Monitoring organic Google Search traffic in Looker Studio

DANIEL WAISBERG: Hi.
I'm Daniel Waisberg.
CHERRY PROMMAWIN: Hi.
I'm Cherry Prommawin.
DANIEL WAISBERG: And in this video, we'll talk about--
[DRUM ROLL]
CHERRY PROMMAWIN: Monitoring Google organic search traffic
using Search Console, Google Analytics, and Looker Studio.
And for that, we created a Looker Studio dashboard
template, which you can use to monitor
your own data by clicking in the link in the description.
DANIEL WAISBERG: Now our previous video,
we talked about the data available in Search Console
and Google analytics and what are the differences
and similarities between them.
If you haven't watched it, check it out.
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CHERRY PROMMAWIN: And now to the main star of this video--
Looker Studio.
Looker Studio is a tool that enables you to create, share,
and collaborate on interactive dashboards and reports.
You can connect it to various data sources
and then visualize that data with charts, graphs, maps,
and other visualizations.
You can also add interactive controls for viewers
to explore the data and even embed the dashboards
into your site, article, or message board.
We won't talk about the details of how to create reports or data
sources.
For that, you should check the Looker Studio Help Center.
We'll jump straight into a dashboard
we have created for you.
You will find a link to the template
in the video description.
Click it, and you will see the same dashboard
but with your own data.
DANIEL WAISBERG: And without further ado,
I present to you the organic Google search traffic dashboard.
CHERRY PROMMAWIN: Whoa, that's a cool dashboard.
DANIEL WAISBERG: I think so too.
But who are those people inside the dashboard, Cherry?
CHERRY PROMMAWIN: It's us, Daniel
DANIEL WAISBERG: Oh, wow.
CHERRY PROMMAWIN: So apart from beautiful people,
what else are we seeing in here?
DANIEL WAISBERG: First of all, this dashboard
includes two data sources.
We use orange for Google analytics
and blue for Search Console in all
charts to help you recognize each data source.
You can see a data control for both tools at the top.
The data control enables you to select the account that
is used by a report without having to edit the data source
connection.
If you have access to multiple accounts,
this will enable you to choose which
account you would like to view data for.
Also, for each data source, you can choose a specific country
or device to focus when analyzing your data.
We recommend that you pick the same for both data sources
to compare apples to apples.
An important note before we discuss the charts,
the Google Analytics data is filtered
to include only sessions from source equals Google,
and medium equals organic.
We're focusing only on Google organic search traffic.
In the highlighted area, you will see top level metrics.
These are numbers you can use to quickly assess
how your website is doing.
For each metric, you can see a comparison
to the previous period, showing green
when the metric is up and red when it's down.
The default time range of the report is last 28 days.
But Search Console data can be delayed by a couple of days.
You can always change the time range to suit your needs.
Let's go over the metrics one by one.
As we discussed in our previous video,
although the numbers will not match exactly,
what we care about is that the general trends
have the same pattern.
CHERRY PROMMAWIN: Remember, orange is for Google analytics.
Blue is for search console.
DANIEL WAISBERG: OK.
Session is a period of time during which a user interacts
with your website.
By default, a session ends after 30 minutes of user inactivity.
This shows the volume of traffic on your website
that is attributed to organic search.
Engagement rate is the percentage
of sessions that had an engagement, which
means one of three things--
a session that had a key event, previously
known as a conversion, a session that
lasted longer than 10 seconds, or a session that
had two or more page views.
The engagement rate shows the percentage
of people visiting your site that engage with your content.
Returning users is the percentage
of users who have initiated at least one previous session
and came back to your website.
This shows whether people come back to your website
through organic search.
Clicks is the total number of clicks
from a Google search result leading
the user to your website.
And click-through rate is the click count divided
by the impression count.
This shows how often users who see your website click
on a search result to visit it.
CHERRY PROMMAWIN: Now let's talk about these beautiful charts.
The top left chart shows the total organic sessions
and its engagement rate over the last 28 days.
This is a good way for you to monitor
if anything changed recently.
If you see a big change here, you
should go to Search Console to analyze further.
We have documentation explaining what to do
if you see a drop in traffic.
Check the links in the description.
The top right chart shows the percentage of organic search
traffic over time.
There is no good or bad percentage.
It depends on your audience.
If the trend changes significantly
and the chart on the left did not,
you should go to Google Analytics
and explore your traffic acquisition report further.
Maybe some other source of traffic
is decreasing or increasing significantly,
which could drive the organic search percentage up or down.
Moving onto the clicks and click-through rate over time
chart, it shows how those metrics are performing
over the last 28 days.
If you see a change in your usual pattern,
you should check further which specific queries and pages had
a drop or a spike.
You can use the top pages and queries tables
in this dashboard to do so.
Here, you can see the clicks and click-through rate,
along with the percentage of change between the current
and the previous time range.
You can use the pagination at the bottom of the tables
to see more samples.
And lastly, you will find two tables
showing the top countries ordered by organic traffic,
showing number of sessions, returning users
percentage, number of clicks, and click-through rate.
The tables also include the percentage of change
from the previous period for each of the metrics.
If you serve multiple countries or regions,
it might be worth looking deeper into those stats.
DANIEL WAISBERG: The data provided by Search Console
goes beyond what we discussed in this and our previous video.
After you analyze your organic traffic dashboard,
you can go deeper into the available data
in Search Console.
That should be your source of truth when it comes to search.
Check out the Search Console training YouTube series
to understand more about what data you have access to.
For example, only Search Console can
confirm that Google can find and crawl your website,
list all indexing problems Google found on your website,
submit a sitemap to Google and monitor its status,
and check which structured data Google found on your site
and whether or not your site appeared as a rich result
on search.
There is a lot more data and recommendations waiting for you,
so head to goo.gle/searchconsole and roll up your sleeves.
CHERRY PROMMAWIN: So how did it feel
to combine Google Analytics, Search Console, and Looker
studio in one video, Daniel?
DANIEL WAISBERG: Amazing.
Even though I haven't been in the Google Analytics team
for years, it still has a special place in my heart.
CHERRY PROMMAWIN: Aww.
To summarize, if you would like to have a bird's-eye view
of your Google organic traffic, look at the data from both
Google Analytics and Search Console.
It can give you a quick idea of how your Google search
traffic is performing and how it relates to other traffic
sources.
DANIEL WAISBERG: Check out the links in the description
to find the dashboard template we shared in this video.
You'll be able to see the data for your own accounts
and try out what we've shown here.
CHERRY PROMMAWIN: Also, don't forget
to subscribe to the Search Central YouTube channel
to be the first to watch our new videos.
DANIEL WAISBERG: Stay tuned.
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