Google Analytics Tips & Tricks: Exact Match Keyword Filtering

Sometimes, when sifting through analytics data, it’s useful to be able to quickly identify an exact match for a particular keyword within a large set of results within Google Analytics. This is especially useful when working with sites that generate hundreds or thousands of referring search keywords.

I scoured the web looking for a tutorial on how to filter for an exact phrase in Google Analytics, and when I didn’t find one, I did some testing and figured it out. So without further adieu, here’s the syntax that must be used to isolate exact phrases in keyword data:

^Keyword Phrase$

It’s as simple as that. And here’s a screenshot to help further clarify the process. Try it for yourself the next time you need to isolate a very specific keyword variation!

Google Analytics Exact Match Filter

If you’d like to see several exact matches, you can combine keywords using the | operator. So your filter would look like: ^online schools$|^online education$|^online learning$

Special thanks to Hugo Guzman for his help with this post.

Dan Cristo is a search engine optimization specialist at Zeta Interactive Agency - Follow me on Twitter