Tracking what search words buyers used.

[ra66it]

Is there an web site traffic analysis program/script/service that will tell you what keywords buyers used to get to your site? Maybe by back tracking the hit on a "receipt" page and tracing it back to the keywords that person used to find the site.

[Filipe]

Can't think of a pre-built one, but if you can code some simple session management it shouldn't be hard. On every page check for a Session ID variable you set randomly. If they don't have one (i.e., they arrived on the site for the first time) create one and keep track of their referrer, if they do have one, leave it alone.

Then, when a purchase is successful, keep the session referrer information with the order in your database (or simpler, have your site send you an e-mail with this info).

Of course, that's assuming you know how to code. Google Adwords has a conversion tracker that lets you track which AD a user bought from. That's handy, but not universal.

What you really want to do is run a search on "conversion tracking". That'll return several services you might be interested in.

[ra66it]

I know a bit of coding but I'll follow up on your query suggestion first.

Thanks for your help.

[monkeythumpa]

We have one. Our site uses Netflame by Fireclick. It is expensive though and is really for enterprise web sites. I can't live without it now. It tells us what words for each engine that people are using . . . AND how much revenue they generated. Kind of like the AdWords conversion data but for natural searches. I don't know how they do it but it is cool and they have ten other cool reports that help you refine how your site works. I highly reccommend them, unless it is against the WW TOS. Then I am neutral.

[cgrantski]

A lot of mid-level web analytics programs allow you to do it like this: Filter out all visits that do not have the receipt page in the visit somewhere. Look at the "search terms used to get to the site" report for this group of visits.

[Matt Probert]

Not exactly what you want, but the free log file analyser "Analog" will report search terms and words used in the search engine to access your pages. These can prove very interesting, and valuable.

Matt