Keyword Trends in Google Analytics With Greasemonkey

By Sal Uryasev
April 23, 2008
Find more about: webanalytics google analytics hack greasemonkey

There is a new post that re-releases the script as a Firefox Plugin. Find it here.

After the warm reception for the first version of our Enhanced Google Analytics, we decided to add some new functionality. (Nothing like a few kinds words to keep us in the giving mood.) The first script created a couple new tables in the Google Analytics interface that highlight recent changes in referral visits. It uses Greasemonkey, an add-on for Firefox that allows a user to insert javascript directly into a webpage.

Our update gives you even more ability to understand the data in Google Analytics:

  • At the suggestion of Avinash Kaushik, the new script works for keyword data, helping you see how organic search traffic is changing. An increase in a keyword may indicate a general change in user interests and/or improved performance on search results.
  • My coworker Pete Skomoroch also suggested that I add the ability to see declines in referrals and new keyword searches.
  • With the help of Paul Irish, the script is now better able to interface with the date widget on the Google Analytics site.

(Click the above button for a simulation.)

Keyword Growth Keyword Decline

When you click the button, your browser will download some historical data behind the scenes, and display a nice summary of the best and worst performing keywords/referring domains.

Installation Instructions:
Firefox 2.0+
Greasemonkey
googleanalyticsdownloade.user.js

If you don't already have Firefox, install it. Install Greasemonkey, and do the required Firefox restart. You should see a handsome monkey peeking at you from the bottom right hand corner of your browser. Open the script file in your firefox browser, and Greasemonkey should give you an option to install the script.

Afterwards, log into Google Analytics, and navigate to your Referring Sources or Keywords Tab. Click the button.

Configuring the script:

We spent some time trying to find convenient default settings here at Juice Analytics, so the script should work straight out of the box. Some users, however, may find it convenient to alter some of these configurations. To do so, in Firefox, go to Tools=>Greasemonkey=>Manage User Scripts..., select Google Analytics Downloader, and then click Edit in the lower left corner of the window. This should open up the script file in a text editor. If your computer does not have a default text editor configured, you may have to choose one. 'c:\windows\notepad' is a good bet for Windows machines.

This is what you should see:

Code Blurb

The bracket labeled 'keywords?' controls defaults for the Keywords page, and correspondingly, 'referring_sources?' controls the Referring Sources page.

To change the settings, simply change the corresponding variable to your preferred default. Make sure to refresh your Google Analytics webpage, if you have it open, so the new settings are loaded.

Now for the nitty gritty configuration details:

  • display_limit: This controls the maximum entries that each table will contain. This may be useful for large, sprawling sites.
  • growth_tolerance: This is the percentage growth parameter. Changing it to .10, for example, will catch everything that has grown by 10%, as opposed to the default 50% and 20%, respectively.
  • minimum_number_elements: This is a significance benchmark that can be used to limit what is displayed upon the screen. By default, only keywords with at least 10 elements are displayed upon the screen. Referring Sites does not have a minimum by default, but one can be set if desired.
  • limit: Limit is more of an internal parameter that determines how many entries should be downloaded from Google in order to get the results that are visible here on the page. Lower the limit to increase speed. If the limit is set to a very high number, you will get the largest result set, but you will have to sit around for a while for the results to load. Since the results are downloaded ordered by volume, raising the limit from the default numbers will not actually give more significant results. You will simply get more of the smaller results, such as keywords with only 1 hit.
  • look_back: This is a very important parameter. The script uses the date displayed upon your Google Analytics page to determine the full range that you want to consider in your results, but 'look_back' determines how many of those days are used for the significance test. So, say the range you have displayed in Google is March 23 - April 22 and your look_back is 7 days. The script will compare the average referrals for a given keyword from April 16-22 to the average from March 23-April 15, and will return the keyword only if the recent average is 20% higher than the rest of the time period. Thus, if you want to increase the total range of the data, change the dates on the actual webpage. Change 'look_back' only if you want to change the period of significance.

Happy analyzing!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. All source code is released under a BSD License unless otherwise specified.

41 comments | Show all comments only the last 5 are shown


March 10, 2009
dot said:

Thanks! that would be cool..


March 17, 2009
Sal Uryasev said:

There is an version of the new and improved Firefox addon that encapsulates this functionality. It is faster, sleeker, and it will have automatic updates. You can find it here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/11120

It is still experimental so users who want to download it have to log into addons.mozilla.org. I need a few user reviews before I can nominate the addon to be fully public (and easy to install). So, leave reviews if you happen to wander by there.

I'll publish a blog post once I can get the addon into the public part of the addons site.


March 26, 2009
Dave H said:

Hi,
Installed fine both using Greasemonkey/FF Add-In, however when I push the button I can see the table briefly appear but almost instantly disappear. Instead, multiple sort asc/desc triangles appear in the main Site Usage table. Does it interfere with other plug-ins?
(Also it only works when you access GA directly (the orange version) as opposed to via Adwords (the green version) - but that's not the main problem!)


March 30, 2009
Sal Uryasev said:

Hey Dave,
My particular plugin is very non-intrusive. While it should not interfere with any other plugins that I know about, if you have something that is quite intrusive, there is always a chance. It does sound as if you have something extra installed that kicks off after the script runs... maybe some kinds of special scripts to neaten up webpages?


June 5, 2009
steve said:

Hey Dave,
Thanks for the plugin, but I can't get it to work.:( I'm on firefox 3.0.1 and I can see it installed and I restarted like it asked. Then I go to google analytics page and no blue button.

Can you help me? I realize this is in Beat and I should expect this.

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