Google Analytics: Creating Advanced Segments and an Issue

Last month Google Analytics released Advanced Segmentation functionality. I am very impressed with it so far, however this functionality is still in beta, which means it could potentially have some issues. In this post I will show you how to create an advanced segment and one issue that I found with it.

Business Problem: I want to see all the data for visits that originate from Google.

Solution: Create an Advanced Segment that will have all the visits that has the source as google.

Let’s see how to create such a segment. (Not this is a very simple segment but the same steps can be used to create more complex segments).

Creating an “Advanced Segment”

1. Click on the “Advanced Segments” link on the left navigation bar under the “Settings” section.

   

2. In the next screen you will see all the “Advanced Segments”. In this screen you manage all the advanced segments. Google Analytics has predefined some of the segments and they are grouped under “Default Segments”. The segments that you create will be listed under “Custom Segments”. To create a new segment, click on the “Create new custom segment” link on the top right hand corner.

   

3. The next screen is where you create the segment. The segments can be created by using one or more dimensions and metrics. On the left hand side you have 2 sections “Dimensions” and “Metrics”. I chose a dimension of “Source” listed under “Traffic Source” as I wanted to see all the visits which originated from Google (i.e. the source was Google). I chose “contains” as the condition as I wanted to get all the visits that originated from anything that contained Google in the source. Finally I entered the word “google” in the value.

   

4. Click on “Test Segment” button to do a sanity check and see if the segment size is as expected. Once you are satisfied with the segment, give it a name in “New Segment” filed and click “Save Segment” to Save the segment.

   

5. Once you the save the segment you will be taken back to “Mange Segments” where your new segment will appear. See below, a new segment called “Google Visits” show up. The new segment is now ready to be applied to various reports.

   

So far so good. However, I found one potential issue with the data.

The Issue

I applied this segment to one of the pages in my Content Report (see below) and chose the date as Nov 3rd.

As you can see my “Google Visit” segment is reporting 328 pageviews while my “All Segments” is reporting only 175 pageviews. That does not seem right. Similarly Unique Views is 112 for “All Visits” while 201 for “Google Visits”. As you can also see from the graph, “Google Visits” are higher than “All Visits” on several dates not just November 3rd. Has anyone else seen something similar? Am I not reading these reports correctly?

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Site: AnilBatra.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/anilbatra
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Goal Attribution to Organic Keywords – Google Analytics Tips and Tricks

In April I wrote a blog post to show you why some of your keywords show 0 Visits and 0 page views in your Google Analytics Report. In this post I am going to show the attribution of goal to the search engine keywords, when a user searches multiple keywords on the search engines to visit your site (all within the same session) and converts from one of the keywords.

Note: The past post and this one are both based on the Organics keywords searches and clicks.

I conducted two following two experiments

1. Converted on the Last Keyword
   1. Searched “1 page no register seattleindian” on Google, arrived on http://www.seattleindian.com/ , viewed one page and existed the site by typing Google.com in the browser address bar
   2. Searched “2 pages no register seattleindian” on Google, arrived on http://www.seattleindian.com, viewed 2 pages and then exited the site by typing Google.com in the browser address bar
   3. Searched “4 pages register seattleindian” on Google, arrived on http://www.seattleindian.com , registered on the site (converted, Goal 1), viewed total of 4 pages and then exited the site by closing the browser
   4. All of the above was done within 30 minutes and using the same browser session

   Visit and Page View Attribution

   As you can see my visit resulted in 3 keywords, total of 7 page views and 1 visit (visit time out is 30 mins and all of it was done in 30 minutes). As I showed you in the last post, 1 page view is shown and attributed to 1st keyword. The other keywords do not get visits or page views attribution (Figure 1). The total pages are accounted and counted in the keyword report even though 6 pages were not attributed to any particular keyword (Figure 2)

   
   Figure 1 (click on the image to enlarge it)

   
   Figure 2 (click on the image to enlarge it)

   Goal Attribution

   In this scenario, the Goal is attributed to overall search engine keywords but not to any particular keyword.

