Bing shows up in my Analytics as referral and organic. What's the difference between these two? I don't do PPC on Bing.
Thanks Mike
lucy24
9:51 pm on May 6, 2013 (gmt 0)
Same as the difference between http and https on google, isn't it? Except that GA recognizes its own name so it knows the difference between a search and a direct referral. I get the same thing on piwik: google dot com shows up as a "referring site", completely separate from "searches". And it sure as ### isn't because Matt Cutts has been talking about me in a blog ;)
Unless I have completely misunderstood the question.
internetheaven
10:20 pm on May 6, 2013 (gmt 0)
You may not have misunderstood the question, but I'm unable to understand the answer.
Are you saying that both referrals could be from search result clicks by users, except one is from http bing searches and the other is https bing searches?
lucy24
3:46 am on May 7, 2013 (gmt 0)
Well, let me make sure I understand the question. You're seeing
(a) visit from search: bing, possibly with more info about search terms
(b) visit from referring site, which happens to be www.bing.com
separately classified in analytics? I don't do GA so I'm extrapolating from what I see in piwik-- only there you also get the two versions of google.
internetheaven
9:32 am on May 7, 2013 (gmt 0)
And what do the two versions mean in Piwik then? (Bing wouldn't be sending me traffic from anywhere else other than search, would it?)
lucy24
7:28 pm on May 7, 2013 (gmt 0)
The "non-search" version means that the user is logged-in, so there is no query string. It is factually a search, but in both raw logs and piwik it is shown simply as "https://www.google.com" --exactly like a regular referring site. Or, as the case may be, "https://www.bing.com" taking advantage of forums' failure to auto-link https forms.
Again: I'm extrapolating from google to bing. My basic assumption is that google knows how google works. So GA lists all google referers as coming from a search, even when the usual search information is missing. Look at your own raw logs. If you didn't know that google was a search engine, you would assume that someone at a site called google dot com was praising you to the heavens and sending tons of traffic your way.
