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Google Is Replacing The Most Used Feature In Webmaster Tools

Google announced the release of the new Search Analytics report in Webmaster Tools, which it promises will deliver webmasters more precise data. It is replacing the Search Queries report, which the co...
Google Is Replacing The Most Used Feature In Webmaster Tools
Written by Chris Crum
  • Google announced the release of the new Search Analytics report in Webmaster Tools, which it promises will deliver webmasters more precise data. It is replacing the Search Queries report, which the company says is the most used feature in Webmaster Tools.

    “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,” says Google’s Zineb Ait Bahajji “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?”

    The new report is designed to help you solve such problems. You can break down your site’s search data and filter it in “many different ways”. Google specifically suggests using it to compare your mobile traffic before and after the big Google Mobile-Friendly update (Mobilegeddon).

    You can use it to find the countries where people search most for your brand by choosing impressions, filtering by your brand name, and grouping results by country.

    These are just a couple examples Google gave, but you should be able to do a lot more with the report than that.

    “There are some differences between Search Analytics and Search Queries,” Bahajji notes. “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.”

    The default view of the report shows your site’s click count coming from Google search results for the previous four weeks. Just select one or more metric checkboxes at the top to change what it shows. Clicks, Impressions, CTR, and Position are the available metrics.

    Images via Google

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