Tracking your traffic from Google Base

Google now requires venue sites like 1KM and Etsy to submit all their merchants' product feeds to Google product listings together rather than allowing individual merchants to submit their own directly. As a result, merchants have lost the ability to track their visits from the Google product search by logging in to their Google Merchant Center account.

But it is still possible to track the incoming traffic from these links using Google Analytics. Here's how:

Google Analytics lets you filter incoming traffic based on the referring source and "re-write" it so it shows up separately in your reports. By default, your Google Products traffic will be lumped in with your organic Google Search traffic. But, where Google searches come in from google.com, Google product searches come from google.com/products. You can filter all the traffic that comes from google.com/products, extract it from your regular Google search traffic, and output it to its own line in your Traffic Sources reports.

First, find the profile for the shop you want to apply the filter to and click the Edit link on the right side of the table.

Find the Filter box (the third one from the top) and click the + Add Filter link at the right.

At the top of the page, select Add new Filter for Profile

In the box called Enter Filter Information refer to the screenshot below:

Filter Name Give the filter a name that will let you recognize what it does, like Google Products

Filter Type Select Custom filter and the rest of the information fields will be displayed. Select Advanced

Field A -> Extract A From the dropdown menu, select Referral and in the text box, type in google\.com/products (note the backslash before the dot in the address. This is important)

Field B -> Extract B From the dropdown menu select Campaign Medium and in the text box enter organic

Output To -> Constructor From the dropdown menu select Campaign Source and in the text box enter google products (or any other source name that will allow you to recognize the traffic source)

Field A Required Yes

Field B Required Yes

Override Output Field Yes

Case Sensitive No

Save changes

To see your traffic from the Google product search, look in your Traffic Sources report in Google Analytics - it will now show up as google products / organic for the medium and source:

You can click on this line to see the keywords people have used to find your items in the Google Product search.

Note: you can use this filter on all your venue sites. Follow the first few steps of these instructions to get to the Filter page of the site you want to track, but instead of selecting Apply a new filter select Apply an existing filter. A list of your filters will be displayed under the names you gave them. You can select your filter from the list and add it to your shop profile.

Campaign Tracking with GA

I try to encourage merchants to use GA as a tool to measure their own efforts rather than just a way to view the behavior of people who "happen" to view their shops.

Here's one way to take charge - use Google's ad campaign tracking tools.

You have probably noticed how 1KM and Etsy add information to the URLs of your products that show where people found them from within the site. You can add similar information to the URLs you use when you create links to your shop that you place on your blog or website, in e-mail newsletters, Project Wonderful ads, etc.

If you use Google's specific method for adding information to your URLs, Google Analytics will pull the information from your ad campaigns and organize it so you can focus on it, make adjustments, and measure the results.

I've put together a Google Presentation that explains more about how to put together an ad campaign that will give you hard data you can use to improve your efforts.

Tracking your 1KM Appearances on the Home Page

1KM inserts a little bit of code into the link of products that are shown on the home page. When someone clicks on a product, that information is passed along to Google Analytics, making it possible to see if you have received any traffic from products of yours that were on the front page.

Here's the simplest way to check - look at the URL in your Content report. Home page items will include the code site_medium=homepage. Like this:

http://www.1000markets.com/products/84467?site_source=1000markets&site_medium=homepage

You can search through your content reports using the little search box at the bottom of the report. To use it to search your report for page views from the home page, first go to your Top Content report, under the Content tab in the menu on the left sidebar.



Then look at the bottom of the list of URLs for the Filter Page box.



Enter the word homepage into the box and click Go.

Google will search your content URLs and return any that have the word homepage in them.

If you find that one of your products has been linked from the home page, you can drill down even further by clicking on the URL. This will tell you the day on which the link was clicked, how long people who found you on the home page spent looking at your site, and so on.

Note 1KM currently only puts the homepage code in the links to individual products that appear on the home page, not in the links to featured shops or markets.

Turn on your 1KM Site Search

With Google Analytics now enabled for our 1KM sites, there is plenty of information that can be extracted about how people are finding your site. One of the first things you might want to turn on is Site Search, which will track the search terms that people are entering into 1KM's search box to find your items. Here's how to do it:

Open your Google Analytics account and find the line for your 1000 Markets account. Click on the Edit link on the right.

Click on the Edit link in the upper right of the Main Website Profile section

Scroll down to the section that says Site Search

Fill it out as it shows in the image:

1. Select Do Track Site Search

2. In the Query Parameter box, enter site_term all in lower case with an underscore between

3. Select Yes, strip query parameters out of URL

4. At the bottom of the page, click Save Changes

Now open your Analytics report and find the Content tab in the left hand sidebar. Click it and find the Site Search tab. Click it.

