Hacker News Reader

Comment by runn1ng | Hacker News Reader

I am not sure if I get the post right, but if you want to know what keywords people use when clicking on your website and/or seeing your website in search results (and on which average position you are with that keyword), and on which page they land the most often (and with which keyword), you can use Google WebMaster tools

For free, for every website.

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

View on HN

The data in Webmaster Tools has been historically unreliable[1][2]. If you compare it to data in Google Analytics, the two have often been world's apart. Sadly, this isn't going to come close to replacing accurate keyword data in GA.

[1]http://www.portent.com/blog/analytics/google-webmaster-tools... [2]http://moz.com/blog/comparing-ranktracking-methods-browser-v...

True, but I don't think there is a way to get this data in session and be able to get detailed funnel progression by keyword. That also limits dynamic content based on keywords.

Oh.

OK. So the websites cannot "analyze me" as properly.

I am OK with that.

Google still can, though.

Not really...

What parent said is that marketers cannot now measure funnel progression (I had to google that) by keyword.

Google cannot do that, since it has no way of reading the server's data. (If the server doesn't have Google Analytics injected, of course.)

Google has its own funnel, with Analytics, AdSense and all its myriad other web properties. They can track and analyse users much more than specific companies.

A simpler example would be that I would not know which keywords were driving people to my site (it's "learn to remember everything" or is "snickerdoodles recipe"?) A stupid question? In my case yes, but for a company, it's crucial to know. Not even for pinpointing users, just in broad terms, with relevant date data, landing page and some other goodies (which webmaster tools does not offer, and looks unlikely to offer in the future)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com