Google Search Referrals Does Not Affect Google Analytics Reports
The upcoming changes of Google Search regarding the current referring URLs format will not affect the Google Analytics reports. According to the Google Analytics Blog, starting with this week the structure of referrals URLs will be different, as the one in the next example, corresponding to the search term “flowers”:
Until now, the old referring URL in case of a user who performed a Google Search based on the keyword “flowers”, had the following structure:
The main difference between the two URLs structures is represented by the fact that the /search? part in the old referring URL will be replaced with /url?. Google Analytics reports does not depend on the /search? part of the referring URL and as a consequence the data related to visits coming from the search engine results pages will be accurate.
If you are using other types of analytics tools, the change of referring URL structure will definitely affect the accuracy of the reports and as a consequence the respective analytics utilities must be reconfigured to work optimally with the new referring URLs.
In the same time, the Urchin Software will get also an update in the near future: “If you are using UTM-based tracking with Urchin Software, you’ll want to stay tuned for a software update that we’ll be making available soon. If you are using IP-Useragent based tracking with Urchin, you won’t be affected since this form of tracking can successfully process both current and new referral strings.”
The changes of referring URLs structure must be always known to get the optimal value of the actual level of traffic coming from Google Search engine based on specific keywords or key phrases.
Usually, the majority of websites have the highest number of visits coming exclusively from search engines and the website optimization process is of a great importance for a better visibility in search engine results pages.
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