You will see an overview of the visits to your page that came through the
search function at 1000 Markets. To see a list of the search terms they
used, click on the Search Terms tab:

You will get a report showing ranked by the most common search terms. These
are reported whenever someone clicks on one of your items in the search
results and tells you what search terms they entered to find your item.
You can click on individual search terms to find out more, such as the
actual items they found with those terms.

It will take a little while for data to start flowing in, so be patient!

Google Shutting Down Shop Feeds

Many handmade sellers are receiving the following e-mail today:

Hello,

We're happy to let you know that as of September 3rd, individual sellers on marketplaces no longer need to submit feeds to Google Product Search. Going forward, marketplaces will be responsible for submitting a feed of all their sellers' items, so we will be retiring your account to avoid duplicate entries on Product Search. Your marketplace will also be responsible for ensuring that your feeds are up-to-date and compliant with our policies.

In most cases, marketplaces already submit feeds of their sellers' items. If you have any further questions about your items or Google Product Search, please contact your marketplace. We look forward to continuing to display your products, and hope you enjoy the new streamlined submission process.

Sincerely,

The Google Team

What does this mean? According to Google's blog, it means that sites like Etsy, 1000 Markets, and others that do not currently submit product feeds for their individual sellers will have to start doing so if they want their items to continue being searchable in the Google Product Search.

At this early date there are still many questions sellers have. Will these sites be taking over product submission for us? Will we still have access to statistics?

The deadline for the new policy is December 1, 2009. Most individual shop feeds are still live at this point, but Google says it will start shutting them down beginning today.

Listing your 1000 Markets Items in Google Base (an unofficial guide)

Google maintains a huge list of products in its Google Base system. These products are fully searchable and sometimes even appear among regular Google searches. You can upload products to Google Base at no charge - you just need a free Google account - and the listings are linked directly to your own item listing.

1000 Markets provides sellers with an easy way to format their items for Google's product listings in Google Base. Setting up the process takes a little fiddling with settings, but once it is in place, any changes in your shops can be automatically sent to Google Base. You won't have to update it when you sell an item or add a new listing - it will happen automatically. Free and low maintenance - the perfect combination.

Nota Bene If you already have a googlebase feed set up for another site, like Etsy, you cannot add your 1000 Markets feed using the same Google account. You will either need to choose one or the other, or set up a separate Google account for each. Also, 1000 Markets has not officially "released" the shop item feed. They may make changes that might require adjustments in the future.

1. If you haven't already, Sign up for Google Base

2. From the Google Base starting page, click on the Data Feed link inside the box at the right:

3. At the top of the page, select the Settings tab. Fill out the top portion of the page like this:

- in the Display Name field, type your shop name

- in the Description field type a short description of your shop or products

- in the Website URL field, type the address of your shop page. Important: This should be the "raw" URL that ends in your user number.

With this complete, you can also indicate your time one and e-mail preferences, scroll to the bottom of the page and click the Save Changes button.

4. Next, click the My Items tab and then the Data Feeds link, then the New Data Feed button.

5. You are now on the page to register your feed. There are three steps:

Step 1 - Target Country: United States

Step 2 - Item Type: Products and then Type of Feed: googlebase

Step 3 - Data Feed File Name: Type an .xml file name such as 1Klistings.xml

Click the Register Data Feed button at the bottom of the page.

6. You should now see your feed file name in your list of Data Feeds. Click on the edit link next to the name.

7. Change the settings so they match the ones in the picture below. The encoding should be set to UTF-8. Save Changes

8. Almost done! Next select the create link next to the Schedule section in your data feed list.

9. Select an upload schedule. You can choose daily, weekly or monthly. For now, choose daily and set the time to the nearest hour. Be sure your time zone matches.

In the URL field, put the address of your RSS feed. This address will have this form:

http://www.1000markets.com/users/PUT_YOUR_USERNAME_HERE/products?format=rss

Click the Schedule button.

OK! Now you wait until the time you set for Google to fetch your feed and go back and check. It may take several minutes after the scheduled time for the feed to appear, so be patient. Once it does, you will see a green Success indicator in your list of data feeds. If your upload fails, double check all the settings above and try again. Google can be finicky.

1000 Markets teams with Amazon.com on Ad Campaign

1000 Markets slowly slipped out of "Sneak Preview" mode this past week and quickly announced a partnership with Amazon.com in a targeted e-mail campaign. Some of the ads, which are running currently, are centered around Earth Day on April 22 and feature eco-friendly crafts and shops. 1000 Markets has created specific landing pages for each of the ads.

In addition to promoting 1000 Markets, the ads prominently mention Amazon Payments, Amazon.com's online payment gateway, which is presently the only method of payment accepted through 1000 Markets.