web-analytics

How to compare hourly sessions in Google Analytics 4 to track the impact from major Google algorithm updates (like broad core updates)

I was just asked on Twitter if there was an easy way to compare Google organic traffic hourly like you can in Universal Analytics. That’s a great question, and that’s a super useful report to have as major algorithm updates roll out. You can typically start to see the separation over time as the update … Read more

How to analyze the impact of continuous scroll in Google’s desktop search results using Analytics Edge and the GSC API

Google rolled out continuous scroll in the desktop search results in the U.S. on December 5, 2022, which follows a rollout in the mobile search results in October of 2021. It’s basically like infinite scroll for the search results. When you approach the bottom of page one, the second page of results seamlessly load, enabling … Read more

Google Multisearch – Exploring how “Searching outside the box” is being tracked in Google Search Console (GSC) and Google Analytics (GA)

Google first announced multisearch in April 2022 (right before Search I/O 2022) and it was really the beginning of Lens entering the spotlight. With multisearch, you can use Google Lens to analyze a photo and then add to your search by typing in a query. Then Google will display more results based on the query … Read more

Smart Delta Reports – How To Automate Exporting, Filtering, and Comparing Google Search Data Across Timeframes Via The Search Console API and Analytics Edge

In 2013, I wrote a post explaining how to create what I called a Panda Report, which enabled you to identify landing pages seeing the biggest drop during a major algorithm update. The post explained how to do this based on Google Analytics data, but you can definitely do the same thing with GSC data … Read more

Exit The Black Hole Of Web Story Tracking – How To Track User Progress In Web Stories Via Event Tracking In Google Analytics

Google’s Web Stories, previously called AMP Stories, can provide an immersive AMP experience across both desktop and mobile. Google has been pushing them hard recently and stories can rank in Search, Google Images, and in Google Discover. On that front, Google recently rolled out a Web Story carousel in Discover, which can definitely attract a … Read more

Web Stories Powered by AMP – 12 Tips and Recommendations For Creating Your First Story

I’ve been following the progression of Web Stories (formerly called AMP stories) since 2018 when the developer preview launched, and they have been hard to ignore recently. Google has been pushing the Story format pretty hard over the past year and I’ve seen stories show up more and more both in Search and in Discover. … Read more

Visualizing The SEO Engagement Trap – How To Use Behavior Flow In Google Analytics To View User Frustration [Case Study]

When thinking about content quality, it’s incredibly important to meet or exceed user expectations based on query. If your content cannot do that, then users can end up extremely frustrated as they search Google, click through your listing in the search results, scan your page, and not find what they were looking for. And that … Read more

NOT taking the (canonical) hint: How to estimate a low-quality indexing problem by page type using Google Analytics, Search Console, SEMrush, and Advanced Query Operators

During a recent crawl analysis and audit of a large-scale site that was negatively impacted by Google’s core updates, I surfaced an interesting SEO problem. I found many thinner and low-quality pages that were being canonicalized to other stronger pages, but the pages didn’t contain equivalent content. As soon as I saw that, I had … Read more

Beyond The 1K Limit – How To Bulk Export Data From GSC By Search Appearance Via Analytics Edge (including How-to, Q&A, and FAQ)

Google has been releasing new features in the search results more and more recently that can have a big impact on SERP treatment, click-through rate, and potentially traffic. Three of those features are part of Google’s “best answer carousels” and include Q&A, How-to, and FAQ snippets. Q&A has been live for a while already, while … Read more

7 Examples of Untrackable Clicks From Google’s Ecosystem of Search, Chrome, and Feeds

Information is powerful. And for SEOs, it can help inform, guide, and drive change. That’s why we’re always looking for more data from Google to better understand where traffic is coming from, what people are searching for, which elements in the search results are driving those clicks, and more. And that’s also why tools such … Read more

A Holly Jolly Load Balancer Christmas – How Google Treated A Major Site Performance Problem From A Crawling And Ranking Perspective [SEO Case Study]

Ah, the holidays. Who doesn’t love a festive atmosphere, ugly Christmas sweaters, eggnog, singing Christmas carols, and major performance problems that can take down your site? Wait, what was that last part??The holidays are always interesting for me SEO-wise. Every few years, I receive an SOS from a site owner right around Christmas Day based … Read more