By default, Google Analytics will show you some great information about your organic search engine rankings (also known as “free” or “natural results”), such as which terms brought visitors to your site via the search engines. However, Google Analytics does not include where that keyword ranked as part of the display. This information is now even more valuable as individualized/personalized search results mean that we all get different results and thus have rendered the tools that monitor rankings less accurate.
There have been several methods to provide clues about ranking information in the past, but each had it’s limitations. But now that Google is modifying the way queries are structured, we can use this filter that will bring us this information inside the reports automatically.
Using this method, the standard Keywords report will now display the keywords ranking in parenthesis directly after the term.
The Filter(s)
There are two versions of the filter: a simple one-step filter for those not running pay-per-click campaigns (like Google Adwords) and a two-step filter for those that are running PPC.
Below is the simplified, one step version:
Filter Text:
Campaign Term: (.*)
Referral: (\?|&)(cd)=([^&]*)
Campaign Term: $A1 ($B3)
If you are using Adwords or other paid search, you may want to use the alternate two-step filter that will isolate the organic traffic.
Tip: We suggest creating a new profile specifically for this filter so that you can maintain the default keyword report in addition to this enhanced version.
Caveat: Google is currently rolling out the new format, so it will not capture the ranking of all of the keywords immediatley.
[...] Not to mention the great comment from WebShare, with detailed instructions how to set up an advanced GA (Google Analytics) filter to track the Rank Data in the referrer string. (I’m testing out the filter with a couple of [...]
This is awesome ! I have applied the filter and waiting for the reports. When do you think the keywords will appear ? After 24 hours ?. Also will I have to go User Defined > User report to see the ranking report exactly as displayed above.
Please reply.
Nice follow up on my filter, who would have thought Google Analytics would replace all ranking tools ;)
@Atul
The ranking will appear only when users search via the new Google interface, which appears to be rolling out to some users as we speak.
This particular filter doesn’t use the user defined report, but actually modifies the the keyword report itself. This avoids the problems with the user defined report method, but means that you probably should apply the filter in a new profile to be on the safe side.
Another reason to recommend using this filter in a separate profile is that the result may affect your ability to easily see the traffic brought by each key phrase as a whole.
Until some data is built up the implications of this may not be clear, but it seems likely to me that personalized search results will mean that each key phrase may well appear several times. This will, in itself, be interesting data. But it does mean that the combined total might not be obvious.
Based on what I’ve seen elsewhere, using the results page offset to set user-defined, there probably wont be many clicks from pages after the first one. But each key-phrase could well be repeated up to 10 times just from page one. It’ll be intersting to see.
by this – still interesting – way, if Google modifies my position for a keyword, or user is runnig a search while logged, potentially i could see something like
keyword A (7)
keyword B (12)
KEYWORD A (6)
KEYWORD A (8)
is this filter disaggregating my keyword?
[...] bloccato soprattutto dal fatto che non ho ancora trovato un referrer “nuovo”) sul sito websharedesign.com è apparso il filtro fatto e finito. Diamo quindi a Cesare quel che è di Cesare, perché intanto [...]
Any major regexp difference between yours:
(\?|&)(cd)=([^&]*)
and mine:
cd=([1-9]|10)
Just out of curiosity ;-)
Great post. I started providing reports utilizing filters. The clients are loving it.
[...] Display Search Engine Rankings (SEO) in Google Analytics, WebShare Blog [...]
Beware about the ranking numbers when they are getting larger than 10. Ranking 11 and larger (have seen up 20) can be page 1 rankings. I wrote about this some days ago (including my solution of tracking rankings):
http://www.savio.no/blogg/a/81/google-analytics-how-to-track-google-keyword-ranking-from-your-visitors
@Marco
Yes. This is one of the reasons we suggest you run this filter in a new, duplicate profile, so that you can see this data, without altering your “standard” keyword reports.
[...] the rankings in your keywords report. Here is one of the posts that shows you how to set up the filters in Google Analytics [...]
What happens if the ranking changes within the date range? What position will be displayed?
The ranking displayed is the ranking that was there when that visitor made the click. So if there are several positions during the time period when people click, you will have several positions listed.
Hey everyone, what percentage of searchers are being fed this search update?
Thank you for contributing. I added your code to my google analytics account. I will report back my findings
cheers
SEO Guy
Very nice information. Thanks for this.
Just as a quick update – it appears that around 3-5% of profiled web traffic is seeing this search update, and note that it is ONLY applicable to Firefox browser users.
I’ve long lobbied Google to create their own rank checking mechanism and charge for it, instead of of banning IP addresses or 3rd party services that task their servers with the same queries. They have the data, it’s quite obvious that rank checking is still an essential part of SEO (despite the “rankings are dead” camp). it’s great they are doing this, but it is currently less perfect than 3rd party solutions.
Why? It does not include Yahoo/Bing data (or outside U.S. if you’re doing international search) and it doesn’t have the reach yet (see the 3-5%) to be very useful or reliable (which, I know, is a strange word to use for any rank checker) as existing 3rd party solutions.
Andre, I wonder what you think about this solution vs your outstanding post that predated this. Looks like this indicates position and not page for google, but your solution has page capability for Yahoo and Bing (if I’m reading things correctly). Do you see a way to use above and apply to Yahoo and Bing too?
I spend a lot of time combining reports into one master spreadsheet (for SEO Audit phase) that shows keyword volume estimates, source & data on those words (GA, trellian, wordtracker, past traffic, brainstorming) + ranking on top 3 engines + urls ranking. In the end, it’s a wonderfully useful and powerful document. I have built a few macros to automate portions of it, but if we could get top 3 SE ranking data (position not page) built into GA reports…wow!
Sean