Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: search queries

Monday, January 08, 2018

A few months ago we released a beta version of a new Search Console experience to a limited number of users. We are now starting to release this beta version to all users of Search Console, so that everyone can explore this simplified process of optimizing a website's presence on Google Search. The functionality will include Search performance, Index Coverage, AMP status, and Job posting reports. We will send a message once your site is ready in the new Search Console.
We started by adding some of the most popular functionality in the new Search Console (which can now be used in your day-to-day flow of addressing these topics). We are not done yet, so over the course of the year the new Search Console (beta) will continue to add functionality from the classic Search Console. Until the new Search Console is complete, both versions will live side-by-side and will be easily interconnected via links in the navigation bar, so you can use both.
The new Search Console was rebuilt from the ground up by surfacing the most actionable insights and creating an interaction model which guides you through the process of fixing any pending issues. We’ve also added ability to share reports within your own organization in order to simplify internal collaboration.

Search Performance: with 16 months of data!

If you've been a fan of Search Analytics, you'll love the new Search Performance report. Over the years, users have been consistent in asking us for more data in Search Analytics. With the new report, you'll have 16 months of data, to make analyzing longer-term trends easier and enable year-over-year comparisons. In the near future, this data will also be available via the Search Console API.

Index Coverage: a comprehensive view on Google's indexing

The updated Index Coverage report gives you insight into the indexing of URLs from your website. It shows correctly indexed URLs, warnings about potential issues, and reasons why Google isn't indexing some URLs. The report is built on our new Issue tracking functionality that alerts you when new issues are detected and helps you monitor their fix.
So how does that work?

When you drill down into a specific issue you will see a sample of URLs from your site. Clicking on error URLs brings up the page details with links to diagnostic-tools that help you understand what is the source of the problem.
Fixing Search issues often involves multiple teams within a company. Giving the right people access to information about the current status, or about issues that have come up there, is critical to improving an implementation quickly. Now, within most reports in the new Search Console, you can do that with the share button on top of the report which will create a shareable link to the report. Once things are resolved, you can disable sharing just as easily.
The new Search Console can also help you confirm that you've resolved an issue, and help us to update our index accordingly. To do this, select a flagged issue, and click validate fix. Google will then crawl and reprocess the affected URLs with a higher priority, helping your site to get back on track faster than ever.
The Index Coverage report works best for sites that submit sitemap files. Sitemap files are a great way to let search engines know about new and updated URLs. Once you've submitted a sitemap file, you can now use the sitemap filter over the Index Coverage data, so that you're able to focus on an exact list of URLs.

Search Enhancements: improve your AMP and Job Postings pages

The new Search Console is also aimed at helping you implement Search Enhancements such as AMP and Job Postings (more to come). These reports provide details into the specific errors and warnings that Google identified for these topics. In addition to the functionally described in the index coverage report, we augmented the reports with two extra features:

The first feature is aimed at providing faster feedback in the process of fixing an issue. This is achieved by running several instantaneous tests once you click the validate fix button. If your pages don’t pass this test we provide you with an immediate notification, otherwise we go ahead and reprocess the rest of the affected pages.
The second new feature is aimed at providing positive feedback during the fix process by expanding the validation log with a list of URLs that were identified as fixed (in addition to URLs that failed the validation or might still be pending).

Similar to the AMP report, the new Search Console provides a Job postings report. If you have jobs listings on your website, you may be eligible to have those shown directly through Google for Jobs (currently only available in certain locations).

Feedback welcome

We couldn’t have gotten so far without the ongoing feedback from our diligent trusted testers (we plan to share more on how their feedback helped us dramatically improve Search Console). However, your continued feedback is critical for us: if there's something you find confusing or wrong, or if there's something you really like, please let us know through the feedback feature in the sidebar. Also note that the mobile experience in the new Search Console is still a work in progress.
We want to end this blog sharing an encouraging response we got from a user who has been testing the new Search Console recently:

"The UX of new Search Console is clean and well laid out, everything is where we expect it to be. I can even kick-off validation of my fixes and get email notifications with the result. It’s been a massive help in fixing up some pesky AMP errors and warnings that were affecting pages on our site. On top of all this, the Search Analytics report now extends to 16 months of data which is a total game changer for us" - Noah Szubski, Chief Product Officer, DailyMail.com

Are there any other tools that would make your life as a webmaster easier? Let us know in the comments here, and feel free to jump into our webmaster help forums to discuss your ideas with others!

Posted by John Mueller, Ofir Roval and Hillel Maoz

Deeper Integration of Search Console in Google Analytics

Thursday, May 12, 2016

 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.

Posted by Joan Arensman, Product Manager, and Daniel Waisberg, Analytics Advocate

(Cross-posted from the Google Analytics Blog.)instructions

 New Search Console reports combine Search Console and Google Analytics metricsNew Insightsimproving titles and descriptions shown in search

New Landing Page report showing Search Console and Google Analytics metrics   Additional Information Search Console Help Centermake sure your properties are linkedPosted by Joan Arensman, Product Manager, and Daniel Waisberg, Analytics Advocate

An update on CSV download scripts

Monday, August 31, 2015

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!Posted by John Mueller, Webmaster Trends (and query, impression, & click trends) Analyst

Introducing the Search Analytics API

Wednesday, August 05, 2015

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:

Verify the presence of data (what's the most recent date you can request?)

Top 10 queries by click count

Top 10 pages

Top 10 queries in India

Top 10 mobile queries in India

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.Posted by John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst, Google Switzerland

More precise data in the new Search Analytics report

Wednesday, May 06, 2015

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!

Posted by Zineb, on behalf of the awesome Google Webmaster Tools engineers and UX designers.

Webmaster Central Blog

How to discover & suggest Google-selected canonical URLs for your pages

Consolidating your website traffic on canonical URLs

Introducing the new Search Console

Deeper Integration of Search Console in Google Analytics

An update on CSV download scripts

Introducing the Search Analytics API

More precise data in the new Search Analytics report

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