Organic Search Calculated Metric

[EggBoy]

Hello all,

My organization wants to have a calculated metric that we can apply to our various page reports.

It is "number of organic visits a given page originated". The question we are asking is: Does the page drive organic search traffic to our website?

Below is what we've done....my question is, is this a valid approach? Is there a flaw in my logic? Do I need more coffee? :-)

So, we would want to count the number of times a page was the entry page of an organic search visit. This implies the page appeared in organic search and was clicked on.

This is what I've done so far:

Created a segment called Visits from Organic Search, where we tried to segment visits that BEGAN with organic search. Not an existing visit that later on had someone search Google or other engine...which we see a lot. This segment has a lower number of visits than just the Search Engine Natural without the Entry page condition.

The segment looks like this:

I then made a calculated metric using this segment, with Unique Visitors inside. Since the segment uses Visit as the container, I thought that Unique Visitors would eliminate any visit duplication, and also create the metric. This metric looks like this:

I also created an Organic Search % metric to normalize the numbers, so I can look at the percentage of total visits to the page that were organic search entry visits:

This allows me to run reports like this....so we can assess a page, or sets of pages, on whether they are driving organic search visits....if they are answering questions that people are asking on search engines:

The pages that drive a lot of organic search traffic make sense....but, my question is if this methodology is valid?

Thanks!

Eugene, overworked Analytics Jack of all Trades

[derelict_wombat]

I am also looking to validate this.  I can't seem to find anyone else posting in the forums about Organic Search metrics and am trying to create a Organic Search Percentage metric.  Would love it if someone can validate @Eugene's post above.

[Urs_Boller · Accepted solution]

I think you have 2 problems in your solution:

1. in your calculated metric you divide „unique visitors“ by „visits“. I think both should be „visits“ since one unique visitor might come mote than once to your page
2. the formula/calculation (with correction) is ok as long as you inspect the whole site! that means as soon as you apply a segment to just a part of the website, it might be wrong (or missleading). the reason is that the entry page might or might not be within the desired segment. Example: A user comes to a totally other website (within your data) by natural search and then navigates to the segment internally. This would be counted as „natural search“ in your calculation even if the user didn‘t enter directly. If that is right or not totally depends on your website. To solve the problem, you might want to work with some instances within the segment to see if a certain action happened (eg. first hit, last touch instances or something similar)

let me know if you need more information.

regards Urs

[Gigazelle]

The rule 'entry page exists' is going to pull in every hit of a visit, because entry page is a visit-based metric. Since it's a separate data column, it persists through the whole visit. In addition, it might not even be necessary, since search engine data typically happens on the first page of the visit anyway. You could say something about arriving to your site via another channel, then they arrive via natural search within 30 minutes, but that's not terribly likely to happen.

Other than that, the logic seems pretty sound to me.