Measuring Success

Google Analytics recognises 41 search engines by default. Although this is constantly being added to, there are of course a great many other search engines in the world – language and region specific, as well as price comparison and vertical portals. The purpose of this hack, is to be able to differentiate regional variations of search engines. For example, instead of just reporting search engines as their generic Google, Yahoo, MSN etc. (as Google Analytics will do by default), I want to be more regional specific in order to compare SEM efforts in different countries: [ Last update Dec 2009: Now 100+ additional SEs + GA defaults (140+ domains). You no longer need to re-define the default set of search engines that Google Analytics uses as this hack now prepends new search engines to GA's list. For details on new prepend revision see: code.google.com ] Google.com Google.co.uk MSN.co.uk MSN.fr eniro.se [...]

My standard word of caution – This is a tech tip and requires you to have a knowledge of html and javascript to implement and use it… [Update 03-Nov-2008: This hack is for the legacy urchin.js tracking code. For the ga.js version read: Customising the list of search engines in Google Analytics.] Google Analytics shows which search engine your visitors/customers have used in the Traffic Sources > Search Engines report. To view the list of all the search engines that Google Analytics currently identifies by default, simply load into your browser http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js. In this file you will see the section commented as: //– Auto/Organic Sources and Keywords This section is where the organic search engines are defined that once captured by the Google Analytics Tracking Code (GATC) will be reported in the reports interface. By looking at this section, you will notice that the current number of organic search engines [...]