Google Analytics Reports: Search Engines

Next in our list of Google Analytics Traffic Source reports is the Search Engine Report. This report gives you detailed information about the traffic you get from search engines. In this report you will find all the typical information about your visits including:

• Number of Visits: The number of visits to your site.
• Pages per Visits: The number of pages a user looks at during their visit.
• Average Time on Site: The average amount of time a user spends on your site.
• Percentage of New Visits: The amount of visits out of the entire number of visits coming from new visitors.
• Bounce Rate: The percentage of visits that do not last long because the people click right back off your site to find another one that better fits their needs.

This information will apply only to the traffic brought to you by the search engines.This lets yousee how well the search engines are working for you. To get to this report, click Traffic Sources and then Search Engines. You will see a screen which looks something like this:

click to enlarge

Google Analytics tracks 41 search engines by default, and they work to add more to the list constantly. In most cases, this is more than enough information. Although, sometimes, you may want to add more to your list. You can alter the tracking code given to you when you first signed up for Google Analytics to track sdditional search engine.

To add an additional search engine, you need to use the following code:

pageTracker._addOrganic("name_of_searchengine","q_var");

The “name_of_searchengine” should be replaced by the name of the search engine you want to track. The “q_var” should be replaced by the specific query you want to track.

Your code should look something like this from Google Analytics Support:

<script type="text/javascript">

var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");

document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));

</script>

<script type="text/javascript">

var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-xxxxxx-x");

pageTracker._addOrganic("name_of_searchengine","qvar");

pageTracker._trackPageview();

</script>

Remember the UA-xxxxxx-x code will need to be replaced by your specific Google Analytics account number.

When traffic comes from search engines, you will see a bar graph displaying the number of visits from search engines to allow you see the search engines your visitors use the most. The keywords used to find your site are included on the Keywords Report, covered later in this series.