Organic search in Google Analytics. How to analyze information

Today we will analyze in detail such traffic channels as: Direct (direct), Search (search engine) and Referral (affiliate). Let's try to analyze each of them and understand what chips allow them to be upgraded.

Direct traffic means that the user comes to our site immediately. That is, either he has our site saved in his bookmarks, or he manually types in the address of our site in the browser.

If you think a little, it becomes clear that this type of traffic provides familiarity with the site or our product. A visitor could see our site, for example, in an advertisement, and then enter the address in the browser and get to us. Then again, he could have come with third party sources, view and add the site to your bookmarks.

It is important to understand that people who directly access your website are your target audience. Loyal visitors and your fans. Who else will just come to your site on purpose? 🙂

How to upgrade Direct?

1. Content is everything. Publish what is necessary and interesting to you target audience materials. It could be articles, videos, whatever. If only people liked it and something new appeared constantly.

2. Colleagues from other sources advise paying attention to the domain itself. Is your address simple? Is it well remembered? What about the logo?

3. Subscriber base. Your fans and fans should follow you. As soon as you have new materials, products, etc., you send out a newsletter.

4. Don't forget about brand knowledge. How more people know about you, the higher the likelihood of direct traffic growth.

Search or search traffic

Imagine you are looking online for a kitchen chair. Some kind is needed, it is not yet clear which one. Go to the search engine you like, type in “kitchen chair” and voila! There are many sites in front of you.

By clicking on one or another option, you create search traffic for these sites. That's exactly how it works.

How to pump up search traffic?

1. Optimization, optimization and optimization again! Search engines can be said to scan our sites for searches. keywords. These are the keywords that should be on your website. Otherwise they won't find you.

2. When you entered your query into the search engine, a great amount sites. The priority by which sites are ranked in search results is influenced by optimization. A good specialist will help you bring your site to a good level in search engines.

3. But! Get ready, this is a long process. The work of an SEO (optimization specialist) can take up to six months until the first results appear, but it is worth it.

2. If you have a project that does not create content, then I advise you to think about neighboring product categories. What products can complement yours? Do they have websites? Is it possible to come to an agreement with them?

Results

We have mastered the first traffic channels. Each of them deserves due attention. But it gets even more interesting!
In the next article we will analyze social and paid traffic.

Stay with us! By subscription :-)

February 07, 2018

In this section Google Analytics reports on various traffic sources are presented. "Traffic Sources" comprises: “Overview”, “All traffic”, “AdWords", "SearchConsole", "Social networks" And "Campaigns".

The traffic source overview contains information on default channel groups - a set of labels that can be assigned to different traffic sources based on certain rules. Standard channel group "Default Channel Grouping" in Google Analytics includes 9 different labels. More on this in the next article.

Each channel group label corresponds to indicators from three categories: "Traffic Sources", "Actions" And . This combination is called ABC metric groups in Google Analytics.

• Group A (Acquisition - incoming traffic);
• Group B (Behavior - user behavior on the site);
• Group C (Conversion - conversions, targeted actions).

For each of the ABC metrics group, you can sort those indicators that belong to it. For example, you can filter the indicator by group C (conversions) "Income" in descending order and see which channel brought greatest number money.

To change the channel group, you need to click below the selection.

When analyzing data in all reports "Traffic Sources" selection of comparison period is available.

By clicking on any of the channel groups, we will move from report to report "Traffic sources - All traffic - Channels." For example, when you click on Organic Search, a report with the main parameter will open "Keyword".

Note: about what it is (notset) And (notprovided), .

And when navigating through direct traffic (Direct), the main parameter in the reports is .

Google Analytics identifies traffic sources by HTTP_(referrer), which is one of the client (browser) request headers. It contains the request source URL. If you go from one page to another, the referer will contain the address of the first page.

If there is no referrer, Analytics will include such a visit in direct traffic (Direct).

You can select . Also available: "Source or Channel", "Source", "Channel" And "Other" (“Browser”, “City”, “Country”, “Language”, “Login Page”, “Keyword”, “Ad Content” etc.)

The report looks similar "Source/channel", in which the main parameter is "Source or channel".

By applying an additional parameter and an advanced filter (for example, "Device type" And "Source or channel" contains google), we can analyze the data and determine the most effective channel promotion.

