Thursday, May 10, 2007

Add additional search engines to GA to track

As of writing this Google Analytics tracks just 24 search engines (from 0 to 23). You can see the full list inside this file at the line #33.

The other SEs are reflected as referrals in GA reports. You can track them as "organic" just adding additional lines in the GA code on your site.

How to:

1. Go to the SE you want to track and type any query:
"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"

2. When you got the search results, look at the current URL and find the words you just typed. You will see something like this:
http://www.bloodysearchengine.com/dir?query=The+quick+brown+fox+jumps+ over+the+lazy+dog&sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&aq=t
3. Prior to the search phrase you will see the query variable. It may be "query", "q", "s" or whatever. Remember it.

4. Hack: insert the following line right before urchinTracker function:

_uOsr[_uOsr.length]='bloodysearchengine'; _uOkw[_uOkw.length]='query';

If you want to add several SEs it should look like this:

"< src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript"> < /script>
< type="text/javascript">
_uacct = 'UA-xxxx-x';
_uOsr[_uOsr.length]='bloodysearchengine'; _uOkw[_uOkw.length]='query';
_uOsr[_uOsr.length]='bloodysearchengine2'; _uOkw[_uOkw.length]='queryvariable';
_uOsr[_uOsr.length]='bloodysearchengine3'; _uOkw[_uOkw.length]='
queryvariable';
urchinTracker();
< /script>"


* Note that queryvariable may be different for every search engine. You should repeat steps 1-3 each time you want to add new SE.

The benefit of use of _uOsr.length and _uOkw.length instead of just numbers is your independence from the quantity of SEs in the urchin.js file. When Google increase the quantity of items in the list your SEs will be above them anyway.

Since you updated the code your google analytics will treat all traffic from bloodysearchengine.com as organic not referral.

Your thoughts?

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

New google Analytics Interfcace

Google just announced new version of Google Analytics.

They say:

The new version of Google Analytics is easy enough for a layperson to understand, but also offers the sophistication experienced users need.
To get used to the new interface they suggest "Report Finder Tool": You can find the report you need using the old structure.



looks very smooth. But I am sure it is still far from what exactly users want. They prove it theirselves

Functionality of the product is not changing - only the interface
This is very sad: they spend huge amounts of time and money on the interface appearance but not improve the product itself

Saturday, May 05, 2007

Intro

Google Analytics is cool thing but almost all of it's features are limited by the interface.

Here I will post my thoughts and tips on how we can extend the usage of it.