What is organic search according to adobe analytics?

[dsimov]

Hi

I see in some reports in adobe analytics the term "organic search". When I click it, I see a huge table of unrelated data.

I searched the documentation but did not find a definition of the term nor an explanation of how I can use it.

1. What does "organic search" mean?

2. How is one supposed to use it?

Regards

Dimiter

[Pablo_Childe]

You need to clarify what report are you actually looking at?

search -> Site search or external search?

It sounds more like a segment or a custom event that was made up.

typically one would relate organic search in terms of looking at:

Referrer type, then depending on referring URL establishing if it was a Organic search result or if URL was driven by PAID SEM a Paid search result.

This is often used to measure the marketing success and costs of PAID SEM traffic.

[dsimov]

I do not think the actual report matters. I would not expect the meaning of a term to change through the different reports.

As I mentioned, although the term appears as a clickable link, what you get when you click it is a table of 40-50 unrelated entries - no referring URLs, search terms, or anything that makes sense.

[Pablo_Childe]

The report matters when trying to help you troubleshoot.

Some reports when a user clicks on a result will bring you into a windows with a list of 100 different seemingly random variables...

Can you include a screen grab with any data anonymized?

[dsimov]

OK. Here you are two screenshots.

The report I run first is called (eVar75) URL then I break it down by Marketing Channel. I get something like this:

and when I click Organic Search, I get:

I expect to get a list of the terms that people have used to find the page.

[Pablo_Childe]

Ok this sheds some light...

I can say the evar 75 is likely a cuatom evar to grab, URL or referrer URL.

The Marketing channel is then I an guessing a Classification breakdown. hence when you try and breakdown further the Organic search it pulls up the list of report suite events.

You are going to have some challenges here.. Google does not like to easily share its external search data.

Is your google adwords account tied to Adobe Analytics via an API token in genisis for example? Are you using Adobe Media Optimizer?

I am sad to say I dont think you can use the SAINT grouping ORGANIC search to show you all listed search terms.(unless via Genesis you can pull that data in.)

If organic search in this case relates to just your internal search tool then you should be able to see what key search word drove users to what page.

1 Key here is how are the Marketing Channels built? Classifiaction or special evar or prop?

2 Do you have some API connection into your Adwords or Google Search console to allow for import of key organic search terms?

regards

[Urs_Boller]

Hi dsimov​

maybe I can help you with some inputs on your first question.

“eVar75“ is a custom variable where you can save anything you want. according to the description „URL“ I assume that it just saves the full URL on each page in this eVar.

“Marketing Channels“ is another special variable which you can use. you can find a lot of information here: Experience Cloud Help

In short, you can use the „Marketing Channels“ to check if a user has used a defined „channel“ and set a new value. I can just assume the setup and think it is looking in every hit if the referrer is a known „search engine“ and no tracking code is set. If a hit matches those criteria, the „Marketing Channel„ would be set as „Organic Search“. But you need to check your implementation (report suite settings) to see your rule!

If you break down an eVar (in your case the page UrL) by the Marketing Channels, you can see how many visits you had to this URL seperated by each channel (eg. Organic Search). Be careful because this can or can not be the way the user reached the page, it was just the last channel that matched the criteria...

I don‘t know what the next screen is when clicking on „Organic Search“. I assume due to the screenshot that you get a list of events for this specific channel. That means you can see what events triggered after the user passed a specific channel (in your case „organic search)

i hope that this helps to underdtand the report.

let me know ...

[Alexis_Cazes_]

You are breaking down by marketing channels and I will suggest you to read this series of articles about marketing channels and how they work exactly:

Refresher on Adobe Analytics' Marketing Channels Reports: Part I | Adobe Blog

Refresher on Adobe Analytics’ Marketing Channels Reports: Part II | Adobe Blog

Refresher on Adobe Analytics' Marketing Channels Reports: Part III | Adobe Blog

Refresher on Adobe Analytics' Marketing Channels Reports: Part IV | Adobe Blog

To understand the Organic Search Marketing Channels you should check the Marketing Channel processing rule. Create Marketing Channel processing rules

The others explained the rest so will not go over the same. 

[dsimov]

Thank you pabloc82923542, urs.boller​ and Alexis Cazes Adobe​!

Your comments helped, in unexpected ways I must say.

1. I asked what the term "organic search means" because Adobe does not bother to define it. I know from experience with other analytics solutions that it is supposed to mean "traffic that comes from external search engines and excludes paid ads and campaigns". So I had to guess. When the link that Adobe present in the report does not give me anything I can relate to, I am confused. Now I learned that it is not my fault.

2. I asked how I was supposed to use the organic search. It looks like I am not supposed to use it. A colleague of mine explained "The Summary Report shows a high-level list of metrics for visits where visitors arrive to the site from external search engines. It shows data for the entire site although I expect to see data only for the page that I come from. It seems to be one of those things that is incomplete, improperly configured, or just there by chance.

It is quite unfortunate that we all have to use a product like this. @Adobe, please think about usability.

Regards

Dimiter