   
   Figure 3 (click on the image to enlarge it)

2. Converted on the First Keyword
   1. Searched “SeattleIndian 4 pages register test 3” on Google, arrived on http://www.seattleindian.com , viewed 4 pages, registered on the site (converted, Goal 1) and then exited the site by typing in Google.com in the browser address bar
   2. Searched “SeattleIndian 3 pages no register test 3” on Google, arrived on http://www.seattleindian.com, viewed 3 pages and then exited the site by typing Google.com in the browser address bar
   3. Searched “SeattleIndian 1 pages no register test 3” on Google, arrived on http://www.seattleindian.com , viewed 1 page and then existed the site by closing the browser
   4. All of the above was done within 30 minutes and using the same browser session

   Visit and Page View Attribution

   In this case I converted (Goal 1) when I arrived via the first keyword. When I look at the Site Usage of keywords, the first keywords is credited with 1 visit and 4 pages, the other two keywords did not get any credit of the visit or the pages that were viewed as a result of click on those keywords. So the 3 pages are not attributed to any keyword. This is what I showed in my last post.

   
   Figure 4 (click on the image to enlarge it)

   
   Figure 5 (click on the image to enlarge it)

   Goal Attribution

   In this scenario when the conversion happens from the first keyword, the goal is properly attributed to that keyword.

Conclusion

When a user searches multiple keywords to arrive to the site,

1. The visit is attributed to the first keyword only
2. The page views directly related to the first keyword are attributed to that keyword and other keywords show 0 visit and 0 page views
3. Total page views from all the keywords are counted in the overall keyword report
4. If the conversion happens as a result of the first keyword then it is attributed to that keyword
5. If the conversion happens as a result of any of the keyword other than the first one, then the conversion is not attributed to any of the keywords
6. The conversion from any keyword is counted in the overall keyword report

What’s next? I will be testing how attribution works when a user clicks both Organic (SEO) and Paid PPC (search result) within the same visit.

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Web Analytics Buyer’s Guide, Assessing Vendors’ Competencies and Value

John Lovett from Jupiter Research released his new report titled Web Analytics Buyer’s Guide, Assessing Vendors’ Competencies and Value. In this report he analyzed the web analytics market and various vendors, and concluded:

The Web analytics feature race is largely over and we are left with Web Analytics providers competing on Price and Flexibility.

John provides great analysis and insights in this report but I do not fully agree with his conclusion that feature race is largely over. I believe that as new trends in web continue to emerge so is the need for new features. As Phil Kemelor, another great analyst, writes that audio and video are becoming an important part of the web, so there are clearly features needed to support their tracking. Other features currently missing are for Mobile Analytics. Mobile web is clearly gaining momentum and so is a need for Mobile Analytics. I am sure Product Managers of these tool providers are not ready to quit yet.

I do agree that most of the vendors are mostly competing on Price and Flexibility (post-data-capture segmentation, reporting on custom data elements etc.) at this time. (In my view, flexibility is also a feature though). However competing on price when there is still a lot of room for innovation and differentiation is a very myopic view by current web analytics vendor and will provide a way for someone to disrupt their business very quickly.

Satisfaction with the current tool

One of the surprising results in this report was that more than 69% of the web analytics clients have decided to stay with their current web analytics tool. This is a big change from the trend that we have seen in past. A lot of this has to do with education about web analytics tools, what they can do, how they operate and the fact that several most used features and reports are comparable in various tools.
72% of those 69% where completely satisfied with their current provider.
47% of the customer said that the biggest challenge they were trying to solve with Web Analytics tools was Vistor Segmentation. 47% also said that customer engagement was their biggest challenge.

And the Winner Is?

