IDX and Google Analytics
Tracking IDX Traffic Using Google Analytics
Did you know that our Mapping IDX already has google analytics integration? If you are not already using Google Analytics to analyze the traffic on your website, you should be. This post is not meant to be a tutorial on setting up and using Google Analytics, but you’ll find plenty of Google help in getting it done.
For our purposes, we are talking about the wealth of information regarding your site visitors’ activity inside your IDX search. Google Analytics places tracking code on every page, so you’re able to go into your analytics reporting and see what pages, even individual listings, your site visitors are checking out. This is whether or not they have registered, which allows you to see the activity of anonymous visitors as well.
In the left margin of Google Analytics, there is a Behavior tab, and under that we have three places providing valuable information. First, we’re looking at the Content Drilldown to see sub-pages and the navigation that brought the visitor to a certain IDX search result. Notice that we have 1580 page views at the top for the /idx/ sub-directory.
Clicking on that /idx/ link, we’ll be taken to the individual searches they did in the IDX, as we see here:
Now we’re seeing some really detailed information about the search results viewed by the visitors. The top result, with 22 page views, happens to be an individual listing, so for some reason it’s of interest to a number of visitors. By copying out the URL and pasting it into your browser with “yoursite.com/idx” in front of it, you’ll see what they saw; in this case:
In this case there were 22 views of that listing, but 16 of them were “Unique Views.” So, one or more visitors came back more than once to check it out. There’s obviously interest in this listing, so you may want to go visit the property to get a firsthand perspective. Or, if it expires unsold, this could be a target for re-listing.
In this image we see a couple of searches that are on specific areas or communities. They’re popular, so we may want to write a blog post about each of those areas, as these may get some good SEO credit.
Google gathers a ton of data about visitors and their activities on your site. Check out the Behavior tab and sub-tabs to see the specific types of searches they’re doing. Information is power they say. If so, then there’s a whole lot of power here.