What is search[organic] in Google Analytics?

Trying to figure out where this traffic is coming from

[netmeg]

This may well be a silly question that's been answered here before and if so, I apologize, but the nature of it makes it kinda hard to do a specific search for an answer.

I've been using Google Analytics for a few sites, and for some I have an unusually high number of traffic and conversions from search[organic]. Now, I have plenty of google[organic] and yahoo[organic] and msn[organic], plus my google[cpc] is showing just fine - so what is search[organic]? search.live.com? Other search engines BESIDES Google, Yahoo and MSN? I can't seem to find this spelled out anywhere.

[gregbo]

I don't know offhand, but it sounds plausible. I suppose you could try it out by doing some clicks on serps for your sites on engines other than the ones supported by GA and see if [organic] pops up for any of them.

[hunderdown]

There's a site called search.com. As far as I can tell, if you're looking at the report that breaks down sources of organic (search engine) traffic, the items there are the names of the search engines.

[gregbo]

What type of result do you get if the engine is not known by GA? Just curious.

[arieng]

I had always assumed that this was coming from search.com as well, but now that you bring it up the traffic % we receive from there seems unnaturally high for such an unknows engine. The other odd thing is that search.com is a metasearch engine, pulling from Google, Yahoo, and others.

I hope someone can lend definitive insight on this.

[netmeg]

Yea, it can't be search.com - the traffic and conversions are just too high. I'd see it in my log reports if it were.

Well I'll try to pick a site with not a whole lot of traffic and see if I can isolate one or two visits and compare them to my logs and Webtrends stuff. I just thought someone here might know off the top of their heads.

Supposedly there are 20 search engines defined by Google (I haven't found them yet but they have to be in help docs somewhere) and you can add more if you need to. I just want to know what THAT one is.

[kichus]

By default, Google Analytics tracks referrals from 20 search engines as listed in the urchin.js JavaScript file....

(http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js).

hope this is the one you are in search for...