The report contains information about traffic that Google Analytics could not classify as either organic or any other, despite the received address of the page from which the transition was made (referrer).

Note: in the example source yandex.ru is a 100% organic free search engine. However, Google was unable to recognize it correctly and assigned all sessions to referral traffic. To avoid this in the future, it is necessary at the resource level in the section "Tracking code" add yandex.ru as .

To view the full address of the page from which the transition was made, add as additional parameter "FullReferral URL":

By using "Efficiency cards" you can visually assess the volume of incoming traffic from a particular channel and its overall value.

The main indicator affects the size of the rectangle (larger = larger), and the additional indicator affects its color (larger = greener).

Even though the referral channel has one of the largest values ​​for the main parameter (sessions) and the size of the rectangle looks appropriate, its secondary indicator (pages/session) is one of the smallest and therefore the rectangle is colored red.

When we click on one of the channels, we will be taken to a lower level, where information will also be presented in the form of colored rectangles.

These reports can help you analyze what users do on your site after they click on an AdWords ad.

By Google default Analytics provides integrated reports on button usage +1 . This means that if the code is installed on the page analytics.js and button +1 , all clicks on it will be automatically counted as social interactions by every piece of tracking code on that page.

Report "User Paths" contains the same information as a similar report in the section "Audience", which we talked about in the previous article.

Campaigns

The last 4 reports included in the section "Traffic Sources"- This “All Campaigns”, “Paid Keywords”, “Unpaid Keywords” And .

Main parameter: "Campaign", "Source", "Channel", "Source or Channel" And "Other".

Reports "Paid Keywords" And "Unpaid Keywords" contain information about the traffic that came to the site from advertisements and free organic search respectively.

Main parameter: "Keyword", " Search query", "Source", "Channel", "Campaign" And "Other".

Thanks to the report, all data from different advertising systems can be combined in Google Analytics and compared by effectiveness in one place.

Main parameter: "Source or channel", "Campaign" And "Keyword".

Learn how to set up data import.

• Vk.com -

How do visitors behave on your site and do they come back to you? How does an advertising campaign affect other traffic acquisition channels?

Link accounts

In order to see the full picture of the effectiveness of your advertising campaign, you will need to link your account. Google AdWords with a Google Analytics account.

This will give you the opportunity to see not only more data in the AdWords interface, but also track how the advertising campaign affects other channels, and see the payback of your advertising. And also the connection between AdWords and Analytics will allow you to set up more subtle settings through the Analytics account.

So that you can track in detail which keyword brought you orders and which page was the most effective, you should also tag the links. There are plenty of resources online to hand tags links unless you use the auto-tagging feature.

For example, Google itself offers a URL builder, a handy resource that helps you add the necessary parameters to track campaigns, from campaign source to keyword.

Define your goals

First of all, before you track the effectiveness of an advertising campaign, you need to determine what you will track? Subscribe, order, watch a video, click the “Order” button, etc. as well as the correctness of the configured goals.

The correctness of setting goals (as well as setting the analytics code itself on the site) can be seen in Real time report. In addition, you can see who is on this moment be on your website, from which channels this traffic came, what content are your visitors currently viewing and if we're talking about about the correct setting of goals, then you can track correct setting in the Conversions section.

This report shows any technical problems on the website or with a real-time advertising campaign.

Channels and Traffic Sources

In Channels and Traffic Sources you can see from which channels your visitors come. And also how long they stay on your pages, i.e. How interested they are in your site's content. Which channels generate the most conversions (or let’s say, achieving goals).

So, what does each of these channels mean and include?

Referal – transitions from sites where links leading to your site are located.

If you see enough large percentage traffic, then you should pay attention, this may be referral spam. It does not affect the operation of the advertising campaign or the operation of the site, but it unpleasantly spoils the statistics. In the screenshot, pay attention to the Average session duration - it is equal to 0. That is. there was no activity on the site.

Organic Search – traffic from search network. In this channel you can see for which queries you are found in organic results.

Direct – when visitors go to the site by entering a link on the site in the browser line or via a bookmark. Traffic from this channel is also called “branded”. And over time the Display Network operates, the percentage of traffic by this channel should increase. This means that visitors are already familiar with your brand and enter your brand name directly into search bar browser.

Paid Search is paid search traffic, which is what we are currently considering.