This report has a great 3 dimensional chart showing how different tool vendors rate in terms of business value, market suitability and breadth of company.
Omniture, Unica, and Coremetrics emerged as industry leaders for large enterprises while WebTrends, Google Analytics, IndexTools and Lyris HQ ClickTracks emerged as industry leader for small-to-midsize businesses along with the three listed for large enterprise customers.

It was surprising to see that WebTrends was not considered an enterprise tool anymore, though WebTrends was the only company to score 100% on availability of basic features. (Sidenote: A customer of ours is replacing Coremetrics and going with WebTrends).
Another surprising result was that Omniture was the overall winner even for small-to-midsize businesses.

You can get the complete report at http://www.jupiterresearch.com/bin/item.pl/research:vision/79/id=100411

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Google Ad Planner

A lot of you might already know that Google announced the release of Google Ad Planner. This free media research and planner tool allows advertisers/agencies to find the Web sites that match their desired target audiences so that they can decide where to spend their advertising dollars.

This tool along with other tools such as Google Analytics Benchmarking, Google Trends for Websites positions Google well in competition with Nielsen , Quantcast, Hitwise and Compete.

I got my account to Google Ad Planner last week and I can tell you that I was impressed. Yes, there are a lot of features that are not there yet but nonetheless this tool is pretty powerful. Using this tool you can find smaller sites to advertise that you would normally not look at.

How does Google Ad Planner Work

1. When you first enter the tool it show you how many total Unique Visitors and Pageviews that you can reach (that is total internet usage) if you advertised on the whole internet.
2. Then you can choose specific country and/or language to narrow down your target audience.
3. Next you can enter any demographic information to further narrow down your target audience. The demographics that are available are gender, age range, education and household income.
4. Finally you can narrow or expand your target audience by particular sites. You have two options in this filter to choose from
   1. any site below
   2. all sites below

   Below is the description of this filter from Google Ad Planner Help.
   Choosing any site below means any internet user in the sample set who meets at least one of the criteria will be included in your audience.
   Choosing all sites below means internet users in the sample set must meet all of the criteria in order to be included in your audience.
   For example, if you specify ‘Site A,’ ‘Site B,’ and ‘Site C’ as sites your audience is likely to visit, then select the all sites below filter, only internet users in the sample set who visit all three sites will be included in your audience.
   If, however, you select the any site below filter, an internet user in the sample set who only visits Site A and Site C will still be included in your search results.

5. Another filter option is to limit your audience to only those sites that are in Google Content Network and the ad sizes these publishers support. This option is very useful if you are limited to using Google Adwords for your media buys.

Apart from Media planning, this tool can be used to do competitive analysis. For example, it can show you what percentage of your users also go to your competitor’s site. It can show you what other sites your competitor’s visitors visit – Good for analysis and then planning your media buy. It can show you the demographic mix of your competitors visitors.

Like Google trends, Google Ad Planner needs to be integrated into Google Analytics. Microsoft Gatineau overlaid some of the demographic data into the web analytics reporting, Google just showed you that they have that data too, plus some more. So it is matter of time when this data will be available in Google Analytics.

Google started using its Monopolistic Powers? Do No Evil?

On Monday, I wrote about Google Trends for Websites, a tool that lets you trend and compare unique visitor counts for websites.

It combines data from variety of sources, such as aggregated Google search data, aggregated opt-in anonymous Google Analytics data, opt-in consumer panel data, and other third-party market research. Remember, a while back Google asked you to opt-into data sharing in Google Analytics, this is one place where your data is being used.

If you don’t want your site to be listed in this tool because you don’t want you competitors to know how you are doing, then how do you opt-out?

Let’s assume that you are using Google Analytics and have opted-in to Google Analytics Data Sharing. In that case Google should be using your Google Analytics data to show your site starts in Google Trends, that is more accurate than any other kind of data (well sort of). So if you do opt-out from Google Analytics data sharing, Google will revert to other sources of data e.g. toolbar, Google search data etc, which means you will still be listed in Google Trends for Websites.

