If you strip query parameters, you essentially are telling Google Analytics to strip the keywords from the URL (which really are virtual anyway). The way vBulletin search URLs work, it doesn't give any useful info either way really. But if you were drilling down to individual pages, if you strip keywords, it would look like so:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/external/2011/10/69.png

Without stripping the keywords, those pages would instead look like:

/search.php?searchid=4771051&keywords=searching+for +something

Hopefully that makes more sense...

Either way, drilling down to searchid=1234 is rather useless imo since the searchid is unique only to a single user and a single search.

Thanks dude. Makes sense.

Where on GA do I see all the new options? I'm sure I'm being daft, but I can't find anything like the screenshots above - it all looks normal. I've checked and all previous GA code has been removed and hits are still being tracked so it's at least working that much. I've done the site search settings to track + keywords.

Make sure you are in the new version of the Analytics interface...

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/external/2011/10/51.png

okay, so I have mysite then I have forum.mysite, I have analytics installed on the site without a sub domain, if I install this version to the vbulletin forum.mysite will that interfere with the other analyrics?

It shouldn't interfere with anything on a different sub-domain (or root domain).

Ah thanks - hadn't spotted the new GA version option :)
All working great!

So if I am using GA with VBSeo, I should remove it?

You should not use other Google Analytics tracking code (at least not the base) if you use this.

I always wondered (if you don't mind me asking)

How does this compare -vs- me simply putting Google's Script into the footer.