Drill down to search query level in Google Analytics

In our second Google Analytics post focusing on paid search, we illustrate the use of very useful reporting tools in Google Analytics for gaining some quick and actionable insights into into your paid search campaigns.  A useful three-tier strategy is to

1. Focus on the major performance shifts at a campaign-level
2. Identify the keywords in the campaigns that are driving those shifts in performance
3. Zero in on the actual search queries  to look for opportunities

Lets consider the above strategy at the hand of an example from a multi-product retail site.

Step 1 – Identify major shifts in Campaign-level performance

Below we show quarter-on-quarter shifts in campaign revenue for all paid search campaigns for the first 2 quarters of 2010, from the Campaigns Report under Traffic Sources.   We include filters to focus on the higher traffic non-brand campaigns.  Predominantly there has been strong growth in revenue across most campaigns.  We can now drill down to a keyword-level to understand which keywords are driving the strong growth in some of the categories.

Step 2 –  Identify the keywords that are driving performance

One of the above campaigns showing strong revenue growth is an electronics campaign.  When we drill down into the keywords of this campaign from the above Campaigns Report, it is clear that 3 keywords are driving growth in excess of 100%.  With a little bit of effort you can go one level deeper to the actual search queries behind these keywords.

Step 3 – Zero in on the actual search queries behind growth keywords

Google Analytics do not provide the actual search queries by default.  You can extract the search queries behind each keyword in your paid search campaign by smart use of advanced filters and regular expressions in your profiles.  It is recommended that you create a duplicate profile before applying the following filters to this profile to extract the actual search queries.

We have set up a profile a few weeks ago that has now started accumulating search query results.  Below we show the query breakdown for one of the 3 largest growth keywords in the above electronics campaign.  In this example,  155 search queries were responsible for driving traffic and revenue on the keyword.  The relevance of these more specific queries are reflected in the bounce rate.  These are good suggestions for expanding your campaign even further.  This analysis takes a few minutes and provides deep insight into your paid search campaigns.