The only way to completely remove your site from Google Trends from websites is by opting-out of Google Search engine by using a robot.txt to not let googlebot crawl your site. Remember, by doing so you will probably loose a good chuck of you traffic, traffic that comes via Google search engine. And why would you do that? In other words, you don’t have a choice. You are opted-in in Google Trends for websites by default and you have no way out. (Note, even if you could opt-out of Google Trends, competitors can still find out about your traffic etc using other services such as comScore but this one is Free so makes your data widely available).

On the other hand Google Properties such as Google.com, Orkut, do not have to follow the same process. According to Google, “We do not show Google.com properties on Trends for Websites. We have policy of not providing interim financial guidance, and have decided not to release Google numbers in accordance with that policy.” Hmmm…what about other companies? Should Google not respect their policy?

Now won’t you call using (abusing) your monopolistic power?

Comments?

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Google Trends for Websites

Google has released a new tool called Google Trends for Websites to compete with the likes of Alexa, Compete, Hitwise, Comscore Nielsen Net Ratings. This is exactly what I predicted in my blog post on April, Friday the 13th, 2007. I wrote, “Another effect of the widespread code of Google could be the death of companies like Alexa, Compete, Comscore etc. Google can provide the internet usage data that won’t be based on a sample of those who participate (voluntarily or by installing some kind of application such as a toolbar) but on the Google cookies which will be on almost every single computer connected to the internet.”

I also said, “However, this business might not be so lucrative for them. Why would they want to let others know how people use internet when they can use it to make it Googlenet (formerly known as internet) or GWW – Google Wide Web (formerly know as World Wide Web).” I think this business might not make them money but will help them dominate Word Wide Web and make it Google Wide Web.”

So how does Google Trends for Websites work?

Google Trends for Websites allow you to trend and compare number of daily unique visitors for up to 5 sites.

Below is a screen shot of Google Trends for Websites. I compared Walmart.com with Amazon.com.

Source: http://trends.google.com/websites?q=walmart.com%2C+amazon.com&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

You can see daily visitors on the graph and a list of

1. regions where visitors originated from
2. Other websites that they have also visited. The list shows a correlation between different sites.
3. search terms they have also searched for. The list shows a correlation between different sites

You can breakdown the data by region and time frame.

It combines data from variety of sources, such as aggregated Google search data, aggregated opt-in anonymous Google Analytics data, opt-in consumer panel data, and other third-party market research. Remember, a while back Google asked you to opt-into data sharing in Google Analytics, this is one place where your data is being used.

Are all Sites Included in this tool?

No, at this time not all the sites are included in Google Trends for Websites. Here is why certain sites may not be included

• Websites with low traffic volume below certain threshold
• Websites that don’t wish to be indexed by Google and have indicated their preference through a robots.txt exclusion file
• Websites that don’t adhere to Google Quality Guidelines
• Other websites for miscellaneous reasons

Just like other similar service (Compete, Alexa, Comscore etc.), Google Trends numbers won’t match the number you will see with your web analytics tool. However, considering the number of sources that Google can potentially collect and aggregate data from, in future this might provide the best approximation, totally outdoing other competing tools.

What’s next?

1. Integration of Google Trends with Google Analytics, so that you can get competitive information in one place.
2. A service for website owners to collect “Voice of Customer” data – surveys, opinions etc. (Watch out OpinionLab, you are next) This service will enhance Google Services such as Search (page rank algorithm), Google Trends and Google Analytics.

