Google Analytics Conversion Consultant

Well, I was very excited yesterday when looking at my Google Analytics account to find that someone had found my site using ‘Bing’.  ’What was the keyword?’, I say to myself.  Guess what, to my annoyance Bing is currently tracked in Google Analytics as a referrer rather than a search engine.  This means the query string (keyword) that was used will not show in Google Analytics.  So, what to do?  Well luckily I had received a blog post notification from Brian Cliftons blog specifiying how to track Bing.

Brian has hosted a Javascript file on his site that if you make a reference to it in your Google Analytics Tracking Code, will identify many different types of search engine to be tracked as such and not as referrers including Google Maps.  If you copy it and host it on your own site you can make all sorts of changes to ensure you are tracking everything necessary.  I know Brian Clifton too, and I’m sure he would be grateful to receive ideas for adding to the custom_se script.  Heres the post for Bing tracking using Google Analytics.

***Update – Google Analytics is now tracking Bing without this hack!!***

Microsoft Bing is a decision agent?  Right.  Nice try Microsoft.  Deep site links, local search, related links, – nothing new here.

BUT, what does interest me is the video and the quick view of a web page although I haven’t in my thirty second view of the website worked out how to get the quickview funtion to work.  I typed, Google Analytics Consultant.  Nothing happened when I hovered over the URL or the <title> bar. I could also only see a cache function.

Ooh ooh, I’ve just found the quick view.  You have to move a little to the right of the SERP for it to appear.  A line with an orange spot appears and you hover over.  Nope, hang on a moment – its disappeared again!  Well, it is still in Beta.

Lets check out the videos.  Now this, I really, really like!  Smooth.  I input the term BING and was presented with talking head snippets, ads, reviews, news sites – all sorts.  This is a great feature and cleverly, they are predominatly advertising Googles’ own products but competing with them in the presentation and selection that is offered to the user.  I will defo use this to search for a vid before going near youtube.com itself.  See here.

So lets see what else is offered? Same old, same old. No – hang on – what is this?

X-Rank 

http://help.live.com/help.aspx?project=wl_searchv1&querytype=keyword&query=knarx&mkt=en-GB

A cultural view of what is hot and what is not according to Microsoft?

No Brian Clifton, no Avinash Kaushik, no Nikki Rae – don’t they know what they are missing?

Thank God Google has gained some sense and is at last going to release some decent data where Google Adwords Search Query data is concerned.  According to the Google Adwords Blog Post.  No more will we see the dreaded - ”other unique queries” hiding the information we really need to know!

Hooray, hooray, hooray.  Thank you Google!!

Well, how interesting! Google is moving forward with helping us to track social media sites and functions within them – perticularly where their own products are concerned. It was announced to day on YouTube Biz Blog that Google Analytics are intergrating with YouTube brand channels to offer further insight into data previously provided by YouTube Insight.  Go on Google – keep it up.  I’m off for a nosey now….

Although I am lucky enough to have blagged a Yahoo! Web Analytics account from the lovely guys at Yahoo!  I have just heard that they are rolling out to their search customers.  I am guessing you will have to spend a few pennies with Yahoo to earn this privelege however certain markets I have found have a much lower spend but great conversion rates when compared with Google Adwords (as a percentage of spend) even though Google Adwords has a greater reach and ends up with more conversions as a total.

I am enjoying playing with Yahoo! Web Analytics so please be sure to try and get a hold of an account. Or, of course, contact me and I’ll see what I can do.

All the best,

Nikki Rae

The worst mistake I come across on a daily basis is business managers who use their analytics packages to predict/forecast traffic and thus leads.

Why is this a problem?

1.  Google Analytics, for example, is a free tool where your data is hosted on Google’s own servers.  They are not accountable to you or your data in any way apart from what is inluded in their terms of service regarding privacy - http://www.google.com/analytics/en-GB/tos.html.

You will never know then what data has been missed/lost due to downtime or any other reason.

2. Google Analytics as other tag-based web analytics packages uses cookies to collect data.  In order for cookies to work, your browser must have them enabled. This means any visit that has come from a machine that does not have a browser enabled for cookies acception will not be tracked in Google Analytics.

3.  Google Analytics, for example, run development tests like ‘event tracking’ which are in Beta.  If you become dependent on the data whilst it is in Beta – you run the risk of your data disappearing if the beta run is not fully implemented.

4. It is not hard to make a mistake when adding profiles and filters to your google analytics package that can skew the data affected if not set up correctly.

5. I have seen many issues with adwords data collection where clients have had pages in their site redirected and so it has lost the gclid information.  In this instance, it would appear as organic search traffic when in actual fact it is paid search traffic.

6. Remembering to track all your campaigns with all the correct Google Analytics parameters in urls for e.g. yahoo/MSN PPC campaigns (as seen here - http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55578).  In this case, the traffic would show as organic when in fact it is Paid.  Also, adwords recently made a change meaning that you have to be able to select your google analytics account from your adwords interface so that the ‘apply cost data’ field was enabled in analytics.  If you have seen a hike in direct traffic and a flatline in adwords – this is what has happened.

So what is it for?

Web analytics packages such as Google Analytics are tools to measure trends – peaks and troughs in your website traffic based upon what changes have been made to the site and how he online industry is affected.

Think of it like cause and effect.  You need to benchmark your current status, make a change and then measure its effectiveness.

Analytics packages take a while to understand that they are not entirely intuitive – in the words of Disraeli, there are ‘lies, damned lies and statistics’ and if you are not careful about how you interpret the data into information from ana analytics package then you are in fact faced with nothing.

I have decided that it is time for me to impart some of the knowledge that I have attained over the years in search engine marketing and Google Analytics.

I am writing this blog for people that want to understand more about search techniques, tactics and strategies and how to measure success using the free analytics package – Google Analytics.

 Please feel free to contact me if you would like some professional web analytics consultancy with particular regard to Google Analytics then I am happy to perform website audits and conversion analyses for a fee.

Please contact me – Nikki Rae – on 01273 476709.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolarae