Now in their new experiment with the Google Search result URLs, they have done some changes which again would leave most other web analytics package high and dry to track Google referrer data.

At present a typical Google search referrer URL would look like
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=candles&btnG=Google+Search

The New Referrer URL format would be
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=7&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.com%2Fmypage.htm&ei=0SjdSa-1N5O8M_qW8dQN&rct=j&q=candles&usg=AFQjCNHJXSUh7Vw7oubPaO3tZOzz-F-u_w&sig2=X8uCFh6IoPtnwmvGMULQfw

Now besides showing the complete result page URL and other multiple parameters, the key difference between these two referrer strings is that in the first on the parameters started after “/search?” and in the second one they start after “/url?”. Now most of the present day analytics packages parses the Google referrer string based on the “/search?” part and looks for information after that to figure out which keyword or which page of the search result the traffic came from. Also most of them look for the “/search?” to determine if a visitor is coming from organic search results. Replacing “search” with “url” would leave them all messed up.

Google analytics however does not depend on the “/search?” string in the referrer and would continue to work properly. Also the latest version of Urchin (6.5) would not be affected by this change.

Other analytics packages would probably need to do some changes to adapt to this change in Google referrer string to provide accurate analytics report.

These new referrer String is launched at beta stage and only a small percentage of users are getting this at present but it is likely that Google would soon roll out this in the main stream.

While Google has not explained or given any reason for this sudden changes there seems to be just two possible reasons for this.
a) Making other third party analytics less usable / giving them a hard time – I don’t think other analytics providers would have a lot of problem to adapt this but they would definitely need some time and webmasters would need an option for that period and Google Analytics would be the choice.

b) This new referrer string would allow Google to pass all clicks through their server thereby making it much easier for them to track the CTR for individual sites. As it has always been said that Google uses CTR data as a factor for their algorithm, now that Google can track individual CTR with so much precision I would think that they are very likely going to use these information for further refining the organic results.

Related Post:
Google Planning AJAX Interface – Doom’s Day for Analytics
Google Analytics Blog Post

The post Change in Google Referral Strings – Another Attempt to Push Google Analytics ? appeared first on Adwords Consultant India : DigitalSRC.

• Helps to track and generate detailed report on web site traffic, referral sources, search engines, referring keywords, duration of visit, entry and exit points and various other information that helps to analyze a website’s performance and take decisions for improvement.
• E-commerce and ROI tracking – Google analytics can track visitor foot prints to generate reports on whether they are following the desired path of action, if there are specific points on the website where the visitors drop, it tracks advertisement campaigns and the traffic driven by each of them, it tracks sales and attributes them to their respective traffic source, equates the expenses for traffic acquisition and sales generated to calculate ROI.

b) How to Implement Google Analytics? (Just to track traffic details)

• Sign Up for a Google Analytics Account or if you already have a Google account you can use that to log in to Google Analytics at http://www.google.com/analytics and then sign up for Analytics using the “Sign Up” button.
• The sign up process would take ask for your website URL and other necessary info and you can move through the process by clicking on the “continue” button.
• On the final step, you will be provided with a small piece of JavaScript that you will need to add to each page that you wish to track just before the tag. You can add this code as a Server Side Include or simply write it in your code.

  Example Code:

  
  
  
  The “xxxx-x” needs to be replaced by the Analytics account number for your website.

• Once you have added this JavaScript to all your web pages click the “Check Status” button to ensure that the tracking code has been set properly.

c) How to set up Conversion goals for Google Analytics?

• Log in to Analytics Account
• Click on “Edit” option for “Settings” for the website for which you want to add the conversion Goals.
• Google Analytics allows you to set up to four Conversion Goals. Against each of the Goals click on the “Edit” option on “Settings” tab
• Enter the URL of your web page that you set as a Goal in the Goal URL field, add a name to the goal for ease of identification.
• Click the radio button below to activate/deactivate the goal (by default it is active)
• Set up a Funnel for your goal from the “Define Funnel” section (optional – explained in point below)
• Set up a Goal Value from the “Additional Settings” section. (Optional)

d) How to set up a Funnel for Goals?

