Showing posts with label search queries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label search queries. Show all posts

Thursday, May 12, 2016

Deeper Integration of Search Console in Google Analytics

(Cross-posted from the Google Analytics Blog.)
Google Analytics helps brands optimize their websites and marketing efforts for all sources of traffic, and Search Console is where website owners manage how they appear in Google organic search results. Today, we are introducing the ability to display Search Console metrics alongside Google Analytics metrics, in the same reports, side by side - giving you a full view of how your site shows up and performs in organic search results.

For years, users of both Search Console and Google Analytics have been able to link the two properties (instructions) and see Search Console statistics in Google Analytics, in isolation. But to gain a fuller picture of your website’s performance in organic search, it’s beneficial to see how visitors reached your site and what they did once they got there.

With this update, you’ll be able to see your Search Console metrics and your Google Analytics metrics in the same reports, in parallel. By combining data from both sources at the landing page level, we’re able to show you a full range of Acquisition, Behavior and Conversion metrics for your organic search traffic. This feature out is rolling out over the coming few weeks, so not everyone will see it immediately.


New Search Console reports combine Search Console and Google Analytics metrics

New Insights

The new reports allow you to examine your organic search data end-to-end and discover unique and actionable insights. Your Acquisition metrics from Search Console, such as impressions and average position, are now available in relation to your Behavior and Conversion metrics from Google Analytics, like bounce rate and pages per session.

Below are some new capabilities resulting from this improved integration:
 • Find landing pages that are attracting many users through Google organic search (e.g., high impressions and high click through rate) but where users are not engaging with the website. In this case, you should consider improving your landing pages.

 • Find landing pages that have high site engagement but are not successfully attracting users from Google organic search  (e.g., have low click through rate). In this case, you might benefit from improving titles and descriptions shown in search.

 • Learn which queries are ranking well for each organic landing page.

 • Segment organic performance by device category (desktop, tablet, mobile) in the new Devices report.
 

New Landing Page report showing Search Console and Google Analytics metrics

 

Additional Information 

Each of these new reports will display how your organic search traffic performs. As data is joined at the landing page level, Landing Pages, Countries and Devices will show both Search Console and Google Analytics data, while the Queries report will only show Search Console data for individual queries. The same search queries will display in Google Analytics as you see in Search Console today.

As mentioned in our Search Console Help Center, some data may not be displayed, to protect user privacy. For example, Search Console may not track some infrequent queries, and will not display those that include personal or sensitive information.

Also, while the data is displayed in parallel, not all Google Analytics features are available for Search Console data - including segmentation. Any segment that is applied to the new combined reports will only apply to Google Analytics data. You may also see that clicks from Search Console may differ from total sessions in Google Analytics.

 To experience the new combined reports from Search Console and Google Analytics, make sure your properties are linked, and then navigate to the new section “Search Console”, which should appear under “Acquisition” in the left-hand navigation in Google Analytics.

Monday, August 31, 2015

An update on CSV download scripts

With the new Search Analytics API, it's now time to gradually say goodbye to the old CSV download scripts for information on queries & rankings. We'll be turning off access to these downloads on October 20, 2015.

These download scripts have helped various sites & tools to get information on queries, impressions, clicks, and rankings over the years. However, they didn't use the new Search Analytics data, and relied on the deprecated Client Login API.

Farewell, CSV downloads, you've served us (and many webmasters!) well, but it's time to move on. We're already seeing lots of usage with the new API. Are you already doing something neat with the API? Let us know in the comments!

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Introducing the Search Analytics API

Introducing the Search Analytics API

With the great feedback from the Search Analytics feature in Google Search Console, we've decided to make this data accessible for developers via API. We hope that the Search Analytics API will help you to bake search performance data into your apps and tools.

If you've used any of Google’s other APIs, or maybe one of the existing Search Console APIs, then getting started will be easy! The how-to page has examples in Python that you can use as recipes for your own programs. For example, you can use the API to:

What will you cook up with the new API? We're curious to see how new tools and apps that use this API will satisfy the hunger for even more information about your site's performance in Google Search! If you've integrated this API into a tool, we'd love to hear about it in the comments. If you've run into any questions about the API, feel free to drop by our webmaster help forum.


Wednesday, May 6, 2015

More precise data in the new Search Analytics report

If you manage a website, you need a deep understanding of how users find your site and how your content appears on Google's search results. Until now, this data was shown in the Search Queries report, probably the most used feature in Webmaster Tools. Over the years, we’ve been listening to your feedback and features requests. How many of you wished they could compare traffic on desktop and mobile? How many of you needed to compare metrics in different countries? or in two different time frames?

We’ve heard you! Today, we’re very happy to announce Search Analytics, the new report in Google Webmaster Tools that will allow you to make the most out of your traffic analysis.
The new Search Analytics report enables you to break down your site's search data and filter it in many different ways in order to analyze it more precisely. For instance, you can now compare your mobile traffic before and after the April 21st Mobile update, to see how it affected your traffic.



Or, if you have an international website, you can now find the countries where people search most for your brand: choose “impressions” as your metric, filter by your brand name, and group results by country to show a sorted list of impressions by country.



These use cases are just two examples out of many more. Search Analytics allows you to really dig deeper into your traffic analysis and helps you make the best decisions for your website’s performance.

There are some differences between Search Analytics and Search Queries. Data in the Search Analytics report is much more accurate than data in the older Search Queries report, and it is calculated differently. To learn more read out Search Analytics Help Center article’s section about data. Because we understand that some of you will still need to use the old report, we’ve decided to leave it available in Google Webmaster Tools for three additional months. To learn more about the new report, please read our Search Analytics Help Center article.

We hope you find the new Search Analytics report useful for your traffic analysis. Please share your feedback in the comments below or on our Google Webmasters Google+ page. As usual, if you have any question or need help with the report, feel free to post in our Webmasters Help Forum.

Last but not least, we sincerely thank all the Trusted Testers and webmaster forums’ Top Contributors who spent time testing the alpha version of Search Analytics, and who helped us create such a good report: we wouldn’t have made it that great without your constant feedback and suggestions. Thank you for being so amazing!