Configure Finding Methods

Hi, this is Daniel, and I’d like to share with you how to adjust the settings for the finding methods reports. First click on a report suite, edit settings is what you hover over and then then to conversion and then click on finding methods. Okay. So, finding methods are out of the box reports tasked with capturing the information of how a visitor found your website and then took action. And the settings here, allocation and expiration, control how this information is allocated to the finding method and how long it lasts. So let me explain by using a scenario and the scenario being imagine a visitor came to the site via Google and then added something to their cart, and then they left and a few minutes later, they came back to the site via the Bing search engine and added something to their cart, again. Now there’s two items in the cart and then they checked out and then they purchased the item. So, with that scenario coming in via Google, leaving coming back in via Bing, and then purchasing having added to the cart between each of those steps. That scenario will give us a framework to explain how allocation and expiration work for each of these finding methods. We’ll use the search engines as our example here. So, in that scenario, if allocation is set to the first of these options, which is most recent then here’s what would happen since Google is the most recent search engine at the time of the first add to cart, it would get the allocation. So the Google report would increment by one and then the Bing report would increment by one as well, because it, at the time of the second cart add was the most recent or the last search engine used. So, it would get an, a one incremented to that report. And then the purchase would increment the Bing search engine report because that was the last search engine at the time of the purchase event. So that’s how that works. So most recent, allocates the events to the most recent search engine in this case that was used. Now, if this was set to original or first here’s what would happen since the original search engine was Google then Google would get allocation for all of the events, 2 cart adds in one purchase. And then if it’s set to linear, linear is interesting. It collects all of the metrics that happen up until the expiration which we’ll cover in a minute and splits those between all of the finding methods that occurred. So, if there were three different finding methods each of those methods would get one third of the event. So, let me explain in with her scenario here, in our scenario with Google then Bing in purchase, et cetera, Google would get if it was set to linear, Google would get 2 cart adds and then Bing would get 1 cart add and then both Google and Bing would get half of the purchase. So linear is a little bit more complex but that’s how that would work. So, let’s leave this most recent and look at expiration. So, exploration is by default set to visit, which is a, a wise default. That’s a good one to keep, because it would make sense that if you wanted to track, if a visitor made, you know did something on the site in terms of success metric that finding method that enable them to get to the site and do that should be given attribution for the whole visit. I mean, you could set it to say page view or minute, minutes is an interesting one that would only allow the allocation to happen within the minute. Right? So, visit makes sense, generally, page views available, minutes available, and these, these last ones, purchase, product view, and then the cart ones. These are the standard events that you would fire on the site in a scenario where there is a shopping cart and a purchase. And so, you can expire the allocation, say at the purchase or at the moment they add something to the cart. So, last the search engine they used to get there would last until they actually added something to their cart if that was the setting. Okay. So again, expiration, we allocate until the expiration values to each of the finding methods as they occur based on the allocation settings. This is an important thing to understand, and it applies to these built-in finding methods that will receive credit for these events that happen on your site based on these settings, make sure you hit the save button when you’re done adjusting these. And I hope that’s helpful. Have a great day. - -