Comments on: Google Analytics, internal site search and SEO http://www.engage-digital.com/2007/11/27/google-analytics-internal-site-search-and-seo/ Website analysis and performance improvement Thu, 24 Mar 2011 23:55:08 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Tom Atkinson http://www.engage-digital.com/2007/11/27/google-analytics-internal-site-search-and-seo/comment-page-1/#comment-9598 Tom Atkinson Thu, 15 Oct 2009 01:21:34 +0000 http://www.engage-digital.com/?p=34#comment-9598 This is a brilliant post! I too agree that the benefits of the intelligence that comes from having Site Search tracking running outweigh the benefits of the friendly URLs, even though I am an SEO practioner myself, having traffic is nice, but understanding the users intent is much more important. One thing I might add though - I will be looking into the possibility of running a separate profile that has an advanced filter that is able to un-rewrite the URLs back into raw query string format, for digestion by that profiles Site Search tracking parser (not sure if its per profile or per site - might be out of luck if its per site, but then again, you could have it active for both profiles without issue... one would have the info and one wouldn't). This way you'd have one "master" profile with everything great except no Site Search tracking... and then you have your other "Site Search Tracked" profile with the advanced filters, but the URLs in Top Content won't quite be strictly correct. This is a brilliant post! I too agree that the benefits of the intelligence that comes from having Site Search tracking running outweigh the benefits of the friendly URLs, even though I am an SEO practioner myself, having traffic is nice, but understanding the users intent is much more important.

One thing I might add though – I will be looking into the possibility of running a separate profile that has an advanced filter that is able to un-rewrite the URLs back into raw query string format, for digestion by that profiles Site Search tracking parser (not sure if its per profile or per site – might be out of luck if its per site, but then again, you could have it active for both profiles without issue… one would have the info and one wouldn’t).

This way you’d have one “master” profile with everything great except no Site Search tracking… and then you have your other “Site Search Tracked” profile with the advanced filters, but the URLs in Top Content won’t quite be strictly correct.

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