If you’re like me, you weren’t too thrilled with the new layout of Google Analytics that they rolled out last year. For a while you had the option to revert back to the old Analytics dashboard, until recently when they option disappeared. Clearly, once you get past the shock of the new look you can see that the features have been improved quite a bit. In fact, I highlighted several of those features in a past blog article.
With all the great additions to Google Analytics, it seems like one major thing was changed: the ability to create custom reports that drilled down each conversion to a keyword. In the pat you could set ‘Conversions’ as your metric and then drill down the dimensions to ‘Source/Medium’ and then ‘Keyword’. That option isn’t available. But, there’s a workaround…
When you login to your Analytics account click on ‘Custom Reporting’. Then:
1) Click ‘New Custom Report’
2) Title report (you can make the tab title same as the report title)
3) Click ‘Add Metric Group’ and then, from the Conversions drop down menu, start selecting each of your goals that you’ve set up (if you don’t have any goals set up check out this article on goal/conversion tracking). In my example to the right you’ll see I have several goals, so I want to select them all.
4) Now click ‘Add Dimension’ to the right of Dimension Drilldown
5) From the Traffic Sources drop down menu select “Source/Medium”
6) Then click ‘Add Dimension’ again, and this time go to the Advertising drop down and select ‘Keyword’*
   *in the last version of Analytics ‘keywords’ was located under the Traffic Sources drop down
7) Scroll down and click ‘save’
You’ll then be able to see all the sources for your leads (Google CPC, Google organic, Bing organic, etc). Best of all, these are hyperlinks that when clicked will show you keywords that drove people, and eventually became a conversion. Your report should look something like the one on your left.
One tip for people who have many goals in place is to click ‘Display in Alphabetical Order’ when you search through your metrics in step #3 above. Just remember to un-click this option when you get to step #4, so you can quickly find the Traffic Sources and Advertising drop down menus.
If you have any questions about using Google Analytics, specifically custom reporting and goal tracking, or you would like to be track your marketing efforts online, leave TRBO a note here. You can also reach us by phone at 877-673-7096 x2.