To understand more detailed information, you can go directly to each channel.

The picture shows which campaign attracted a certain number of clicks and orders.

What to look for?

Please note the discrepancy in the number of clicks and sessions. The thing is that in Google Analytics, clicks– deciphers the number of transitions to your site from search engines, and sessions– this is the period of time during which the visitor interacts with your site. Term Session includes the concepts of both the number of screens viewed and transactions on the site.

The bounce rate is also quite important. This indicator is related to the effectiveness of pages on the site and the interest of visitors in the content on these pages. The higher the bounce rate, the more likely the site or page has a problem, such as: the page content is inconsistent key query or advertisement, not found on the site necessary information or clicking occurs.

If you have a one-page website, then the failure rate can reach up to 90%. The viewing depth of a single page is checked by the percentage of scrolling (for this you need to use special script page scrolling and set to ).

For regular blog sites or online stores, the failure rate is no more than 40-50%

The small percentage of refusals should also be alarming. Some of the reasons could be: an incorrectly installed analytics counter, or the same analytics counter is located in both the GTM and on the site at the same time, or the navigation on the site is bad and people simply “wander” in search of the information they need.

Conclusions need to be drawn both for the site in general and for each individual pages. Does the landing page match the key query that leads the visitor to landing page. Does the name of the product or product group contain the key query itself?

Those. the keyword should be mentioned in the ad and the information in the ad should be mentioned on the landing page.

But it's possible that campaigns that didn't result in direct transactions helped drive conversions through other channels. This can be seen in cross-channel funnels, how users completed their conversions, which we will look at in more detail in the next article.

In the Traffic Sources section - AdWords section - Keywords tab, pay attention to which words bring you more income and whether their cost per click pays off.

I would like to draw your attention to the fact that with the help of Google Analytics you can see how many actions a visitor had to take in order to make a conversion.

Those. In the picture you can see that 26 conversions were completed in one interaction, the rest of the conversions were completed in two or more interactions.

We can say that the navigation on the site is done perfectly, but this is a one-page site, in the case of stores, you need to pay more attention to what difficulties your visitors may encounter while getting to their “cherished goal”.

I would like to warn you right away that many people make the mistake of conducting analytics only on traffic sources in standard reports. Paid Search and Display often don't look as impressive as Direct or Organic in standard reports. But in order to understand all the details, I advise you to do a more detailed analysis.

In the Multi-Channel Conversions report, you can look at the Time to Conversion report to see when conversions usually occur.

You can also see when your visitors usually make a purchasing decision. The Multichannel Conversions – Time to Conversions report can help you with this.

Using this report, you can understand after what time to launch remarketing.

Pay attention to the Time of Day report in the AdWords section

Pay attention to the amount of traffic on certain days of the week and which days bring in the most purchases.

When it comes to direct traffic in Google Analytics, there are two deeply ingrained misconceptions.

The first is that direct traffic is almost always caused by users entering a site URL into address bar browser (or click on a bookmark). The second misconception is that direct traffic is a bad thing; not because it has any effect Negative influence on the operation of the site, but because it is not subject to further analysis.

Most digital marketers believe that direct traffic is an inevitable inconvenience. As a result, discussions on this topic focus on ways to assign it to other channels and troubleshoot problems associated with it.

In this article we will talk about a modern view of direct traffic in Google Analytics. Not only will we look at how data on referral sources can be lost, but we will also look at several tools and tactics that can be used to reduce the level of direct traffic in your reports. Finally, we'll learn how advanced analysis and segmentation can unlock the mysteries of direct traffic and shed light on what your most valuable users might actually be.

What is direct traffic?

In short, Google Analytics records direct traffic when there is no data about how the user came to the site. Or if the transition source was configured to be ignored. In general, direct traffic can be thought of as backup option in Google Analytics for those cases when the system could not attribute the session to a specific source.

To understand why direct traffic occurs, it is important to understand how GA handles traffic sources.

IN general outline and without regard to user-configurable overrides, GA follows the following chain of checks:

AdWords Settings > Campaign Overrides > UTM Parameters > Referrals From search engine> Referrals from another site > Previous campaign during the waiting period > Direct traffic

Note the penultimate processing step (previous campaign in the waiting period), which significantly affects the Direct channel. For example, a user learns about your site through organic search, and a week later returns through a direct link. Both sessions will be attributed to organic search. In fact, campaign data is retained for up to six months by default. The key point The point here is that Google Analytics is already trying to minimize the impact of direct traffic on you.

