclusion list which made no difference. Over the weekend, we upgraded to the global site tag and it seems to have improved somewhat, but yesterday 50% of transactions were still attributed to referral/sagepay. I am also seeing an odd issue, where for half of the transactions, the revenue and transaction are attributed to one channel, but the products (quantity) are attributed to another. One of the channels is always referral/sagepay and the other is the channel that the transaction should be attributed to. Has anyone seen this issue before? I'd appreciate any tips that might help us fix this issue. Thanks in advance!
Reporting & Analytics | | ViviCa10 -
Tracking 301 redirect traffic in Google Analytics
if I 301 redirect www.mywebsite.com to go to www.yourwebsite.com, how can I track the traffic in Google Analytics that is coming from mywebsite.com?? I don't think that's a referral traffic, is it?
Reporting & Analytics | | Armen-SEO0 -
Help With Understanding Chrome Web Store Analytics
Hi all, our website Creately is listed in the Chrome Web Store. Its not an extension or an app, but just a link to app which users can use to quickly log into the app and start drawing their diagrams. They do provide you a way to add Google Analytics to track some visitor data like user visits. But we want to figure out from which sections of Chrome Web Store is sending us traffic. When looking at the Source/Medium reports I can see the following. chrome-ntp-icon / (not set) chrome-app-launcher / (not set) chrome-ntp-launcher / (not set) chrome-app-launcher-search / (not set) chrome-app-launcher-info-dialog / (not set) I'm guessing these indicate where we're getting the traffic to the Chrome web store page but I can't seem to find any information about what they mean. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Reporting & Analytics | | Nishadha0 -
Tracking time spent on a section of a website in Google Analytics
Hi, I've been asked by a client to track time spent or number of pages visited on a specific section of their website using Google Analytics but can't see how to do this. For example, they have a "golf" section within their site and want to measure how many people either visit 5 page or more within the golf section or spend at least 6 minutes browsing the various golf section pages. Can anyone advise how if this can be done, and if so, how I go about it. Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | geckonm0 -
Referral Traffic vs. Campaign Traffic in Google Analytics
I have two sites: a blog and an ecommerce site. The blog funnels people to the ecommerce site. In Analytics I'm seeing declines in referral traffic from the blog to the ecommerce site. During the same time I'm seeing an increase in campaign traffic to the ecommerce site, with most campaign traffic coming from the blog. I believe the increase in campaign traffic is largely a result of simply having installed more tracking links. This leads me to believe that the declines I'm seeing in referral traffic is simply a result of the increase in campaign traffic. In other words, what was once counted and reported as being referral traffic is now being counted and reported as campaign traffic. So my question is this: In Google Analytics is campaign traffic ALSO reported as referral traffic, or is campaign traffic reported separately and not duplicated in referral traffic reports? I'll provide a concrete example to make this more clear in case it isn't: Say site X sends 1000 visits each month to site Y. Say 50 of those visits come from a single link on X. If that link is changed so that campaign Z data info added (via the Google URL Builder), would you expect to then see 950 referral visits each month from site X to site Y plus 50 campaign visits to site Y via new campaign Z, or would you continue to see 1000 referral visits plus the new 50 campaign visits? Many thanks in advance to anyone that can shed some light on this.
Reporting & Analytics | | aaronprimal0 -
On google analytics what is Mozilla Compatible Agent under browser and OS?
On my Google Analytics (I know this is not SEOMOZ) I have a lot of visits from mozilla compatible agent with 100% bounce rate. Does anybody know what this is?
Reporting & Analytics | | essentialworld0 -
Google Analytics and DNS change
Our new alumni application is going be tested at domain uva.imodules.com . We are going to collect traffic data with a Google analytics account number UA-884652-XX. So going to uva.imodules.com/myPage.html would send its data to Google Analytics with that account number. Then when it is ready for production we are going to just change the domain name of the application and switch the DNS over to dardencommunity.darden.virginia.edu . So going to dardencommunity.darden.virginia.edu /myPage.html would send its data to Google Analtics with that SAME account number. Aside from having the testing domain data in the same profile are there any other issues/problems we may run into?
Reporting & Analytics | | Darden0 -
Setting up Google Analytics for Subsites
I currently have one main .com site and am planning on launching geo-location subsites .co.uk, .com.au, .ru, etc... Traffic will flow between both sites and some of the content on the subsites will be duplicate and therefore include a canonical tag to the main site. I want to set up GA to capture who is going to the subsites and vice versa and correctly capture crossover traffic. Any advice on implementing advanced analytics directly (or links to sources that will direct me the right direction for this project)
Reporting & Analytics | | theLotter0