Tracking referrals from Google Base can be difficult and confusing. As noted in todays post by on the Google Base blog one way to solve that problem is to create different landing pages for your Google Base entries. That is not so great advice from a company that suggest that we make pages for people and not bots. Besides the amount of effort you would have to put into making the pages, you could end up looking spammy and creating a metric crap ton of duplicate content. I don’t think the they really thought this post all the way through.
An altogether easier way it to simply add a query string to your Google Base submission that designates the source of the traffic. An example might look like this “http://mycoolsite.com/super-cool-page/?ref=base”. Then to determine the amount of traffic you get from Google Base go to the Content Section, select the “landing pages report”, and in the “find url search” at the bottom search for urls containing “ref=base”.
Now isn’t that much easier than duplicating your whole site?
Step One:
Step Two:
Step Three:
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LOL - the images are priceless, Scott. :-)
I’m glad someone makes sense, unlike Googlebase blog! :-)
Geez, it doesn’t get any easier than that! You rock!!
I love the fine images too. Without even realizing it, you gave me some other food for thought, which I’m thankful. :)
[...] Tracking Google Base Referrals using Google Analytics Scott Horne, Web Professor | 5/10/07 [...]
[...] Tracking Google Base Referrals using Google Analytics Scott Horne, Web Professor | 5/10/07 [...]
What about adding ?utm_source=Google%20Base , wouldn’t that be better? In my recent search on how to track Google Base traffic, all I am able to find is the ref=base. Does Analytics now offer better means to track Base traffic?