I'm doing all my Google Analytics server side, but GA is only tracking direct or referrals, and I don't know how to track organic. This is a pice of code that gets either direct or referral:
//Campaign is used for the referrals //If not in session and there is a referrer, create campaign from referrer //and add it to the tracker and to session. if (!isset($_SESSION['campaign'])) { if (isset($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']) && strpos($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'], parse_url($this->config['url']['base'], PHP_URL_HOST)) === FALSE) { $campaign = GoogleAnalytics\Campaign::createFromReferrer($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']); $this->tracker->setCampaign($campaign); $_SESSION['campaign'] = serialize($campaign); } } else { //If already in session, add it to the tracker $this->tracker->setCampaign(unserialize($_SESSION['campaign'])); }
The above basically analyzes the referer; if from another source, creates a referral, if not it doesn't. Then it is stored in the session if there was a referral.
Now, how would I identify organic sources? I was thinking on making a table of possible organic sources, is this how Google does it? Something like:
protected $organic_sources = array('www.google.com', 'www.yahoo.com')
Then I would check the source in there before creating the campaign, if in array I would create it as an organic campaign. Is this an optimal solution? Any thoughts on how to identify organic traffic?
Yes, that's how Google does it. I created a small function to identify organic traffic. It goes like this:
/* * Organic sources */ protected $organic_sources = array('www.google' => array('q='), 'daum.net/' => array('q='), 'eniro.se/' => array('search_word=', 'hitta:'), 'naver.com/' => array('query='), 'yahoo.com/' => array('p='), 'msn.com/' => array('q='), 'bing.com/' => array('q='), 'aol.com/' => array('query=', 'encquery='), 'lycos.com/' => array('query='), 'ask.com/' => array('q='), 'altavista.com/' => array('q='), 'search.netscape.com/' => array('query='), 'cnn.com/SEARCH/' => array('query='), 'about.com/' => array('terms='), 'mamma.com/' => array('query='), 'alltheweb.com/' => array('q='), 'voila.fr/' => array('rdata='), 'search.virgilio.it/' => array('qs='), 'baidu.com/' => array('wd='), 'alice.com/' => array('qs='), 'yandex.com/' => array('text='), 'najdi.org.mk/' => array('q='), 'aol.com/' => array('q='), 'mamma.com/' => array('query='), 'seznam.cz/' => array('q='), 'search.com/' => array('q='), 'wp.pl/' => array('szukai='), 'online.onetcenter.org/' => array('qt='), 'szukacz.pl/' => array('q='), 'yam.com/' => array('k='), 'pchome.com/' => array('q='), 'kvasir.no/' => array('q='), 'sesam.no/' => array('q='), 'ozu.es/' => array('q='), 'terra.com/' => array('query='), 'mynet.com/' => array('q='), 'ekolay.net/' => array('q='), 'rambler.ru/' => array('words=') );
Just put the above in your class, and add this function:
/* * Check if source is organic * * @param string $referrer The referrer page * * @return true if organic, false if not */ public function isTrafficOrganic($referrer) { //Go through the organic sources foreach($this->organic_sources as $searchEngine => $queries) { //If referrer is part of the search engine... if (strpos($referrer, $searchEngine) !== false) { //Check if query is also there foreach ($queries as $query) { if (strpos($referrer, $query) !== false) { //If there, traffic is organic return true; } } } } return false; }
You can then just call the function above by passing $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'] as param. Hope it's useful for someone.
is this how Google does it
Basically yes - as far as GA is concerned an organic search visits is a referer from a known (by url) search engine plus a search parameter (to grab the search keyword) but without utm- or glcid-parameters (which would turn the referer into a campaign url). In client-side GA you can even add your own set of search engines, so I'd say that's the way it should work for the server side, too.