What causes direct traffic?

Contrary to popular belief, there are actually many reasons why a session might be missing campaign and traffic source data. Below we will look at the most common of them.

1. Manual input addresses and bookmarks

This is a classic scenario for getting direct traffic. If the user enters the site URL into the browser's address bar or clicks on a bookmark in the browser, then this session will be counted as direct traffic.

1. HTTPS >HTTP

Note that this is by default behavior. This is part of how the secure protocol was designed, and does not affect other scenarios: HTTP-HTTP, HTTPS-HTTPS, and even HTTP-HTTPS transitions all carry referral data.

Therefore, if your referral traffic has decreased, but your direct traffic has increased, perhaps one of your main referral sources has moved to HTTPS. The reverse is also true: if you switch to HTTPS and link to HTTP sites, the traffic you send to them will be recorded by Google Analytics as direct.

If your referrers have moved to HTTPS and you have remained on HTTP, you should also consider migrating your site to HTTPS. Having done this (and updated backlinks so that they point to an HTTPS URL), you will get back the referral data that was previously lost.

If, on the other hand, you've already switched to HTTPS and are concerned about your users registering as direct traffic on affiliate sites, you can set up a referrer meta tag. This is a way to tell the browser to pass referral data to sites over HTTP. It can be implemented as an element or HTTP header.

1. Missing or broken tracking code

Let's say you changed the template landing page and forgot to add the GA tracking code. Or, imagine that the Google Tag Manager container is a bunch of poorly configured triggers and the tracking code simply does not fire.

So, users end up on a page with a missing tracking code. They click on the link and go to the page where the code is there. From the point of view of Google Analytics, the first request will be a visit to the second page, and your own website (self-referral) will act as the referral source. If your domain is included in the list of excluded referral sources (according to the default settings), the session will be registered as direct. This will happen even if the first URL contains UTM parameters.

As a short term solution, you can simply add the missing tracking code. To prevent this from happening again, conduct a thorough audit of Google Analytics, move to implementing tracking through Google Tag Manager, and promote a culture of data-driven marketing.

1. Incorrect redirect

Everything is simple here. Don't use meta refresh or redirect to JavaScript based: They may erase or replace referral data, resulting in direct traffic to Google Analytics. Also keep a close eye on server-side redirects and check your redirect file frequently. Complex chains of redirects increase the likelihood of losing referral data, as well as UTM parameters.

Again, control what you can: use carefully crafted 301 redirects to retain referral data where possible.

1. Non-web documents

Links in documents Microsoft Word, presentation or PDF files do not convey referral information. By default, users who click on these links are recorded as direct traffic. Transitions from mobile applications(especially those that have a built-in browser) are also deprived of referral data.

To a certain extent this is inevitable. Similar to so-called “dark social” visits (discussed in detail below), non-web links are bound to generate some amount of direct traffic. However, you can always control the controllable.

If you post science articles or offer to download PDF documents, you should add UTM parameters to the embedded hyperlinks. Probably no email campaign is launched without tracking set up, so why would you distribute other types of materials without tracking this process? In some cases, this is even more important, given that these materials have durability that email campaigns lack.

Below is an example of a URL with UTM parameters that will be added to the document as a hyperlink:

https://builtvisible.com/embedded-whitepaper-url/?…_medium=offline_document&utm_campaign=201711_utm_whitepape r

The same goes for URLs in offline content. For core campaigns, it's common to choose a short, memorable URL (such as moz.com/tv/) and create an entirely new landing page. You can bypass page creation altogether by simply redirecting this URL to an existing page URL that is properly tagged with UTM parameters.

So, whether you tag URLs directly, use forwarded URLs, or—if you don't like UTM parameters—track hashes (URL snippets) using Google Tag Manager, the takeaway is the same: use campaign parameters wherever appropriate.

1. "Dark» social traffic

This is a large source of referrals and probably the least understood by marketers.

The term “dark social” was first used in 2012 by Alexis Madrigal in an article for The Atlantic. Essentially, it refers to social sharing methods that cannot be easily attributed to a specific source. These include email, instant messages, Skype, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and so on.

