ia play

This article is part of a series about search log analysis which includes what people are searching for, bounce rates and spotting real opportunities.

Following on from yesterday’s post Spotting real opportunities in search logs I’ve been looking at what geography can add to the picture.

Anecdotely I’d heard that a lot of our Helen Keller referrals were “just American school children”. Google Analytics seems to validate this. From within the keywords report you can select a keyword and then set a dimension of continent or country. That then gives you the data about where geographically Google thinks those keywords are coming from.

Helen Keller:  mostly North American

Excel Shortcuts: mostly Asia and North America

Fundraising ideas:  largely European

Triathalons: more European

This changes some of my initial reactions to the opportunities each term represents. The non-UK traffic is still valuable to us, but this information could impact on what other kind of content we try and promote to these users  e.g. the volunteering opportunities are all UK based so we’re unlikely to be able to cross-promote to non-UK users.

(I’ve been trying to work out how to set up a custom report for keywords by continent but can’t quite crack it. Any suggestions?)