Demystifying Google Analytics and Search Console data

DANIEL WAISBERG: Hi, I'm Daniel Weisberg.
CHERRY PROMMAWIN: Hi, I'm Cherry Prommawin.
DANIEL WAISBERG: In this video, we'll talk about Search console.
CHERRY PROMMAWIN: And Google Analytics, Daniel.
DANIEL WAISBERG: Of course.
I'm particularly excited about making sense out
of the data coming from both tools.
I spent so many years as part of the Google Analytics team
that it's great to go back to it and geek out
about charts and dashboards.
You spent time with Analytics too, didn't you?
CHERRY PROMMAWIN: Yeah, quite a while ago.
But I'm super excited to be talking about it today
because we got a lot of questions
around Google Analytics from SEOs
and site owners who use Google Analytics along
with Search Console.
It's not always clear what all the data means
and how to use them together.
DANIEL WAISBERG: We have so much to share
that we had to split the content into two videos.
In this first one, we'll provide an overview of each tool,
and then we'll discuss the differences between Search
Console and Google Analytics.
CHERRY PROMMAWIN: In the next video,
to help you optimize your effort on search,
we have a cool dashboard waiting for you,
so make sure to check that out.
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Google Search Console is a tool that
can help you monitor, optimize, and troubleshoot
your site's presence in Google search results.
Among other features, it gives you
information about the traffic you're getting from search.
For example, how many times your website shows up
in search results, how many times
people then click to visit your site from search,
which search terms bring people to your website, and more.
In short, Search Console gives you
data on how your website does on Google search,
but it doesn't show you data about what
your users do once they arrive at your website.
For that, we have Google Analytics.
DANIEL WAISBERG: Google Analytics
is a tool that provides data about visitors' interactions
with your website.
It measures user behavior, such as which
pages they visit, how long they stay, and what actions they
take, helping you understand your audience better.
It also shows you data about where your audience is coming
from, which can help you measure the effectiveness
of your traffic channels, like email,
referrals from other websites or social platforms, paid search,
and organic search.
To summarize, Search Console is about what
happens before users visit your site when coming from Google
search, while Google Analytics is
about what happens after users land on your website,
no matter where they're coming from.
CHERRY PROMMAWIN: Before we dive into the differences,
let's talk about what data you can actually
compare between these tools.
The main intersection between Search Console and Google
Analytics is the performance data of Google organic search.
The primary reason you would want to compare this data
is to attribute conversions, such as e-commerce transactions
or online registrations, to Google search traffic.
Now, we are going to talk about how to view organic search
data in Google Analytics.
However, remember that source of truth
about Google organic search is always Search Console.
DANIEL WAISBERG: First of all, you
can connect Search Console to Google Analytics.
This functionality makes a few Search Console reports
available inside Google Analytics.
So if you're looking for a quick way
to access the queries and landing pages that drove Google
organic search traffic to your website,
that can be a good option for you.
Check the links in the description to learn more.
But even if you don't connect the tools,
you can still find a lot of relevant information
inside Google Analytics.
Start by navigating to the Traffic Acquisition
report in Google Analytics.
If you don't know how, check the links
in the description to learn more.
Here, you see a line chart showing sessions
by default channel group over time.
In the table, you can drill down to Session Source.
This shows you how many sessions originated
from the channel Organic Search and the source Google.
You can use this to understand more about your Google search
traffic.
For example, which actions people took on your website
and if eventually they made a purchase
or subscribed to your content.
Another way to analyze Google organic traffic
is to use the landing page report with a filter
to include only sessions from source Google and medium
Organic.
This will give you an idea of how useful the page is
to your organic traffic, and also
how well the page does in terms of driving engagement
and conversions on your website.
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CHERRY PROMMAWIN: There are lots of synergy between Search
Console and Analytics, but when you try to compare their data,
you will realize that they don't use the same metrics.
While Search Console reports on clicks, impressions,
and positions, Google Analytics reports
on sessions, events, and users.
I know this may be confusing.
Hold on.
Let me explain more.
An impression is when a link to your site
shows up on Google search, and position
is where the link appears in the search result page.
These two metrics are exclusive to Search Console because they
are specific to search.
On the other hand, users and events
refer to the user behavior on your website, not on search.
That's why they are exclusive to Google Analytics.
So the only metrics you might try to compare
are clicks and sessions.
On Search Console, click is counted
when a person clicks on a link in your Google search results
and leaves Google to go to your website.
A Google Analytics session is defined
as a group of user interactions with your website or app.
As you can see, click and sessions
are not exactly the same, which means
that when you compare the data, you will most likely see
a discrepancy.
Let's take a closer look at some of the main reasons
for these differences between the data available in each tool.
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DANIEL WAISBERG: Google Analytics
is a tool that enables you to collect behavioral data
by implementing a tag on your website or app,
so it depends on what and how you implement it.
To learn more about setting up Google
Analytics for your website, check
the links in the description.
On the other hand, Search Console
is a tool that gives you access to Google search
data, which is processed by Google for all properties
uniformly.
This means that the way you configure your settings
will have less impact on the data.
If you have tried to compare the tools in the past,
you might have noticed that the numbers don't always match.
If the difference is small, you can ignore the discrepancies.
Since the systems are different, that's expected.
If the difference is considerable,
you should look further into one of the following reasons.
Starting with Google Analytics.
If your site is asking users to accept tracking
and users opt out, that can skew Google Analytics data.
There are implementation and configuration issues
that can affect your data quality in Google Analytics.
For example, there could be pages on your website
where the Analytics tag is missing,
which could create discrepancies in the data.
You can choose your time zone in Google Analytics,
but you can't customize that in Search Console.
There are three attribution models
available to you in Google Analytics, while Search
Console counts every click on Google search.
As for Search Console, it reports only
on the Google search canonical URL.
Google Analytics reports on any URL
that includes a tracking code.
Search Console breaks down the traffic by web, image, video,
news, and discover.
These category breakdowns are different in Google Analytics.
Non-HTML pages are included by default in Search Console
if they are shown or clicked on search,
while Google Analytics may not be configured to measure them.
And Google Analytics excludes traffic
from known bots and spiders automatically,
while Search Console doesn't necessarily filter them out.
These are some of the reasons, and many of them cannot be
effectively debugged, but knowing of them will help you
make reasonable inferences based on your website's specifics.
Check the links in the description to learn more.
CHERRY PROMMAWIN: While there might
be differences between the data, both tools
are very valuable to provide a holistic view of your website
performance.
Each tool is powerful on its own and offers information
that the other one doesn't, so it's useful to use both of them.
DANIEL WAISBERG: If you choose to compare the data that each
offers, you can use the Google Analytics Traffic Acquisition
report to understand how Google search traffic performs,
and you can use the Landing Pages
report to evaluate which page is bringing you Google search
traffic.
CHERRY PROMMAWIN: Also, in the next video,
we can't wait to show you a dashboard
that we specially created for you
to view your own data from both Google Analytics and Search
Console in one place.
Don't forget to subscribe to our channel to be the first one
to watch the videos.
Stay tuned!
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