Google Analytics

[mccormackmorrison]

Hello

In Google analytics you can obtain the number of visits as a result of non-paid search. You can also set up custom reports to find the number of organic searches. The numbers are different, so what is the obvious difference between these two metrics that I'm missing.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Neil

[CalistonDigital]

Hi Martijn,

When you say "Organic campaigns can come from an unpaid search engine results link, a referral from another website (such as a blog) and direct traffic."

I don't get it how a referral or direct can be considered an organic visit. I recreated the report Tim has mentioned and then changed the advanced segments to Referral and Direct to see if I see any figures. If what you say is correct, when I select organic searches as my metric and then select direct traffic in advanced segments - shouldn't I see the organic traffic from direct traffic.

Please let me know

[mccormackmorrison]

Awesome

Cheers dude!

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

Hi Neil,

Wow, this was a pretty hard question. But I've got (hopefully) a useful answer for you:

The metric: Organic Searches you found within building a custom report in Google Analytics is defined as: "The number of organic searches that happened within a session. This metric is search engine agnostic.".

This differs a bit from the way Non Paid Search traffic is measured: "Organic campaigns can come from an unpaid search engine results link, a referral from another website (such as a blog) and direct traffic.".

I'm not quite sure but the difference in my opinion is within the way sessions are defined for both types and possibly also the way unpaid is defined for both metrics.

Hopefully this will help you any further!

[mccormackmorrison]

Wendy (or anyone else who wants to assist)

a) Within the standard reporting part of Google Analytics I have selected Organic Search from the Traffic Sources section. This provides me with the number of non-paid search visits for the period in question.

b) In the custom reporting section I have selected Organic Searches in the metrics tab, and then Sources (for example) in the dimensions tab. This (I believe) should give me tha same data as in a), but it is lower in volume. The difference is only 3%, but it makes me think I have done something wrong which I obviously want to correct.

Again, any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Regards

Neil

[mccormackmorrison]

Thanks Wendy for the prompt response - just have to dash for a meal with the inlaws (!), will confirm latter what I've done to check.

Thanks again.

[Chammy]

Hi Neil

I have just checked this and am getting matching  figures

What metric and dimension have you set up your custom report on?

I used the metric as visits and dimension as source/medium - and then filtered on organic and the figures matched.

best

Wendy