Recent studies have shown that more than 80% of what people share on publisher and company sites now comes from these private channels. In terms of the number of active users, instant messengers surpass social networks. All activity generated by these platforms is usually recorded by analytics systems as direct traffic.

People who use the controversial phrase "marketing in social media" usually means advertising: you broadcast your message and hope people hear it. Even if you overcome consumer apathy with a well-targeted campaign, any subsequent interactions are affected by their public nature. The privacy of so-called “dark social” channels instead represents a potential goldmine for more personal, targeted and relevant interactions with high conversion potential. The nebulous and difficult-to-track world of dark social holds enormous potential for effective marketing.

So how can we minimize the amount of such traffic that is recorded as direct clicks? The sad truth is that there are no silver bullets: proper attribution of this traffic requires careful campaign tracking.

The optimal approach will vary greatly depending on your industry, audience, offer, etc. However, for many websites, a good first step is to provide user-friendly and properly configured sharing buttons for private platforms such as email, WhatsApp, and Slack. This will allow users to share URLs with UTM parameters appended to them (or shortened URLs redirected to those addresses). This way you can illuminate some of your “dark” social traffic.

Checklist: minimizing direct traffic

To minimize direct traffic in your reporting, follow these steps:

• Go toHTTPS. A secure protocol is not only about access to HTTP/2 and the future of the Internet. It also has a huge positive influence on your ability to track referral traffic.
• Optimize redirects. Avoid redirect chains and ditch client-side redirects in favor of carefully crafted server-side 301 redirects. If you are using shortened URLs to redirect to pages with UTM parameters, check that you have configured everything correctly.
• Use campaign tags. Even among data-driven marketers, there is a common belief that UTM begins and ends with the inclusion of automatic tagging in the software for mailing lists. Others go to the other extreme, even labeling internal links. Control what you can control and you will be able to track the results of your work more effectively.
• Conduct an auditGoogleAnalyticss. Data integrity is vital, so consider this when assessing the effectiveness of your work. A GA audit is about more than just checking for missing tracking codes. A good audit includes a review of the measurement plan and thorough testing at the page and resource level.

Follow these principles and you can see significant reductions in your direct traffic in Google Analytics. Next example includes a transition to HTTPS, GTM and a complete overhaul of internal campaign tracking processes within six months:

However, the saga of direct traffic does not end there! Once this channel is clear, what remains can become one of the most valuable traffic segments.

Analyze why direct traffic can be really valuable

For the reasons we've already discussed, traffic from bookmarks and dark social is an extremely valuable segment to analyze. These will likely be some of your most loyal and engaged users, and it's not uncommon to see a noticeably higher conversion rate for a pure direct channel compared to the site average. You should make an effort to get to know these people better.

The number of potential avenues to explore is endless, but here are some good starting points:

• Create meaningful user segments by defining subgroups within direct traffic based on landing page, location, device, repeat visits and purchasing patterns.
• Track meaningful engagement metrics using modern GTM triggers such as scroll and element visibility tracking. Measure how your direct users use and view your content.
• Watch for correlations with your other marketing activities and use them as opportunities to improve your tagging and segmentation techniques. Set up custom alerts to monitor spikes in direct traffic.
• Check out the Goal Map and Behavior Map reports to understand how your direct traffic is converting.
• Ask your users for help! If you've isolated a valuable segment of traffic that's eluding deeper analysis, add a button to your page that offers visitors a free e-book or other useful material if they tell you how they discovered your page.
• Start thinking (if you haven’t already) about such an indicator as LTV (life time value). Revisiting the attribution model and implementing user IDs are good steps to overcome apathy and frustration with direct traffic.

Tying Google accounts Analytics and AdWords, you can quickly and conveniently track the performance of advertising campaigns and optimize promotion based on data. We have already written about Analytics and AdWords. Today we have a selection of Google Analytics reports to evaluate the effectiveness of paid traffic.

Group of reports “Traffic Sources”

This group allows you to compare channels, sources, advertising campaigns and keywords based on standard metrics such as bounce rate or average session duration, as well as conversion metrics.

Campaign report

To build a report, open the “Traffic Sources” report group, then “All Traffic” and select the standard “Source\Channel” report.

Select the source of interest, for example google/cpc, and click on it.

