Google Search Console vs Google Analytics (2017 Edition)
Apr14

Google Search Console vs Google Analytics (2017 Edition)

12SHARESFacebookTwitter Russ Jones at Moz recently came out with an article around the reliability of Google Search Console data – listing examples of where they had tested some of the platform’s features versus what they saw as the realities. It’s a really interesting read, and it poses the question whether SEOs should even be using the data from Search Console if we aren’t getting the correct information from the tool in question. I am an extensive user of Google Search Console, but also use other tools to validate the work that I do, so reading Russ’ article really does pose many questions. However, in this article, I am purely going to focus on the aspect around the reliability of Google Search Analytics data – the part of the tool that provides web owners with what I consider to be highly valuable keyword data. I am going to keep things really simple, and will compare Google Analytics session data with Google Search Console click data. Comparing Sessions and Clicks If we take Google’s article on comparing AdWords data with Analytics data, then comparing these two metrics, Sessions and Clicks, they will never match 100%, as the two metrics are calculated differently. And that’s just from an AdWords click and Google Search Analytics click comparison, not an Google Organic Click perspective. I think it is safe to assume that PPC Clicks and Organic Clicks might be measured similarly in nature, but perhaps there might be more filtering in PPC to remove fraudulent clicks etc. Either way, comparing Search Analytics Clicks to Google Analytics Sessions, should show a fairly close correlation between the two data sets. In short: Google Analytics Sessions data records when a user enters a site, but the browser must first download the Google Analytics JavaScript file, then that must be interpreted by the browser. A session also lasts for 30 minutes, so if a user does a search, lands on a site, then does the same search again, and lands on the same page, then that counts as 1 session. Google Search Console records a click whenever a click is conducted on a listing in the search results – pretty straight forward. Unlike sessions, there are no 30 minute timers, and a Click is classifed as multiple clicks, if even from the same person. From this, you’d expect any data in Google Search Analytics to be higher than Google Analytics. Source: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7042828#click Examples of high correlations First comparison – a relatively low volume page:  I decided to pick and compare a page with a low click count, as Russ mentioned that in their tests, they did analysis that looked at a...

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