Google Analytics Search Ranking Filters for New URLs

Google is starting to add the search ranking directly to the referring URL which means the convoluted search ranking filters I wrote about earlier will soon be obsolete. That’s good news because now we’re going to have much better information than before and it’s going to be easier to get.

I quickly took the sample query string from the Clickz article and created a set of filters that should give you the exact search ranking in Google Analytics.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=7&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.com%2Fmypage.htm&ei=0SjdSa-1N5O8M_qW8dQN&rct=j&q=flowers&usg=AFQjCNHJXSUh7Vw7oubPaO3tZOzz-F-u_w&sig2=X8uCFh6IoPtnwmvGMULQfw

I can’t test this out because I’m still getting the old query string, but I’m confident this will work.

Setup Instructions

Create a Profile for the Filters

If you need instructions explaining how to do this, have a look at my original clean SERP report post. I called my new profile Google Search Ranking.

Filter Organic Traffic

Create a Custom > Include filter. Choose Campaign Medium for the Filter Field and enter organic for the Filter Pattern. More detailed instructions are again in my original clean SERP report post.

Filter Old Google Organic URLs

Google is rolling out the new URL format slowly. That means you’re going to get a lot of matches with no data if you don’t filter out the old URLs. As an added bonus, this filter also banishes Yahoo and Live as well, so we won’t be needing to create a separate filter to get rid of them.

Create a Custom > Include filter. Select Referral for the Filter Field and enter google\.[a-z]+/url in the Filter Pattern box.

The /url part of the Filter Pattern identifies search queries using the new string.

Output Google Ranking

1. Create a Custom > Advanced filter.
2. In the Field A -> Extract A area, select Campaign Term and enter (.*).
3. In the Field B -> Extract B area, select Referral and enter (\?|&)cd=([^&]*).
4. In the Output to -> Constructor area, select User Defined and enter $A1 | Rank: $B2.

Assign Filter Order

Make sure the filters are in the order you created them. You can do this in the Profile Settings page by clicking on the Assign Filter Order link just above the list of filters applied to this profile.

Viewing the Search Ranking Report

You can see your data in the Visitors > User Defined report.

Remember, though, it takes about a day before you start seeing data and there’s a good chance you won’t get any visitors using the new query string for awhile so don’t panic. Yet.

Tagged as: Google Analytics, search ranking, SEO