Comments on: Tracking Local Search Results

By: Martijn Beijk

Martijn Beijk — Fri, 21 May 2010 13:00:41 +0000

Hey Jaamit, the article you are referring to is nowadays to be found at martijnbeijk.com/how-to-track-universal-search-traffic-with-google-analytics/

By: Ugur Onur

Ugur Onur — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 18:54:10 +0000

thanks for information. it’s very useful

By: jaamit

jaamit — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 16:18:42 +0000

I tried doing this a few weeks ago and the listing seems to have disappeared completely from Google Local! WTF? Any ideas whether that is related to me adding the tracking URL? Have removed it now, will wait and see if it comes back.

Think I’ll use this method of tracking instead: http://www.searchcowboys.com/seo/256

By: Christoph Gummersbach

Christoph Gummersbach — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 07:40:50 +0000

Hi Jim, good tip! I always realize that there are still another points to track. Aside from standard campaign trackings I used to do that for Google Product Search (Google Base) referers and also for email-footer referers …

By: Jim

Jim — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 14:37:44 +0000

Hi Ben – good question.

Google Analytics already differentiates between visits from http://www.google.com and maps.google.com. It shows visits from Google Maps (http://maps.google.com) as referral visits from maps.google.com (as opposed to visits from http://www.google.com, which appear as organic search visits from Google).

The problem is when the maps/local results (local 10-pack) are included in the normal web search results at http://www.google.com. Clicks on those local results show up in GA as organic search visits from Google – not very helpful.

As long as you code your URL in the Google Local Business Center to include the campaign tracking parameter (utm_campaign=local), then it’s easy to look at just those visits in your GA by going to Traffic Sources > Campaigns. Also, the new Advanced Segments feature in GA makes it even easier to view the different metrics and dimensions of just that group of visitors.

By: Ben of AusMedWeb

Ben of AusMedWeb — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 22:43:29 +0000

Thanks. Love the tip as I’ve been wondering about how to do that for some time. A question though – do the results show up neatly in Google Analytics or do you have to do some filtering to see traffic coming from Google Maps? Surely it is only a matter of time before Google split out the Maps results in Analytics themselves.