Hidden Treasures in Google Analytics - SMX East 2011 - Adam Ware
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All analytics packages come with dozens, if not hundreds of reports that slice, dice and segment countless variables, all purporting to offer comprehensive metrics about the performance of your search marketing campaign. While many of these reports are great, you can often get much deeper insights – and “ah-ha” takeaways – from lesser known or even undocumented reporting options. Speakers in this session show you how to tap into these undiscovered gems.
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Hidden Treasures in Google Analytics - SMX East 2011 - Adam Ware
- 1. Hidden Treasures in Google Analytics SMX East 2011 Adam Ware @wheresitworking
- 2. My (Main) Hidden Treasure: Regular Expression & It’s Power in Google Analytics @wheresitworking SMX East 2011 | Hidden Treasures in Google Analytics 1
- 3. Overview of Regex “A regular expression provides a concise and flexible means for matching strings of text” - Wikipedia • A “language” for matching patterns through searches • Different “flavors” in different applications @wheresitworking SMX East 2011 | Hidden Treasures in Google Analytics 2
- 4. Regex in Google Analytics In report queries In Goals In Advanced Segments In Profile Filters @wheresitworking SMX East 2011 | Hidden Treasures in Google Analytics 3
- 5. Example I: Report Query for Branded Keywords @wheresitworking SMX East 2011 | Hidden Treasures in Google Analytics 4
- 6. How many ways can a branded term be spelled? @wheresitworking SMX East 2011 | Hidden Treasures in Google Analytics 5
- 7. Building a Regex: Start with Strings Tie together likely strings: br[a-z].*t[a-z].*y Will cover britney, brittney, brattney, brritney, britny, brinny, etc. That got us 326 out of 593! How do we get the rest? @wheresitworking SMX East 2011 | Hidden Treasures in Google Analytics 6
- 8. Add more strings String strings together using pipes and parenthesis: (br[a-z].*t[a-z].*y)|([g,p_r[a-z].*t[a-z].*ny)|(br[a-z].*t[a-z].*ni) Now up to 383 out of 593… @wheresitworking SMX East 2011 | Hidden Treasures in Google Analytics 7
- 9. But where do we put this? @wheresitworking SMX East 2011 | Hidden Treasures in Google Analytics 8
- 10. Example II: Query for 2 and 3 Word Phrases @wheresitworking SMX East 2011 | Hidden Treasures in Google Analytics 9
- 11. What’s in a word? This is basically stolen from a blog post by Carlos del Rio (@inflatemouse) ^s*[^s]+(s+[^s]+){1,2}s*$ Why would you want that? More specific searches happen deeper in the funnel? @wheresitworking SMX East 2011 | Hidden Treasures in Google Analytics 10
- 12. Put it in the same place… @wheresitworking SMX East 2011 | Hidden Treasures in Google Analytics 11
- 13. Want more words? @wheresitworking SMX East 2011 | Hidden Treasures in Google Analytics 12
- 14. Example III: Finding Specific Types of Landing Pages @wheresitworking SMX East 2011 | Hidden Treasures in Google Analytics 13
- 15. Ridin’ & Ropin’ “I want to see the key metrics for vistors who land on a men’s “cowboy boot” or “ropers and lacers” page – category or product detail.” Page paths are http://www.ariat.com/men/CowboyBoots/ProductName or http://www.ariat.com/men/RopingLacers/ Here is our RegEx: (/men/.*cowboy.*)|(/men/.*ropers.*) @wheresitworking SMX East 2011 | Hidden Treasures in Google Analytics 14
- 16. Similar place, different report Mmmmm, results to analyze…. @wheresitworking SMX East 2011 | Hidden Treasures in Google Analytics 15
- 17. Bonus Treasure! Motion Charts @wheresitworking SMX East 2011 | Hidden Treasures in Google Analytics 16
- 18. But wait, there’s more… This is just the tip of the iceberg with RegEx. Try building Advanced Segments with these… Don’t just look at the landing metrics for those pages, but see what those visitors do with the rest of their visit! @wheresitworking SMX East 2011 | Hidden Treasures in Google Analytics 17
- 19. What’s an advanced segment? You have to learn these! @wheresitworking SMX East 2011 | Hidden Treasures in Google Analytics 18
- 20. Basically the same capabilities as report queries But you view all your reports, and only see the metrics for these visitors! @wheresitworking SMX East 2011 | Hidden Treasures in Google Analytics 19
- 21. Resources & Thank You • Slides up at http://adam-ware.com/resources • Contact me if you have questions: Adam Ware (@wheresitworking) • Follow Us at @SwellPath or SwellPath.com/blog @wheresitworking SMX East 2011 | Hidden Treasures in Google Analytics 20
Editor's Notes
- It is essentially a language that is used in searches, for matching patterns. Enables the search to be far more complicated than it can be by simply trying to match alphanumeric patterns, even if there is the ability to use a wildcard.The different flavors depend on the regex “engine” the application uses; many commonalities, but many differences also.