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New Positions

1. Sr. Web Analytics Manager at NY Times Company (New York, New York)

2. Director, Web/E-Commerce Analytics at World Wrestling Entertainment, INC (Stamford, Connecticut)

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Tracking TV Campaigns on Google AdWords using Google Analytics

Today Google announced, that the advertisers who run TV Campaigns via Google AdWords can track the online impact of those TV ads using Google Analytics.
According to Google AdWords blog, you can track website metrics, such as visits, conversion rates and revenue, alongside metrics from your TV Ads campaigns such as:

• Impressions delivered
• Number of ad plays
• Cost
• CPM paid

• Impression Delivered is Total impressions delivered — an impression is defined as an active television that is tuned to and displays your commercial for 2 seconds or more.
• Number of Ad plays – I am not sure what this means but this probably refers to total number of active televisions that viewed the entire ad. I will provide more information as I get more detials.
• Cost is the total cost that was paid for the campaign
• CPM is the cost per thousand impressions delivered

So now you can start to see online, radio and TV ads all in the same reporting. Pretty cool!!

Here is a screen shot of the report that you will get.

Google Analytics Data Sharing

Google Analytics has an option to allow you to share your analytics data with Google in return for services like Google Benchmarking and enhanced ad features that will be released in future. Google provides following two options for data sharing.

1. With Google products only

   What do you get with this option? Enable enhanced ad features and an improved experience with AdWords, AdSense and other Google products by sharing your website’s Google Analytics data with other Google services. Only Google services (no third parties) will be able to access your data.

2. Anonymously with Google products and the benchmarking service

   What do you get with this option? Enable benchmarking within Google Analytics by sharing your website data in an anonymous form. Google will remove all identifiable information about your website, combine the data with hundreds of other anonymous sites in comparable industries and report aggregate trends in the benchmarking service. Google will also use this data in anonymous form to improve our products and services.

Since companies are concerned about their data, the first question that most of them are asking is “Should we share data with Google and how will the data be used?”
In this post I will provide my views on Google Analytics data sharing service. Please note that I am not associated with Google or any Google entity and have not worked with them in any capacity. These are my views only, based on my past experience with Analytics , Online Adverting and Behavioral Targeting companies and services.

So what do I think?

As I had written in past, Google will be entering the Behavioral Targeting space. For it to realize full power of Behavioral Targeting it will need to aggregate the data it collects from sites across the web via its various services such as Google Toolbar, Adsense, Adwords, Google Analytics, YouTube, Google Checkout, Google Optimizer etc. Since there is so much concern about privacy and data usage by Companies like Google, it will create a lot of problem for Google if they just start aggregating all this data. To make sure Google is easing these concerns about how Google can use the data it collects from its services, in particular data from its business oriented services such Google Analytics, Adword etc , it has to seek permission from the site owners (and visitors).
Google is starting this with Google Analytics. It is asking your permission to allow them to aggregate your Google Analytics data in return for some free services such as Benchmarking and others services yet to come.

Option 1

Let’s start with Option 1 “With Google products only”. The description of this option can be interpreted in the following two ways

1. If you chose this option your Analytics data will be shared by other Google services that you use. This data will only be used to enhance Google products, Adwords, Adsense etc. used by you using your Google Analytics data. So they are asking you to opt-in into tighter integration of these products (sort of like Omniture genesis). Your data will not be shared with any other company or used to enhance Adwords or Adsense for any other company.

Or it could also mean

2. Your data will be used at an aggregated level to enhance Adwords, Adsense or other Google products to help Google. This is along the lines of Behavioral Targeting. Say you operate an online golf store. You have some buyer who frequently come and buy products from you. Google knows a lot about those users (e.g. they buy golf balls on regular basis and hence are avid golfers). When these users goes on another sites that serves Adsense ads, Google can serve ads about Golf balls or other Golf products even though that site might have nothing to do with Golf, but it knows that these visitors are avid golfers and are more likely to click on golf ads. Now these ads could be yours or of your competitors, you won’t know. Also Google will be able to charge more as they will allow advertisers to reach the right target customers, a great deal for the advertiser and Google. This raises 2 main questions (and maybe a lot more).
   1. Why should you allow Google to use your data to power your competitors’ ads and hence loose customers?
   2. Why should you allow Google to charge more for targeting based on the data that was collected on your site? Shouldn’t you get a piece of it?

