After the May Day update many websites reported a significant loss of traffic, while others have seen improved traffic from search engines. After all, Google’s Search index resembles an ecosystem where one site’s loss is another one’s gain.

If you are using Google Analytics there is an easy way to check if and how this update has affected your performance in Google. In order to segment and analyze your long tail traffic you need to set up Advanced Segments using Regular Expressions. The nifty thing with Advanced Segments is that they allow you to analyze historical data, something which is not possible with filters, and to easily share them with others. Below I  have created 4 different segments which will hopefully help you get started with analyzing your long tail traffic. Simply click on any of the links to add them to your own Google Analytics profiles.

>> segment single-keyword queries

>> segment multi-keyword queries (>1)

>> segment two-keyword queries

>> segment three-keyword queries

For those of you interested, here is the basic regular expression used in the examples above. When applied with the Keyword dimension it filters in visits where exactly two keywords were used.

^(\S+)\s(\S+)$

With one of these Advanced Segments activated, you can for instance search for any patterns in your traffic from Google. You can find this report under [Traffic Sources > Search Engines > google].

I would love to hear your feedback, as well as any findings related to this Google update. Happy analyzing! :)

Photo credit: jean-fabien on Flickr

Annotations now seem to be rolled out to all users and here are 8 suggestions on how you can use it in your SEO projects.

In general you should make a habit of creating a note in Google Analytics for the following reasons:

- Technical adjustments including server updates and migrations, change of hosting provider, changes in the code (scripts, CSS, etc), database updates and modifications, etc.

- Structural modifications such as changes to your H-tags, URL structure, meta-robot tags, robots.txt, sitemaps submissions, etc.

- Editorial updates including copywriting, experiments with call to action, page titles, link anchor texts, etc.

- Campaign launches, both paid and organic, as well as offline campaigns. Changes in for instance AdWords budget should also be logged.

- PR work including articles written about you, your company or product, or related stories which could indirectly stimulate interest in your content.

- SEO related announcements including changes in search algorithms or introduction of new features, for instance launch of Google Caffeine, Personalized Search, and Real-Time Search.

- New inbound links to track any positive effect on your rankings and traffic.

- Seasonal trends, for instance start of the summer holiday season, related seasonal keyword trends such as ‘winter tires’ and ‘soccer world cup’, related behavioural trends resulting in higher search volumes in specific keyword clusters, e.g. health and fitness queries after the Christmas holiday season, etc

Feel free to add more suggestions in the comments section. Here is a video explaining how you can create an annotation in Google Analytics: