Nov
The New New Shopper
SO retailers are desperate and sales are down and no one is buying flat screens at Best Buy. Gloom and doom persists. How can you find those new shoppers no one else is targeting? Google has an idea for you…
In the realm of ‘fundamental’, but important, Amanda Kelly over at the Adwords blog reminds us of the importance of mining for new queries. I’ve seen numerous pie in the sky estimations about % of queries that new, and Amanda dishes an interesting number:
Did you know that 20% of the queries Google receives each day are ones we haven’t seen in at least 90 days, if at all?
**finger on chin…thoughtful pose….knowing nod of head**
Imagine. You own a shop and 20% of the people walking outside your store didn’t even exist yesterday. They appeared out of thin air. And they are window shopping. They’re interested in what you sell but don’t know who you are.
Here’s how to strike up a conversation and lure them in…
Adwords recommends that you run the Search Query report to find these NEW NEW keywords.
That’s a good start, and certainly part of the solution, but you need to dig deeper than that. There are 2 other options that you can use in order to get the real data:
1. Google Analytics Keyword Filtering. Hands down the best data you’ll ever get for free. If you are running broad match keywords (admit it, you are), this step is absolutely necessary. If you’re not, I should take away your logins 
2. Tag and Bag (it’s hunting season up here, forgive me) – If you are using a 3rd party analytics platform, this is for you. In your Adwords settings, tag your urls. Now login to your analytics platform and pay attention to what keywords you’re seeing. Log files might even be more accurate, but are harder to work with.
3. Bonus extra – Revenue by product and keyword
In Google analytics – visit:
>Ecommerce Overview
>Product Overview
>Sort by Revenue ***Now you are looking at your biggest selling product
>Click on the product name link
>Select: Dimension – change to Keyword
Now you are looking at the keywords that drove sales on this product and can segment the best revenue producers.
I used this last night to find 12 new keyword variations that were not in a campaign and were driving revenue for the website.
Try it, you’ll be surprised at what you find. Go find some NEW NEW shoppers!
Ditto to everything you just said Jeff!
And thanks for the hat tip.
Haven’t seen you blog for a while – it’s nice to see you’re back at it! Welcome back!
**thanks James.
If I would actually break down and hire some folks to help I could blog a little more
it was reported that search query reports would be giving less “other unique queries”. maybe a little, but not enough improvement i think.
GA does not show search queries for adwords, what to do?
i’ve use roirevolution’s sleuth script, which works; check “user defined’ to see queries.
is there any way to get search queries from GA without the sleuth?
i’m tempted to move over to performicing analytics or hittail, or other recommendations?
dan
Dan,
The search query report has always been minimally useful so my expectations are low. As far as I’m aware, the sleuth script, or keyword filtering, is the only way I’m aware of to see search queries in GA.
I ran a Search Query Report today and still got a majority of “other unique queries” in my report providing me with very little useful information in order to optimize my campaign.
It makes total sense… Google doesn’t really want us to be able to fully optimize and understand true search behavior 100%. =0
I’ve tried performancing analytics and also hittail analytics, these both give search queries and other fun data as well.