Google's new technology

Since a while Google is testing a new AJAX version of their search engine. I'm not sure who's seeing the AJAX version and who isn't, but in Holland most of the Firefox users do see it. You can see if you're one the new one by looking at the url of a result page:

The great thing about this new version is that it makes Google Analytics capable of tracking the clicked position. Yes you heard what I say: the position. Where the 'old' Google only allowed us to track the page a keyword was on, the new Google allows us to track the exact position.

The new filters

You can use the first 2 filters mentioned in the old article, be before you do that: create a new profile where you can apply these filters to (tip: watch the video where Joost explains this all):

Filter name: "Ranking 1"
Filter type: "Custom filter - Include"
Filter field: "Campaign Medium"
Filter pattern: "organic"

Filter name: "Ranking 2"
Filter type: "Custom filter - Include"
Filter field: "Campaign Source"
Filter pattern: "google"

And this is the new filter that is capable of tracking positions:

And the copy/paste version:

Filter name: "Ranking 3"
Filter type: "Custom filter - Advanced"
Field A -> Extract A: "Campaign term", "(.*)"
Field B -> Extract B: "Referral", "(\?|&)cd=([^&]*)"
Output To -> User Defined: "$A1 (position: $B2)"

The new reports

If you have implemented everything correct you should see this in the "Visitors -> User Defined" report:

A list of keywords with the position the keyword was on when a visitor clicked it. Now you're able to see the exact positions, more precise than any ranking tool that is out there. There's 1 minor drawback: business listings next to the little maps are counted as a position also:

The blue result is counted as the 11th result, and not as the first organic result. But when you're analyzing your positions you can easily separate the geo-related keywords from the rest.

Sitelinks

Very interesting: the sitelinks positions are also tracked, and in a more intelligent way than the maps results. If you click on a sitelink, the actual position of that sitelink is passed on. For example, this sitelink has position 4:

If you want to get better insights about your sitelinks you should create an extra profile with the first 3 filters mentioned above. Then add this extra filter to only track those keywords where people clicked on the (full or oneline) sitelinks:

Filter name: "Ranking 5"
Filter type: "Custom filter - Include"
Filter field: "Referral"
Filter pattern: "oi=(oneline_sitelinks|smap)"

The positions you will see are pure sitelinks positions, and you will get an idea about which sitelink is popular and which isn't.

Extra tip

While we are dissecting the referring url from the Google Search engine we could take a look at the "meta" parameter (my dutch blogpost about this). It's used when people use one of these options:

The selected country or language is in the "meta" parameter (not applicable for Google.com) and can be made visible with the following filter:

Filter name: "Language / Country"
Filter type: "Custom filter - Advanced"
Field A -> Extract A: "Referral", "(?|&)meta=([^&]*)"
Output To -> User Defined: "$A2"

And remember: do this on a new profile so you don't mess up existing profiles. The selected language(s) or country is visible in the "Visitors -> User Defined" report.

I had this filter for quite a while on a lot of Dutch sites and saw that the three options where used like this:

1. The internet: 96,69%
2. Pages in Dutch: 3,28%
3. Pages from Holland: 0,03%

Well, that was the update, hope you liked it.

Track SEO rankings and Sitelinks with Google Analytics II is a post by André Scholten on Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

Track SEO rankings?

Well, you can't specifically track the exact position of the keyword that was clicked like you can do with AdWords. But it is possible to determine the page he was on. A ranking tool can tell you over and over again that a certain keyword is around position 15 in Google while Google Analytics claims he is on page 1 (position 1 to 10). This effect can come from 'personalized search' or 'local results' that can influence the Google rankings dramatically. People see other results than you see with your ranking tools. And therefore you need Google Analytics to do the real ranking.

Setup the filter

To get the rankings in your Google Analytics reports you have to create a new filter:

The title of the filter contains a 3, that's because filter 1 and 2 take care of filtering out everything else than Google Organic traffic. So yes: you also have to create a new profile to apply these filters on to be sure you don't screw up your main profile.

This filter only works for Google. if you want it to work for Yahoo and Live Search also, make sure you change the filters 1 and 2 so they accept Organic from all three of them. Then setup the filter like this:

The ranking results

After a while the "User Defined" report will look like this (ignore the language):

What you see are not the actual rankings, but the number of the first result of the page the keyword was on. So when you see 20, it means the keyword was on the third page, and a 50 means the sixth page. (Yahoo and Live Search will report 21 and 51 in stead of 20 and 50).

When you don't see a number but only "(page: ): it means the keyword was on the first page. So perhaps it is better to change "page:" to "minimal position;", I leave that up to you.

If you want to filter the list of keywords on keywords with at least a page 2 position you can use "(page: d{2,3})" in the filter field below the list. The d stands for digits, and the 2,3 for the amount of digits you're looking for.

Enjoy.

Track SEO rankings with Google Analytics is a post by André Scholten on Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!