Google recently announced the incorporation of the Search Queries in Google Webmaster Tools into Google Analytics.
It’s a feature that I have always wanted as it saves time without visiting 2 different platforms to get some insights on organic traffic.
Integrating Webmaster Tools reports into Google Analytics is pretty straight forward. All you need to do is to allow the Google Webmaster Tools data to be shared in Google Analytics.
The instructions will be presented to you when you try to see the SEO reports for the very first time.
The 3 New SEO Reports
The SEO reports can be found under the “Traffic Sources” => “Search Engine Optimization” section and it comes with 3 new reports:
- Queries – impressions, clicks, average position & click through rate of top 1000 daily queries
- Landing Pages – impressions, clicks, average position & click through rate of top 1000 daily landing pages
- Geographical Summary – impressions, clicks & click through rate from various countries
Take a look at a sample screen shot of the Queries report below.
- SEO Queries Report in Google Analytics
Think You Are Going To Love This (I Do…)
Without going in depth on these new reports, there are 2 things that I immediately liked:
- Previously in Webmaster Tools, you can only view up to 1 month’s worth of data. In the Webmaster Tools + Google Analytics integration, I am seeing 3 month’s worth of data.
- Using the advanced filters, I can generate ranking reports for any of the keywords found in the queries reports. Though it may not replace third party rank report generating service, it’s good to see it at source.
In Conclusion
I think this is a good start and it enforces our take in SEO that there’s more than just rankings in doing SEO projects. Having additional SEO related metrics in Google Analytics sure does help to provide other means of measuring the KPIs of a SEO project.