Facebook Graph Search Now Passing Keyword Data To Webmasters

When Facebook launched Graph Search earlier this year, a noticeable element missing to marketers was the lack of keyword data that was passed. Well, this weekend Glenn Gabe of G-Squared Interactive uncovered the fact that Facebook has begun passing keyword data within referral strings.

The keyword data is passed from Facebook with a query string [q={keyword}] appended to the end of the referring URL.  Since analytics providers like Google don’t view Facebook as a search engine, the data must be parsed as referring traffic, not as a search engine.

While the data exists, it takes some finessing  to gather it. Glenn breaks the process down step-by-step, showing each element (and filter) required to pull the data. The end result is that users can set up their analytics package to capture and report keyword data from Facebook Open Graph with results looking similar to these in Google Analytics:

For more information on setting this up, see G-Squared Interactive. All images courtesy of G-Squared Interactive.