- This comes from http://www.google.com/jobs/britney.html. There are 592 misspellings here, and one correct spelling.
- People are very likely to get the “br” in the beginning, a “t” in the middle, and the “y” at the end.
- Up to 383; not going to kill myself for this preso.
- Pipes and parenthesis allow us to use “or” logic in our regular expressions. Using them here, I’m able to get up to 383; not going to kill myself for this preso.
- This Regex selects 2 & 3 word grouping. This makes it very useful when applied to Keywords. For many sites 2-3 word phrases are the bulk of the search engine traffic (in some cases 50-60%). This group also has the quality of being the first place where action intent starts to appear. Consider the difference in intent between ‘Dog Costume” and “Batman Dog Costume.” Who is most likely at the end of their buy cycle?
- It all goes in the same place as the previous example…
- Want to see 4-word searches? Just change the numbers in the brackets….
- Next I’m going to talk about ways you can use RegEx to isolate pages in content-oriented reports, and in this specific example, the landing pages report.
- I’m using a client of ours as an example. This is Ariat International, they sell riding boots, including cowboy boots and roping boots. They sell many other kinds of boots, but let’s say they just want to see the data for landing pages in these two categories. Here are the URL paths we have to work with, and here is our RegEx
- We’re going to put it into an advanced report filter, just like before, but the dimension we’re filtering on is Landing Page (not keyword). So, plug that in, and I get the results I want.
- Here is my “bonus hidden treasure”. If you already know about these, hopefully you have found some cool ways to use them. If you don’t, I find the landing pages report one of the best places to use them. These are called Motion Charts. You can change the standard line trend chart to a Motion Chart by hitting the dropdown up here. There are many ways to tweak the chart, but in this example I’m looking at Visits on the X axis and Bounce Rate on the Y axis. I also have the size of the circles set to be visits and the color to be Bounces. Once I’ve absorbed how this all looks, I can “play” the last 30 days and identify pages that had “extreme” or abnormal numbers or rates of bounces. A very cool way to identify pages that may see weird drops and peaks in their bounce rate, or other anomalies.
- My last “hidden treasure” isn’t very hidden, it’s something that Google has promoted and brought to the forefront of the interface, but I find that most people aren’t using them. I find that even fewer people are combining the power of RegEx with Advanced Segments.
- Advanced Segments allow you to isolate a group of visitors and view most of the reports, just for that segment. You can think of some neat ways to use this; a very effective way to drill into your visitor base. You can access them from almost any report using the button/dropdown up here. To create your own custom segment, hit the button down here.
- The interface is very similar to the advanced query option in reports. And, we can use the same expressions we came up with for the report examples. We can actually create an advanced segment, and then analyze the behavior and activity of those visitors that reached our site via those keywords or through those landing pages. We can go look at any report, and only see the data for that segment. Awesome!