How To Add New or Custom Search Engines In Google Analytics For Reporting?
Gordon Choi
Author
- Chapter 11 – Track New Search Engines through Google Analytics
Google Analytics has a default list of search engines. When a user comes from one of the search engines in the list, the user’s session and all the metrics associated to this user will be accredited to the correct search engine.
However, if a user comes through a website (such as sm.cn, a local Chinese mobile search engine) that has not yet been added to the default list, then in Google Analytics reports the session will be accredited to medium “referral”.
Add a New Search Engine to Google Analytics
For the local search engines or new search engines that do not yet show up under organic search, you can manually configure Google Analytics to recognize them as search engines.
In Google Analytics, go to:
Admin -> Tracking Info -> Organic Search Sources -> Add Search Engine
Fill in the required fields (i.e. The search engine’s domain name & query parameter), click Create, and the new search engine will be added.
Google Analytics assigns any organic search engine session to a single source so the order of the search engines placed under Domain Name is sometimes important. Any organic search session is assigned to the first search engine on your list that matches the Domain Name and Query Parameter.
Let’s consider an example.
- If baidu.com is the first item on your list and image.baidu.com is second with both search engines using the same Query Parameter, such as word, all searches that happen on image.baidu.com are assigned to baidu.com.
- You can change the order of the search engines in the list to prioritize how sessions are assigned. If you place image.baidu.com first and baidu.com second, then all searches that happen on image.baidu.com will be assigned to image.baidu.com.
Previous Chapters
- Chapter 10 – Google Analytics Campaign Tracking
Next Chapters
- Chapter 12 – Google Analytics Custom Reports
- Chapter 13 – Google Analytics Self Referrals
- Chapter 14 – Google Analytics Sampled Data
Content on Gordon Choi’s Analytics Book is licensed under the CC Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International license.
Gordon Choi’s Other Books:
The China Mobile SEO Book
Mobile Website Book
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