More Than a Search Engine

Web analytics vendors tend to treat search engines as simply that – a search engine. In reality though, search engines are becoming oh so much more than that. With search engines now offering things like email, maps, user-generated content and other things that are decidely NOT search, maybe it’s time that web analytics vendors help analysts by finding an easier way for us to report on TRUE search activity. How about it Omniture? How about not lumping all google.com traffic in your “Search Engine” bucket, just based on the domain it came from? We can tell based on the details of the URL what activity people were engaged in, so why not give us more options in our reports of what people are really doing? Our clients and my team of website analysts thanks you in advance.