Hari's Corner - Search engine visitors - the missing clue

28 May 2009

Search engine visitors - the missing clue

Filed under: Internet and Blogging by Hari
Posted at 21:31 IST (last updated: 28 May 2009 @ 21:33 IST)

I've always been interested in finding out how stray visitors reach this website - either through a third-party website or through a search engine (mainly google). However, there's always one piece of the puzzle missing: whether they got the information they were after in finding my page.

Some search terms are quite obvious, but others are cryptic and often don't reveal a clue as to what the searcher is really after.

It is technically possible for a website to display a special message to a search engine visitor (who can be identified on the basis of the HTTP referrer field). Would asking them to simply click a link either to express their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the information present on the site be feasible? The link would probably just add a "yes" or "no" entry to a database, while recording the search term(s) used. It would be quite useful to analyze later on. Of course, the issue of privacy might arise, but after all, it should be made clear that the data is being used purely for stats and no personal information is being collected in the process.

Do you believe that such an idea would work?

7 comment(s)

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One way is to check how much time they spent at the site. If they left within 5-10 seconds in all probability they didn't find it useful. If they'd spent more than a min then for sure they found it interesting/useful.
Note: Please give a feature in your blog wherein the entered text and commener details are retained in case secret code is wrong. Its painful to type them again and again.

Comment by Shrinidhi Hande (visitor) on 29 May 2009 @ 10:31 IST #
Hi, Shrinidhi, I agree that the time spent is a good indication of the user-behaviour, but the problem is that it's not possible to analyze this stat in respect of Search Engine visitors exclusively.
About the comment problem, I've fixed it now. Just try out without specifying e-mail or username or with wrong captcha code and see if it works.

Comment by Hari (blog owner) on 29 May 2009 @ 10:35 IST #
comment testing -success

Comment by Shrinidhi Hande (visitor) on 29 May 2009 @ 12:08 IST #
In my limited experience, I've noticed that more people will refrain from answering at all rather than select either one.
Shrinidhi's analysis is more feasible. 30 seconds or more is the time normally indicative of gaining attention. Anything less usually means the person moved on after a simple visual scan.

Comment by RT Cunningham (visitor) on 2 Jun 2009 @ 08:42 IST #
RT, is there any tool that will let you analyze search traffic exclusively and in more detail than the average stats program? Most of the stats program I've seen don't go in depth into search traffic analysis, they just have keywords used to reach your site.

Comment by Hari (blog owner) on 2 Jun 2009 @ 09:04 IST #
Not without being overly complicated. The bounce rate given by Google Analytics does the job, but seems too complicated for everyday use. You'd probably be better off writing a custom script, based on referrer.

Comment by RT Cunningham (visitor) on 2 Jun 2009 @ 09:39 IST #
Thanks, RT. Well, that definitely sounds like a big project. I've never tried google analytics yet; somehow the thought of giving away EVEN more information to google than they already have does not appeal to me.
I prefer stand-alone stats!

Comment by Hari (blog owner) on 2 Jun 2009 @ 09:42 IST #

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