Google Analytics Tracks Bing As A Referring Site

Posted on June 8, 2009 by Katrina Gallagher

It looks like Google Analytics isn’t tracking Bing as a Search Engine yet, it’s currently being tracked as a referring site.  So if you’re interested to see how you’re doing for certain terms in Bing, then you’ll have to wait until Google catches up.

So if you’ve seen a spike in referral traffic since the 1st of June, then the reason this is probably the reason.

The same type of thing happened after the launch of Google’s own browser Crome.  It wasn’t tracking people’s use of Crome at the start… which was a bit of an oversight as it’s their own browser.

Written By Katrina Gallagher

Katrina Gallagher

Katrina’s work has been recognised by industry peers, with a Big Chip shortlist for her work on ContractStore in 2008, and The UK Wedding Shows in 2010, and the award for ‘Best Use of Search’ for her campaign for The Little Greene at the 2009 Big Chip Awards.

  • http://www.pushon.co.uk Sam Rutley

    Looks like Google have responded and are updating the system.

    “If you absolutely can’t wait for the upgrade, you can add the following line to your Google Analytics tracking code as a temporary solution. Note, this workaround is recommended for advanced users only.”

    pageTracker._addOrganic(“bing”, “q”);

    More information at: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2009/06/bing-to-be-integrated-into-search.html

  • Katrina Gallagher

    Nice one, that was a quick update.

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