Comments on: Tracking Local search Traffic with Analytics

By: Nick

Nick — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 13:17:30 +0000

Is this information still viable since this post was created in 2009?

After reading through the step by step process a question still comes to mind. Please keep in mind that I am not a programmer.

Where do you put your new links? Do you put them as additional links in your resources to pages like your “about us” and or “contact” pages?

I am looking for a solution that is going to at least last the test of time when Google changes happen …

Can you explain here or write a post where exactly you put your new links ?

Thanks and much appreciated for this post.

By: Robert

Robert — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 12:05:06 +0000

Hi Mike,

Great post! I just have one doubt: Is it necessary to create the URL with GA parameters for the filter that tracks Local traffic from Universal Search to work properly?

Thanks

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 17:17:15 +0000

at the end of the day, you will see very little traffic coming from Places.

By: Joy Hawkins

Joy Hawkins — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 17:11:41 +0000

haha. You’re both really helpful The company I work for isn’t the ones using the tracking URLS (some other marketing company is) so I was curious to see how this would affect our clients. I’ll be sure to let you guys know if I see the same thing (their rankings plummeting in a month).

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 17:09:30 +0000

Jim Expressed it better than I but I was “trying” to say what he said… ie I agree with him completely.

By: Joy Hawkins

Joy Hawkins — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 17:07:40 +0000

@Jim. Perfect!! That is so helpful. Thank you so much for sharing.

By: Jim Gianoglio

Jim Gianoglio — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 16:48:26 +0000

Hi Joy -

See my comment above (comment #7) about this specific issue.

Granted, it’s been more than two years since I originally did what you were asking about (adding the utm parameters directly to the URL) but the experience I had was that it worked fine for about a month, then rankings dropped like a hot potato.

A better method (one that I still have implemented to this day and continues to work) is setting your URL to something like http://www.example.com/maps and then having that 301 redirect to the URL with the utm parameters.

Hope that helps!

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 16:44:27 +0000

The Places rank is related to domain strength more so than page rank so it should have no impact on ranking. However, sually Google “dings” url’s that include the word google in them so you might need to use a vanity redirect.

By: Joy Hawkins

Joy Hawkins — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 16:37:43 +0000

Mike,

Sorry, no, this isn’t related to that issue. I was just wondering if using a tracking URL like this listing does would hurt ranking in any way. Instead of using http://www.vernonhinson.com on his Places listing, he’s using http://www.vernonhinson.com/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=maplistings&utm_campaign=localmaps

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 16:05:56 +0000

@Joy I presume you are talking about the "We currently do not support" problem? A tracking URL would not be the best way to track that as it is to reactive. You might be further ahead using something like Page2RSS and delivering the feed from that someplace you look at once a day, once a week.... You did read the recent reports on how to fix?