• You can lay down the expected path that a visitor would follow to reach the goal. This funnels help to identify if there is a glitch or an usability issue at any point in your website that is preventing the visitors to reach the goal.
• Get to the Goal Settings page (Click “Edit” on settings tab for respective Goals)
• Under the section “Define Funnel Option”, put in the URLs that you expect your visitors to follow to reach that specific Goal.
• For Example – If you have set up your order Form Page as a Goal. You can set up a Funnel for the Goals as Home Page > Product Page > Order Form (Goal)

e) Why and how do you set up a Goal value?

• A Goal value needs to be set up if you need to measure the ROI for your marketing campaign. The Analytics program uses this Goal value to equate against the cost of traffic acquisition to calculate the ROI.
• Under the “Additional Settings” section on the Goal Settings page you can insert a Goal value for each of the goals.
• This option allows you to add a fixed amount as the Goal value and is effective only when all your sales are of the exact same value, else, it just provides an approx estimation of the value that you earn when a visitor reaches the Goal. For better tracking and calculation of ROI for E-Commerce websites, E-commerce tracking needs to be set up.

f) How to set up Google Analytics for E Commerce?

• Do NOT insert any Goal value for your goals on the Goal Settings page.
• To enable e-commerce tracking you will need to indicate your website as an e-commerce website by clicking on the radio button for e-commerce website in Site profile. You can do this by clicking on “Edit” next to the site profile for which you would like to enable e-commerce.
• Insert the tracking code in the receipt page in the standard fashion (explained in point (b) above.
• Somewhere below the tracking code you will need to insert the code for e-commerce tracking, which is as follows
  <br />UTM:T[order-id][affiliation] [total][tax] [shipping][city][state][country]UTM:I[order-id][sku/code][productname][category][price] [quantity]
  

  
  
  Everything that are within the [] has to be replaced by actual values by your engine. A reference to the Parameters used in the above code can be found at https://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=27203

  The final output would actually look something similar to

  UTM:T34535Main Store111108.068467.0610.00San DiegoCAUSA
  UTM:I34535XF-1024Urchin T-ShirtShirts11399.009
  UTM:I34535CU-3424Urchin Drink HolderAccessories20.002

  For every transaction there will be one Transaction line that is indicated by the “T” after UTM – this line contains the total for the transaction including taxes and other information. The lines with an “I” after the UTM is the Item line and this contain the details of the items, their price and other details. There can be unlimited number of item lines for any transaction. An Item line is generated for each of the items that are processed during the transaction.

  Note: The square brackets should not be included while setting the values for the form. Also, do not use comma to separate thousand figures for any digit, any digit after comma would be dropped.

• The final step is to call the function “utmSetTrans” when the form gets submitted. This is important to record the e-commerce information. This can be done in two ways.

  You can call the function on Body OnLoad as shown below

  
  
  If you do not have access to the body tag then you can call it within a separate Script tag. You need to ENSURE that the function is called AFTER the form.

g) How to use Google Analytics to track my Google Adwords Data?

• Log into your Google Adwords account
• Click on the “Analytics” tab
• Click on the link “I already have a Google Analytics Account”
• If you are using the same Google Account ID for your Adwords and Analytics you will see the Analytics account in the dropdown. Select the analytics account profile.
• “Destination URL auto tagging” will remain check by default, you should leave it checked.
• Also keep the “Apply cost Data” option checked (checked by default).
• Click on Link Account.

h) How to use Google Analytics to track Ad Campaigns other than Adwords?

To ensure that you are able to track non-Adwords advertisement campaigns through Google Analytics you will need to tag the destination URL for those campaigns with suitable parameters so that Google Analytics can easily differentiate between each campaign and pick up the necessary information.

Google provides an extremely helpful URL builder that would relieve you from adding the tags manually. You don’t need to use all six fields in the URL builder to tag your campaigns, just use the ones that are necessary. You’ll usually only need to use Source, Medium, Name, and Term (for paid keywords).

Alert: A small percentage of websites do not allow arbitrary URL parameters and serve an error page when auto-tagging is turned on. Please consult with your Webmaster to find out if this is the case or turn on auto-tagging and do a test by simply clicking on your ad. If the link to your site works then you can use auto-tagging. If you are getting an error, you’ll need to turn auto-tagging off from your AdWords account. Then, ask your Webmaster to allow arbitrary URL parameters before turning it back on.

Reference: http://www.google.com/support/analytics/?hl=en_US

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