How to Use the Information Inside Google’s Ved Parameter

It’s been two years now since Google announced that they’d be gradually withholding the search terms from referer headers, as secure (SSL) search was rolled out. This has meant that the keyword report in Analytics shows (not provided) for most visitors.

In our own Analytics reports, (not provided) keywords now make up 82% of all organic visitors.

For paid traffic (coming through AdWords) the keywords are still “provided,” which is very helpful, but also very expensive.

And of course there’s also the Search Queries report in Webmaster Tools. This is also useful, but it’s still a disappointing loss of information compared to what we used to have (even if I personally think Google was probably right to go ahead with it).

The ved parameter to the rescue

Back in May, Tim Resnik wrote about patterns he’d spotted in Google’s ved parameter. It turns out that ved codes contain rather useful information about the link that was clicked on in the search engine results page. And as Tim pointed out, this goes some way in replacing what was lost (or rather, killed off) by Google taking away the keyword data.

Three months later, Benjamin Schulz worked out that ved codes are actually encoded in Protocol Buffers (or “Protobuf”). So, as they’re not actually encrypted, it’s not too hard to unencode them (plus we don’t have to feel too guilty about it!).

Google has even released open-source compilers (in several different languages), which you can use to decode ved codes yourself. However these compilers are probably a bit over-the-top for what online marketers need (and probably a bit hard to put into practice).

We’ve written up a guide to decoding and interpreting ved codes—as well as filling in some of the unanswered questions (such as what parameter 1 means). And we’ve also written a JavaScript function for decoding veds, which—as I want to explain—is essential if you want to incorporate this information into your own Analytics reports.

This article is an actionable guide to getting information out of these ved codes, and incorporating it into Analytics.

What is a ved code anyway?

I don’t want to repeat too much what has already been written about in other posts, but it’s a good idea to summarise what veds are, what’s inside them, and how you can access them.

When you click on any of the links in Google’s search results, the URL (address) of the link contains a “ved” parameter.

This “ved” code contains information about the link that you clicked on, and when a user comes to your website through Google’s search results, the ved code is (usually) passed to you in the referer HTTP header.

What’s inside a ved code?

A ved code contains up to five separate parameters, which each tell you something about the link that was clicked on:

Link index (parameter 1)

All the links on the SERP have a numerical index, which gets passed in the ved code.

It only gives you a very rough idea of where the link was in the page (without knowing more about what was on the page), so it’s the least useful of the five parameters inside the ved.

However, it is rather useful when it’s for a ved code coming from an adword, simply because there’s no other information about the position.

Although the link index only gives a rough idea of the position of the adword, there are two concrete things you can take from it:

• If it’s about 45—65 or less (shopping results could go up to 85), then it means the adword was in the main column above the organic results
• If it’s about 170 or over, then it means the adword was in the right-hand column or at the bottom of the page

Link type (parameter 2)

This parameter is a number which corresponds to the type of link that was clicked on.

The most common value is 22, which corresponds to a normal (universal) search result.
Other common values (and their meanings) are:

See the complete list, for other (less common) values.

We’ve actually found well over a hundred distinct values, so this is a small fraction of them! Most of them, though, are very unlikely to appear in referer URLs (bear in mind that these are Google’s parameters; they weren’t really meant for us).

You’ll no doubt have noticed that there are lots of gaps in the values. I don’t really know if this is because a lot have been retired, or if Google has left space for future link types (probably a bit of both, but more of the latter). For example, our reports show the link type 703, but we haven’t worked out what it means yet. It seems like it’s some sort of universal search result just for mobile devices. If you see 703 or other codes in your reports, and you have an idea what they mean—write a comment below, or submit a pull request.

Start result position (parameter 7)

This parameter is the cumulative result position of the first result on the page. On page 2 it will be 10, on page 3 it will be 20, and so on.

It’s better to think of this as the page number of results (after subtracting 1, and multiplying by 10)—because it’s quite a long time ago now that there were always 10 results on every page. Anyhow, you’ll need to interpret it in conjunction with parameter 6.

Result position (parameter 6)

This is very similar to the cd parameter, but there are a few important differences:

• cd is counted from 1 (and upwards), whereas the ved result position is counted from 0.
• On page 2 of the results, cd keeps on counting (i.e. 11, 12, 13…), but the ved result position is reset to 0.
• Sometimes the cd parameter is not passed (e.g. for image thumbnails). In these cases, though, the ved result position does seem to get passed.

The ved result position is the more reliable of the two. If, for example, the cd parameter is 11—you wouldn’t know if this is the 11^th result on page 1, or the first result on page 2. With the ved result position, you can distinguish the two.

Sub-result position (parameter 5)

This parameter is like the result position (parameter 6), except it tells you the position in a list of sub-results, such as breadcrumbs, or one-page sitelinks.

How to decode ved codes and pull the information into Analytics

To import the ved into Analytics, you’ll need to include some Javascript to decode it (and send it to the Analytics servers).

To do this, you can modify your Analytics JavaScript “snippet” as follows:

1. Include the ved-decode and base64 libraries

You need to include these libraries in your HTML, somewhere before your Analytics snippet.

The ved-decode library is needed to decode the ved and extract the information we want.
The base64 library is needed for Internet Explorer users, because they won’t have a native Base64 decoder available in their browser.

Each of the two libraries is licensed under a permissive open-source licence (MIT / Apache v2.0)—which lets you use it in any kind of project.

2. Send the ved data to Analytics

How you do this depends on whether you’re using the old Analytics (ga.js) code, or the new Universal Analytics (analytics.js) code:

    // The custom variable code needs to go *before* you record the pageview
    // (i.e. the call to _trackPageview)
    (function(w) {
        var customVars = [
            { slot: 1, name: 'Google link index',          v: 'linkIndex'         },
            { slot: 2, name: 'Google link type',           v: 'linkType'          },
            { slot: 3, name: 'Google result position',     v: 'resultPosition'    },
            { slot: 4, name: 'Google sub-result position', v: 'subResultPosition' },
            { slot: 5, name: 'Google page',                v: 'page'              }
            ];
        if (w._gaq && w.VedDecode && w.VedDecode.ved) {
            for (var i = 0, val; i < customVars.length; ++i) {
                val = w.VedDecode[customVars[i].v];
                w._gaq.push([
                    '_setCustomVar',
                    customVars[i].slot,
                    customVars[i].name,
                    val ? val + '' : '(not set)',
                    2 // session scope
                    ]);
            }
        }
    })(window);

    // The custom variable code needs to go *before* recording the pageview
    (function(w) {
        if (w.ga && w.VedDecode && w.VedDecode.ved) {
            // Send pageview with custom dimension data
            ga('set', {
                dimension1: getVedValue('linkIndex'),
                dimension2: getVedValue('linkType'),
                dimension3: getVedValue('resultPosition'),
                dimension4: getVedValue('subResultPosition'),
                dimension5: getVedValue('page')
                });
        }
        function getVedValue(key) {
            var ret = w.VedDecode[key];
            return ret ? ret + '' : '(not set)';
        }
    })(window);