Google Images Keyword Tracking – Google changed its referer

Since December 2007 it is possible to add new search engines to Google Analytics by adding this snippet to your Tracking-Code:

pageTracker._addOrganic(“images.google.com”,”q”);
pageTracker._addOrganic(“news.google.com”,”q”);
…

With the new Google Layout – that had its worldwide release on the 05.05.2010 – Google changed the referers of all vertical search engines.

Screenshot of Googles new layout on 05.05.2010

After the new Layout was released we had a lot of customers who said: “We think we have a penalty on Google Image Search but the traffic in total is still stable”.

loss of traffic for images.google.com between 04.05. and 06.05.2010

If you take a closer look at the referer google.com you can see that there was a slight increase in traffic between the 04.05. and 06.05.2010. The increase of the traffic from google.com is caused by the  new Image Search Referer http://www.google.com/imgres instead of http://images.google.com/imgres

increase of traffic from the referer google.com between 04.05. and 06.05.2010

The problem for SEO is that the old _addOrganic-Function is not working anymore. To fix this issue you can use a regular expression for parsing the referer.

New Image Tracking Code for Google Analytics:

    try {
        var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-XXXXXXX-X");
        var ref = document.referrer;
        if (ref.search(/www.google/) != -1 && ref.search(/prev/) != -1) {

            var regex = new RegExp("www.google.([^\/]+).*&prev=([^&]+)");
            var match = regex.exec(ref);
            pageTracker._clearOrganic();
            pageTracker._setReferrerOverride("http://images.google." + match[1]
            + unescape(match[2]));
            pageTracker._addOrganic("images.google." + match[1], "q");

        }
        pageTracker._trackPageview();
    } catch (err) {}

After installing this snippet on your website you will be able to see all keywords from Google Image SERPs by clicking on the new simulated search engine images.google.com (organic).

new organic search engines after installing the image kw tracking snippet

Have Fun!

Author: Simon

P.S.: Wer schreibt denn hier? Mein Name ist Marcus Tober und ich bin Gründer und Geschäftsführer der Searchmetrics GmbH. Ich liebe Daten, weshalb meine Beiträge in der Regel davon mehr als genug haben. Lasst euch davon nicht stören. Über rege Diskussionen in den Kommentaren freue ich mich sehr, ansonsten findet ihr mich auch bei Google+
Alle Artikel von Marcus Tober anzeigen.