Set the Campaign option. To do this, in the “Main parameter” line, click on the “Other” item, then “Traffic sources” - “Campaign”.

Here you can evaluate the amount of traffic that a source and channel provides and its quality based on bounce rates, viewing depth, and session duration. This will help in optimizing work with channels and budget allocation.

Using this report, you can analyze the profitability of paid sources. To build a report at the source level, open the “Traffic Sources” report group, then “Campaigns” - “Cost Analysis”.

In the table, in the “Source or channel” column, select the required source, for example google / cpc and click on it. Data for campaigns belonging to this traffic source will open.

You can see which campaigns are performing better and which need to be improved. You can immediately analyze the effectiveness of keywords in the campaign of interest by selecting it in the column and clicking on it. Based on this data, adjust your bids based on the profitability of keywords or completely disable those that are not generating revenue.

Time to conversion

To find out how long it takes on average for a user to make a purchase decision, use the Time to Conversion report. To view statistics, select the “Conversions” report group, then “Multi-channel” - “Time to conversion”.

The report shows how many conversions and with what value occur on different days after the user first encounters the site. This data will help you understand the purchase cycle and, when setting up retargeting, determine how long to show ads to the user.

Multi-channel sequences

Typically, before placing an order, the user visits the site several times and from different sources. For example, users might first click on an ad and then arrive at the site with free search. And if this is a common situation, then we can assume that conversions are made mainly by organic users, and advertising is not working effectively. But after turning off advertising there will be an immediate decrease in sales.

Therefore, it is important to track the entire path potential clients: where they usually come to the site and what routes they take to return to it before converting. It will also help you set up cross-marketing using different channels of user interaction and correctly set up attribution models in AdWords. This can be done using the report group " Multi-channel sequences" We’ll tell you more about these reports; we also have a large and detailed one on this topic.

Shows all channels that the user interacts with before making a conversion. To view the report, find the “Conversions” item in the lower right sidebar, then select “Multi-Channel” - “Top Paths to Conversion.”

So, often the user comes first with Email, social networks and search, both paid and free.

A conversion is considered associated with source 1 if the user first went to the site from it, but completed the conversion when he returned to it from source 2. In the report, you can see the number associated conversions and conversions based on the last significant transition for each source.

To build a report, under Conversions, select Assisted Conversions.

By default, the report is built by channel groups. It can be drilled down to a specific channel, source or campaign. For example, you need to obtain data on campaigns on the social network VKontakte. To do this, select the “Source or channel” parameter and click on vk_ppcworld/social.

The more associated conversions, the more often the source is used as an auxiliary one. Please review this report before disabling any channels or campaigns. They may not bring direct conversions, but they are important stage on the way to completing an order.

Mobile Devices Report

Allows you to analyze the amount of traffic from mobile devices and determine what share of total traffic it makes up, as well as compare the conversion on them. We have articles from eLama and Molinos on why it's important to work with these reports.

In the “Audience” section, find the “Technology” tab. In it, select “Mobile devices”. The “Review” item will show the ratio of desktop, smartphone and tablet indicators.

The “Devices” item displays indicators for specific models smartphones or tablets.

If you notice that your site receives a lot of traffic from certain devices with a high bounce rate, the pages may not be optimized for that device. It may also be that all traffic from mobile devices has a high percentage of failures. In this case, the site is most likely not optimized for mobile users or are not displayed correctly. The following report from our collection will help you check the site loading speed.

Page loading time

The report is needed to understand how long it takes to open your site, find pages that take a long time to load, and fix the problem. It's especially important to track data for advertisers who receive the majority of their traffic from mobile devices. Users viewing the site on smartphones close the page if it does not load within a few seconds.

To view loading speed data, open the list of “Behavior” reports, then “Site Load Speed” - “Page Load Time”. As in previous reports, add the Paid Traffic segment.

Add the “Mobile Device Traffic” segment to your report to find out how quickly pages load for mobile users. By analogy, you can look at statistics on users of desktops and tablets.

In the same list you can find tips on increasing your download speed. Path to the report: “Behavior” - “Site loading speed” - “Loading acceleration”. Segment - “Paid traffic”. To the right of each page you'll see PageSpeed ​​suggestions. Click on them and you will see recommendations on how to optimize your site and increase its loading speed.