Option 2

“Anonymously with Google products and the benchmarking service” has the following two components

1. Benchmarking: Most of the companies want to benchmark and see how they are doing compared to other companies in their vertical, size etc. This sort of data is usually available from companies like Nielsen Net Ratings, Comscore, Hitwise, Compete for a fee. Realizing the needs of consumers Google Analytics is providing this service as an option in Google Analytics. The data is anonymous and aggregated so I don’t have a problem with letting them use my data and provide me free benchmarking data. (Note: I had talked about them entering this space in my blog post, on April 13 , 2007 ( “Google and Behavioral Targeting” , way before they released the data sharing services).
2. Google Products: Even tough Google is saying that it will make the data “anonymous”, what it really is saying is that it will remove information about your site from the data (the site where data is collected). In nutshell, I think this still refers to the same type of data sharing as mentioned in point number 2 of Option 1 (above) so I have same concerns as I already mentioned.

So what should you do?

It depends on your situation.

Option Number 1: If it is really to help you better your ads and optimize your site and conversion then you should opt-in. At this time it is not clear. I would say opt-in for a less strategic site (if you have multiple) and see how it works then you can always opt-out if it is not what you expect. I will of course blog about it in future on how they actually use the data.

Option Number 2: For now, in my opinion, you are ok with sharing your data to use Benchmarking services. You can always opt-out later when Google starts to use this data to power Adwords and Adsense.

User Privacy

Even though Google is making the data anonymous it is only referring to privacy of the site not of the individual visitors. It is up for debate who owns the data, the visitor, the website where data is collected or third party tool like Google Analytics. They are asking your (site owners) permission by asking you to opt-in to data sharing. To ensure Google covers all it bases when (note I did not say IF) they decide to behavioral targeting based on all the data collected they will seek to get user permission too (or I think they should).

Privacy policies are different in different countries so you should comply with local privacy policies before allowing Google to aggregate data collected on your site. It is always a good idea to clearly mention in your sites’ privacy policy how you are allowing 3rd parties to anonymously collect and aggregate the data for Benchmarking and other marketing services.

Comments? Questions?

Web Analytics Industry – Consolidation Continues

Last month I wrote about ZeroDash1 and IndexTools getting into partnership. Few days later we (ZeroDash1) were acquired by Ascentium, a marketing an technology company based in Bellevue, WA.

Now IndexTool has been acquired by Yahoo.

“Yahoo! believes that the ability to generate the most valuable and relevant insights is essential to seizing market opportunities and creating successful campaigns,” said Bassel Ojjeh “We expect that the IndexTools’ technology platform will provide our customers the opportunity to more quickly uncover and act on these insights, enhancing Yahoo!’s status as a partner of choice in online marketing and the must buy for the world’s advertisers.”

I am not sure if IndexTools will continue to offer its tool for a fee (as it is today) or become a free webanalytics tool like Google Analytics. I think that Yahoo will take the route of Google Analytics and Microsoft Gatineau and make it a free tool. IndexTool is, however, a better tool in terms of functionality it offers compared to Google and Microsoft’s tool.

A free offering from Yahoo will change the Web Analytics landscape. If yahoo is smart they will make index tool available for free as soon as possible. I will replace GA with IndexTool in a heartbeat (as I don’t tie my Adwords to GA).

So what’s next?

Here are few scenarios

Scenario 1

1. Google Analytics, Microsoft Analytics (and some other tools) will not be able to compete with IndexTools free offering.
2. Microsoft will need to step up its offering quite a bit (considering the deal with Yahoo is not happening), they should buy WebTrends. Webtrends is built on MS technology and provides far more functionality than IndexTools (Let’s call it Yahoo Analytics). Which will make Microsoft the leader, Yahoo second and Google third in web analytics capability.
3. Now, Google won’t stand still. They will use their stock power to buy Omniture and replace Google Analytics with Omniture.
4. Which will make Google the leader once again, Microsoft second and Yahoo Third
5. Microsoft then buys Yahoo and it will be down to two Google and Microsoft. We won’t have one clear leader as both will be close.

