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March 11, 2009

Google Analytics Should Consider Google Images a Search Engine

One of my top referrers on virtually all my web sites is Google Image Search. Google Image Search typically is in the top five referrers for most of my web sites. And it is likely one of the top referrers for your web sites. The issue is, Google Analytics doesn't consider Google Image Search a search engine.

A Google Analytics Help thread has a request from a webmaster or two that they would love to see which keywords trigger the referrers from Google Image Search. In response to that, Googler, Christelle said it is not possible as the default set up. Christelle said:

You won't get the keyword information because images.google.com is not treated as a search engine by default.

Why is Google Image Search not treated as a search engine? Isn't Google Image Search one of the most used Google properties, just behind YouTube and maybe Gmail? I cannot tell you how I wish I had the keyword reports broken down under the Google Image Search engine. I bet there is a way to set up advanced reports to make this happen, but why shouldn't Google treat Image Search as a search engine. Isn't it a search engine?

Take the poll below and let me know if you want Google Analytics to treat Google Image search as a search engine:

Forum discussion at Google Analytics Help.



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posted rustybrick in Tracking & Conversion Measurements at March 11, 2009 8:48 AM Comments (8)

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Comments

If you go to http://images.google.co.uk/imghp?hl=en&tab=wi the logo says "Image Search".

It would be highly useful if Google treated it like other search engines and allowed us to see a breakdown of the terms driving this traffic.

 

Posted by Gavin Smith at March 11, 2009 09:35

Absolutely. The image search is where I and everyone I know goes to find pictures.

 

Posted by KJ Rodgers at March 11, 2009 09:46

If you're lucky (or unlucky) enough to get Image universal search placements, then you're gonna get tons of referrals from images.google. Very frustrating - when checking my top referring sites I have to filter out anything containing 'google'.

 

Posted by Luke at March 11, 2009 10:37

I don't really see the point. The images found in the image search are someone elses anyway. Fair enough if you are using it for research. But Google needs has to rely on Alt tags, and these days there are so many spammers, that the alt tags are always keyword heavy, and don't always say what the image is.

Unless they somehow base it on the content surrounding the photo. It has to come a long way.

 

Posted by Claire Jennings at March 13, 2009 04:57

You can track the keywords from Google image hits by adding a few lines of java to your tracking code. It's explained here:http://yoast.com/google-analytics-and-google-image-search-revisited/

Claire: The images are on your site so it is interesting to know what keyword is bringing visitors in.

For example you might even want to exclude certain visitors if they are a bandwidth drain and not relevant to your page. If you knew that a google image search for "growing flowers" was bringing 12,000 avid gardening visitors a day to a page about floral fabric patterns due to an alt tag on your fabric photo, you could change the alt tag to a better description and those visits would eventually stop.

 

Posted by No Name at April 23, 2009 11:17

It's such a shame that Google provides virtually no support about this. Look at this thread: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Analytics/thread?tid=4f166221a4857871&hl=en. Google employees are non existant!

anyway - I'll try the solution at yoast...

 

Posted by No Name at June 24, 2009 03:16

We started using expo-max analytics instead of GA. Works well for image search and we have over 7 million pageviews/mo.

 

Posted by Mike at October 29, 2009 06:24

I was just sent a email from expo-MAX Analytics asking me to load there code I am a bit wary as I don't want ot expose my site unneccessarly.
I too see lots of traffic from G and Ytube but knowing what SE and what keyword phrase, how would I leverage that to get more more traffic or back links is what I would like to know?

 

Posted by Chuck at November 17, 2009 22:12

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