So, what does Organic Search mean?

Can we talk about organic search? It's a term that appears in the acquisition area of Google Analytics. It sounds like a sign you see in the supermarket, which is disconcerting.

Organic Search means people, or sessions, that come from search engines, but not from the sponsored links on those search engines.

That's not very clear, so let me give you an example.

Imagine Katy used Google to search for the term web design agency london. I know London should have a capital letter, but how many people do that when they Google?

Katy got a page of results like this:

Imagine Katy skipped past the sponsored links and started perusing the other search results. She liked the look of this one: 

Katy clicked the link, and it took her to the website for Bond Media.

Now, imagine that Bond Media were running Google Analytics on their website. Later that month one of their team looked at the Acquisition Report. It might have looked something like this:

Katy's session was counted on the Organic Search row. That's because she came to the Bond Media website via a search engine, and not via one of the sponsored links. If one of Bond Media's sponsored links had brought her here, then she would have been counted on the Paid Search row instead.

Here's one way to remember this: when we see the term 'organic' think 'natural' or 'normal' - as nature intended. People arriving via organic search come via the normal way search engines work.

One caveat: all of this depends on how well Google Analytics interprets incoming website traffic. It's possible that some combinations of user device, browser and search engine don't get assigned to Organic Search and end up listed in a different row instead.  

More Google Analytics posts

Should I care about average engagement time?

Spike

That time of year

We don't talk enough about the seasons. 

When you’ve been in this game for a while you notice that the calendar has significance. In my experience in the charity sector our websites were always quiet in August. I guess the audiences were mostly based in the UK, where August was the big school holiday period of the year.

I once worked on a website for a US-based university fundraising operation. Surprisingly, their peak-time was December. You see, you get tax relief on donations in the US. And, if I recall correctly, the tax year ends in December. So, every December was peak-donation time, which meant peak-website-traffic-time.

Regardless of your organisation there will be monthly and seasonal fluctuations in traffic.  For that reason, it’s common practice to compare with the same month in the previous year. For example, how did website traffic in August this year compare to August last year?

Be careful about diagnosing a new trend without a prior year of comparison data. How do you know it isn't a seasonal fluctuation?

A colleague once pointed out something interesting: the impact of the length of the month on our reporting. You see, most years February has 28 days. So, most years February will get 10% less traffic than January by default. In the same way most years March will receive 11% more traffic than February by default. 

I hate to think of the times I flagged a good result in March without considering the impact of the short month in February. An 11% jump is a big number.

Are there any aspects of the calendar I've missed? Let me know on X, Threads or Bluesky.