Google Analytics - why are there keywords with zero visits

Thursday, 28 October 2010 13:37

In Google Analytics, scroll to the bottom of the list of keywords used by visitors to your site  (found under traffic sources).

You will often see keywords that have 'zero' number of vists.

Why is this?

Google Analytics tracks visitor behaviour within a specific visit or 'session'.  If they come and go to and from your website within that 30 minutes, they will not count them as separate visits, but part of the same visit.

For instance:

• I search for 'web design' and click on a link to the Essentee website. 
• I look around for a few minutes and then leave, perhaps looking at other websites.
• 5 minutes later I search using another term, say 'web packages', and again click on a link to the Essentee site

This will be counted as 1 visit. 

Keyword phrases and variations

In the above scenario, I used two keyword phrases that lead me to the Essentee site.

One would register the visit, so assuming no one else used that search term there would be a 1 next to it.

The other keyword (most likely the second one) would already have had the visit counted and does not get counted again because it was in the same session - so there would be a 0 next to it.