Scenario 2

1. Google Analytics, Microsoft Analytics (and some other tools) will not be able to compete with IndexTools free offering.
2. Considering Microsoft’s intent to buy Yahoo, Google will spring into action and buy Webtrends and Omniture.
3. Which will make Google the leader once again, Microsoft second and Yahoo Third
4. Microsoft then buys Yahoo and it will be down to two Google and Microsoft. We won’t have one clear leader as both will be close.

Scenario 3:

1. Google Analytics, Microsoft Analytics (and some other tools) will not be able to compete with IndexTools free offering.
2. Microsoft will need to step up its offering quite a bit (considering the deal with Yahoo is not happening), they should buy WebTrends. Webtrends is built on MS technology and provides far more functionality than IndexTools (Let’s call it Yahoo Analytics). Which will make Microsoft the leader, Yahoo second and Google third in web analytics capability.
3. Oracle, which is on the sidelines but one Web analytics company recently, jumps into action and buys Omniture and makes it free.
4. Which will make Oracle the leader once again, Microsoft second and Yahoo Third and Google the fourth.
5. Microsoft then buys Yahoo and it will be down to three Oracle, Microsoft and Google.

Some other combinations of the above are also possible. Also, there is a possibility of AOL and some agencies getting into the action but you get the idea that the consolidation will continue.

If any one of the above scenarios happen then Ian Thomas will be proven right, when he said in 5 years web analytics will be everywhere and all web analytics software will be free. I disagreed with Ian in my response to his prediction, but I also did not deny the possibility of web analytics vendor aggregating the user data across sites and then using that to provide targeted advertising and in return providing the tool for free.

What do you think? Comments?

Side Note: The interesting thing is that IndexTool will become part of Yahoo!’s Strategic Data Solutions. Bassel was one of the co-founders of my ex-company digiMine (which is now called Revenue Science).

Google Analytics: Tips and Tricks – Why do some search keywords show 0 visits

Question 1: A visitor goes to Google searches for a keyword, come to my site views few pages then goes back to Google does another search and comes back to my site all within 30 minutes (same visit). Which keyword will get credit for the visitors activity?

Question 2: I see a lot of keywords with 0 visits and 0 page views in my Google Analytics keyword report. What does that mean?

Answer:
Google Analytics, assigns the visitors activity to the first keyword that drove visitor to the site and assigns only those pages to the keyword that were a direct result of the first keyword. Note: This test was done on Organic results only, I will look at the impact of paid search (PPC) in my future tests.
Let’s look at an example. I used SeattleIndian.com for this test.
Here are the steps that I took

1. Did a search on “SeattleIndian.com 0 pages” and landed on SeattleIndian.com via a click on search results.
2. Bounced back (viewed only 1 page) and went to Google (by typing in Google.com)
3. Did a search on “SeattleIndian.com 1 pages” and landed again on SeattleIndian.com via a click on search results.
4. Again bounced back (viewed only 1 page) to Google (by again typing in Google.com)
5. Did a search on “SeattleIndian.com 4 pages” and landed again on SeattleIndian.com via a click on search results
6. Viewed 4 pages and left.

Below is the Google Analytics report showing the activity.

As you can see one page that I viewed from 1st keyword “SeattleIndian.com 0 pages” get assigned to that keyword and it also gets the credit for visit. The other 2 keywords do not get the credit for the visit or the pages views. The other 2 keywords will show 0 visit and 0 page views.

So where do the page views associated with the other keyword go? Well, I don’t have an answer for that yet. I am still researching and will blog once I have an answer.

In next article I will discuss which keyword gets the credit for conversion if a visitor uses multiple keywords to come to the site and converts with one of the keywords. Is it the first keyword, 2nd keyword or the 3rd keyword that gets credit? (Assuming visitors used 3 keywords).