Google Analytics for Tracking Google Base (Froogle) Visitors
Posted by reviews on Dec 3, 2007
For those of us that sell products via an ecommerce site, you probably are familiar with Google Base (formerly Froogle) where you can list your products on Google Product Search. You may wonder if you are getting many visitors from Google Base. You will likely get visitors if your pages are fairly well designed in Google Base and the pricing and attributes are good. The question would be; how does one track Google Base visitors using Google Analytics?
Google has an answer on their Official Google Base Blog, however their advice is odd and a pain in the arse at best, and very bad advice at worst. Their answer is to create another page just for the Google Base visitors, thus creating duplicate content, which contradicts Google’s own webmaster guidelines. Nice.
Regular landing page: http://example.com/page1.html
Unique Base landing page: http://example.com/page2.htmlBy creating two versions of the same page on your website and submitting the unique landing page URLs to Base, Google Analytics can show you exactly how much traffic is being sent to your website from Base. Just make sure to include the unique landing page URL in the link attribute of your bulk upload file.
A much, much better answer was supplied by Scott Horne over at WebProNews. They even provide great graphics to help you. He suggests adding a query string to the end of the url link in Google Base, such as ?ref=base.
It would look like this: http://www.example.com/nifty-product.html?ref=base
You would then log into Google Analytics, go to the specific domain, go to Content, Top Landing Page, and do a search for ref=base.
Very simple!
Thanks for the tip, I’ll be using this Google Base tip ASAP (I hate calling it that, I liked froogle)
I’m using the easy populate extension for OSCommerce - I might add the ?ref=base variable so this is output for my Froogle (yes, I refuse to call it Google Base) entries and submit this as a contribution.
p.s. your comment form is not marking up correctly - the name, email address and URL are at the top of the page and the textarea is underneath the page copy.
Nice post good info and comprehensive. Thanks for the links. Might track back if you don’t mind.
I have another trick that I can use because my Web Host provides unlimited sub-domains. First, I create a subdomain with the name of the product I am tracking. Second, I use a redirect command on the subdomain to the actual main page and include the subdomain link for whatever I’m advertising. Using this method I have full statistics from my Web Host (Free reporting is included) for the product, and I never have to login to Analytics.
Wow, had no idea that Google Base cab be so effective..
great post! found it very informative. Thank you for letting me know about this! thanks for the links also. have a nice day:)
I have been using the ref on all my sites for a while and it’s interesting why G would want you to create another page
is froogle not working anymore?
Thanks for the great post. I liked froogle. Overall, very impressive.
It is a surprise to me that base cab is that effective. You always learn new things, thanks!
I’m using awstats now…I’m gona make the switch to google
What software will allow your products to be intergrated into froogle?
Thank you for this tip, I am new at this and appreciate any help I can get
Kudos to you.
Thats a rare thing from Google to see them advising directly against their own guidelines.
However the method of adding the ref to the link sounds like a good one, however comment poster #4 also suggests a good technique and im going to give that a whirl.
Thanks for the pointers!
I’m using google analytics on all of my sites and I didn’t now this was a possibility. It is a bit puzzling why it has to be done this way.
Thanks for the post. I think I’ll try it. You know I’m not crazy about Google Base. I’ll put in maybe 80 different products and only 20 get searchable.
Great advice. I’m going to change a few things around now.
Love this tip - I never realised how easy it could be, thanks for sharing
Thanks for post, it’s really interesting for me!!!
yeah this froogle its really good..thanks for posting this
One of the unexpected result of using google analytics is one of our site (non profit site, over 10 years old) get probed deeper by google bot.
I do not know the connection but it seems that google does use account in google analytics to crawl the internet.
Another thing I learn is when you buy a new domain, try searching the full domain name including its extension in the google search engine.
within 1 week, I found a google bot coming to my new site and my site beginning to be indexed!
Personally I find it a little scary to give Google access to your traffic information through Google analytics (in addition to sales info through Base)…I feel like if they gather enough info globally they could use it to justify raising prices in the long run…but it is free and a good service so I suppose it’s hard to resist!
Couldn’t you just set it up as a campaign? This sounds similar to what you are describing. As a campaign, you could do a lot more with it.
LOL. Google always contradicts itself. Anyways, thank you for the tip. Even though Google is a pain in the arse, I can always count on them to bring traffic to my sites…Actually, they’re the ONLY search engine that brings traffic to my sites.
Just starting to Google analytics. Was working with other software. Thanks for the useful tip.