Over the past month or so, Google has made several improvements to Google Analytics And Google Search Console (GSC) to provide more and better integrated data on search landscape and organic traffic performance. Following are X major improvements from the last two months:
Updated Impressions & Clicks Data in GSC
On April 27, Google updated how impressions and clicks are being recorded. Now, Knowledge Panel, Rich Snippets and local results are being included in these numbers when a URL is included in search results. Currently, these impressions and clicks are being rolled up into the total, and you cannot break out data by each individual search feature.
In GSC Search Analytics reports, they have indicated when the update occurred.
Rich Cards Section in GSC
A new section under "Search Appearance" has been added, called "Rich Cards." Rich Cards are a new search feature for mobile devices, displayed as a carousel with imagery, meta data and review snippets, all pulled from rich data on your site.
Image Source: Google Webmaster Central Blog
The Rich Cards section of GSC shows performance of rich cards and any errors or omissions. Fixing these errors can help to increase organic search coverage and create a more robust experience for searchers. When they announced the new section on May 17, it was only showing for movie and recipe sites, but Google expects to expand to other types of sites in the future.
Image Source: Google Webmaster Central Blog
Deeper Integration of GSC and GA Data
Google has further integrated GSC and GA data, and now shows metrics from both sources side-by-side in a newly titled "Search Console" section under the Google Analytics "Acquisition" section. They have also created a "Devices" report, which allows you to view organic performance by device.
Old SEO section in Google Analytics.
New SEO section in Google Analytics.
Similar to other GA reports, the new GSC+GA reports show Acquisition, Behavior and Conversion metrics. This makes it much easier to compare GA and GSC data to identify ares where site experience or search appearance should be optimized. For example, if you notice a landing page has a high click through rate but low engagement, you may need to make improvements to the content and/or experience on that landing page. Or say a landing page has a good on-site engagement, but low click through rate, page title and meta description may need some love.
GA data is only integrated for landing pages, countries and devices. The Queries report still only contains data from GSC (i.e., impressions, clicks, CTR and average position). Also, if you are using custom segments, only GA data can be filtered by these segments; GSC data will not change by segments.
We love getting our hands on new data sources, especially when they help us improve conversions and drive ecommerce sales.
How are you taking advantage of these new reports?
