Counting unique landing pages in Google Analytics: social vs organic channels
-
Remember the technique Rand posted for counting the unique indexed landing pages on a site?
http://moz.com/blog/indexation-for-seo-real-numbers-in-5-easy-steps
I'm using Google Analytics to compare this result for the "social" channel vs. the "organic search" channel. The idea is to see whether social or search delivers people to more unique landing pages.
I would expect organic search to yield a significantly higher count, due to long tail searches for relatively obscure terms. We have an archive of over 500k pages that Google could be indexing, even if only a fraction of a percent of those might be getting social mentions. But that's not what the numbers show -- I'm seeing roughly 10% higher numbers for the Social channel than for Organic Search. Again, I'm counting unique landing pages here, not the total pageviews or visits.
If anyone else here is monitoring these metrics, please chime in with your results. What's the baseline expectation for a large website with hundreds of thousands of pages of issue-centric user-generated content? Should search traffic provide 2x more landing page exposures than social? 5x? 10x? or 0.9x, as in my case?
In short, I believe these numbers are pointing to an indexing/ranking problem following a recent site redesign.
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
-
Diving into Social Media...
Hi Our company has a Facebook page - it's pretty outdated and barely used. I want to change that, but wondered if anyone had any advice on how to start it up again? It hasn't been used for a while, so how do you start off with your first post? Or do you act like you have been there the whole time... probably not the best idea. We don't want to confuse people or look stupid with the first post. I want it to be regularly used for content, community building and demonstrating the personality of the company. Thank you 🙂
Social Media | | BeckyKey0 -
Facebook have moved my page likes to another page
Hi Hope someone can help or offer advice about an issue that has arisen today i had a facebook page with approx 20,000 likes and a competitor had a page with approx 500 likes. Today the competitor has over 20,000 like (my likes have been transferred to them without informing me) I have spent quite a lot of time and money in facebook advertising building up the page and this came as a total shock today. The page (was) www.facebook.com/wildatlanticway It is very difficult to contact facebook. has this happened to anyone else Regards Brian
Social Media | | briandee0 -
Google+ Cover Photo Question
I am trying to set up a Google+ profile for a client with multiple locations. My design team came up with nice cover photos for each page, using the dimensions that Google recommends (a 16:9 ratio, max. 2120x1192), but parts of my cover photo keep getting cut off. Has anyone else encountered this problem, and do you know what size we should REALLY be using? Thanks!
Social Media | | ScottImageWorks1 -
YouTube Channels - Geotargeting - UK & US specific YT channels (but with identical videos)
Can you have one for each region such as Uk & US like you might with FaceBook etc: I know its a good idea for Geo-targeting reasons to have country specific social pages to promote country specific websites (i.e. UK FaceBook for .co.uk website and US Facebook for .com site etc), does the same apply to YouTube ? Does YouTube allow this (since videos will be effectively the same on both channels) ? I would hope so since say if you wanted to exploit annotated links to the main site from the videos then you would want the US viewer following a link to a US product page not a UK page and vice versa ? Many Thanks Dan
Social Media | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Authorship and Google +
I've got 14 affiliate websites with plenty of original content on each. When I set up Google + last year I of course had the page in my name and then went on to set up separate pages for each site. Actually one page is related to 8 different sites related to golf but broken down by club type. I also have a Wordpress plugin which presents my author bio on my about page for each site. I've filled out all the pertinent information on each Google + page with unique data. OK, when I write a review or blog topic and post it to Google + am I getting the rel = author juice from the sub pages as if I post it to my main profile page? Posting to my Don Bistrow page vs. my golf page?
Social Media | | NicheGuy0 -
2012 vs 2013 SEO
With 2012 coming to an end and 2013 just around the corner. What direction should we be taking our SEO Efforts? My Short List. Unique Content Ensure site is Trustworthy Combine SEO & Social Media for maximum exposure Blog Often What am I missing? What will be the trend to watch in 2013? How will 2013 differ from 2012?
Social Media | | bronxpad0 -
Google analytics now showing social signals
Looking through Google analytics today and noticed that there is a section under top content that shows number of Facebook likes & shares, tweets, diggs, delicious book marks, etc. Anyone else seeing this? [staff note: see answers, this came from a Chrome extension]
Social Media | | prima-2535090 -
Being Blocked by Social Bookmarking sites based on IP
Creating a few (multiple) social bookmarking accounts at multiple sites and getting blocked based on IP (guessing). Disclaimer: a few, not volume here. What is the best way around this? Preferably something simple. Not savvy on VPN. Someone also mentioned Proxies, not sure the best approach on that one. Thanks!
Social Media | | bozzie3110