Do you ever feel that some PPC management language seem foreign to you especially when it comes to Google Analytics? Well, today’s your lucky day because we are giving you a lowdown on regular expression characters on Google Analytics so you can better understand them and work with them.
Ready? Here we go!
1. \ (backslash). It turns the character following the backslash into plain text.
2. | (pipe). The pipe creates an “or” statement. Your PPC management team uses this to find all visits from branded terms. You can even create a custom filter setting a regular expression for all brand keywords.
3. ? (question mark). The question mark tells Analytics that the previous item is optional. This expression is useful for filtering for keywords that are often misspelled.
4. ( ) (parentheses). Like in basic algebra, parentheses tells other characters how to function. For example, you want to see all searches for Google Display Network and you know people also refer to it as Google Content Network. Your PPC management expert uses this expression to include both searches in your results.
5. [ ] (square brackets). Square brackets create a list of items to match to. However, it will only match one item in the list.
6. – (dash). In tandem with square brackets, the dash extends lists. In the example, /page/[2-9], the dash includes more page numbers to match to without having to type all those page numbers.
7. { } (braces). Braces tell Google Analytics to repeat the last information a certain number of times.
8. . (dot). This expression matches any one character including letters, number, symbols and even a white space.
9. + (plus sign). PPC management experts use plus signs to match one or more of the previous items and only these previous items.
10. * (star). The star is used to match zero or more of the previous items. It’s a lot like plus signs except for the part where it allows you to match zero or more of the previous items.
Do you feel more confident going through Analytics now? For more handy PPC management tips, keep reading this blog!