Google Analytics tweaks

Google Analytics is the best free web analytics software. It has just a few flaws and some of them are easily fixed. In this article I will show you a few tweaks to get better reports from Google Analytics.

AdWords keyword tracking
One of the biggest flaws in Google Analytics is probably in the reports on AdWords usage. When you visit “Marketing Optimization -> Search Engine Marketing -> AdWords Analyses (or “CPC vs Organic Conversion -> google[cpc]”)” Analytics only returns the matching options that were triggered, but not the exact typed in search phrase.

When you need to tweak your keywords in AdWords you really need to have good keyword statistics. The following script looks at the refering url to your webpage and looks for the word “google”. If that exists it looks for the query and pushes it as a fake page request to Analytics. This means both AdWord and organic Google results will be logged, but it is unwise to use a special URL to differentiate them from each other. You can use the Adwords autotagging option and edit the script to look for “gclid=…” in the URL. This is an indicator of adwords that is added to your URL after your landing page quality score is calculated.

if( document.referrer )
{
  if( document.referrer.indexOf( ‘google’ ) != -1 )
  {
    var urlPattern = /(\?|&)q=([^&]*)/;
    var aMatches = urlPattern.exec( document.referrer );    if( aMatches != null )
    {
      urchinTracker( ‘/query/’ + aMatches[2] );
    }
    else
    {
      urchinTracker();
    }
  }
  else
  {
    urchinTracker();
  }
}
else
{
  urchinTracker();
}

To see what search phrases have been logged you go to “Content Optimization -> Content Performance > Content Drilldown” in Google Analytics and look for the (fake) directory “query”. Here you find every search phrase from Google. When you compare these figures to “Marketing Optimization -> Search Engine Marketing -> CPC vs Organic Conversion -> google[organic]” you see what is left for AdWords.

Target tracking
Even when you’re not selling anything directly from your website, you can always give certain goals a financial value. This virtual value gives you a good indication which marketing campaign is producing the highest value. For instance: Whenever your contactform is used give it a value of one or two dollar and log it as “contactform submitted”.

For more information see: http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=27203&topic=7282

Campaign tracking
For each separate campaign that uses a specific landing page URL, log it! This way revenue from a mailing you did ends up in a separate report.

For more information see: http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=27254
Or even better: http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=27248

Tracking link clicks
If you want to track outbound links or see which one link (when there are several links to the same url on one page) was clicked, you need to send a fake page request to Analytics. Just like the /query/ request we did for AdWords you can do an onclick=”urchinTracker(’/link/….’);” request.

Here is my link to an unobtrusive javascript example:
http://www.dicabrio.com/javascript/unobtrusive-google-analytics.php

Using Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a fine web analytics tool for companies that make some money online. When you start earning the big bucks every content/navigation optimization can save you thousands of dollars and you will probably be better of with someting like Webtrends or Clicktracks. These give almost instant reports and can give custom visitor segmentation throughout all your reports.

Another reason not to use Google Analytics is: Do you want to give Google this much information on your website and is it unbiased?

Get acquainted with web analytics with Google Analytics, but continue to professional web analytics software!

Read these when you are finished:

• Google Analytics Filters
• Google Analytics without Javascript

Thursday, January 4th, 2007 at 12:22 am | Tutorials, Web analytics
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