Google Webmaster Tools - More Detailed Search Queries Update

[spunkle]

Google has updated GWT with more accurate search query information.

More Detailed Search Queries in Webmaster tools
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2014/01/search-queries-not-rounded.html [googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com]

[edited by: aakk9999 at 1:14 pm (utc) on Jan 7, 2014]

[edited by: engine at 3:29 pm (utc) on Jan 7, 2014]
[edit reason] Fixed URL [/edit]

[Mentat]

<Moved from another location>

I think is related to this topic [googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com], but I'm not sure about what is the meaning...

[i.imgur.com...]

The big question is:
- is an update for reported queries?
- is an update in queries the are serving your pages?

(my english is not native)

[edited by: aakk9999 at 1:17 pm (utc) on Jan 7, 2014]

[engine]

That detail is a welcome addition. More please, and in other tools, such as analytics. Or is that just being greedy. ;)

Here's a snippet from Google post.

we've updated one of the most popular features in Webmaster Tools: data in the search queries feature will no longer be rounded / bucketed. This change will become visible over the next few days.

The search queries feature gives insights into the searches that have at least one page from your website shown in the search results. It collects these "impressions" together with the times when users visited your site - the "clicks" - and displays these for the last 90 days.

[lucy24]

will no longer be rounded / bucketed

Oh, hurrah, does that mean the numbers will no longer go

:: shuffling papers ::

<10
12
16
22
30
35
50
60
70
90
110
150
170
200
250
320
400
... and so on into regions I'm not familiar with? (It seems to approach sanity once it hits 500-plus, but like I said, this is unfamiliar territory ;))

:: further detour to wmt ::

YES! Exact numbers! And it's retroactive.

[aakk9999]

I got it on one of sites. Both, impressions and clicks show a number that is not rounded. There is no more <10 and instead you have an exact number.

The vertical line with the word "Update" is also shown as per Mentat's screenshot above. This is the date when they applied this change and from what I can see, it got applied retroactively to all 90 days of history.

So if you have a vertical line with the word "Update", your impressions and clicks are not rounded and this applies to all data shown in your Search Query.

[lucy24]

So that's what Update means. I thought it was just marking when I moved sites (coincidentally at the same time as this change) :)

I like this a lot.

On the one hand: If some search term lands me on the front page, and nobody ever clicks on me, it probably means they weren't looking for what the search engine thought they were looking for, and maybe I should change a few words so nobody's time is wasted.

On the other hand: If, in the course of a month, only eight people search for some extremely obscure thing-- but all eight of them click through-- there was previously no way to know this. (You grownups may not realize that once the numbers drop to <10, no more information was forthcoming under the earlier system.)

Remaining unanswered questions arising from unusually close study of smaller numbers:

Why on earth would "red widgets" lead to significantly different results from "the red widgets"?

How on earth do I land on the first page in searches for "cats"? (Not really "cats". I made that up. But a single-word query that I'd think would bring up several thousand sites before me.)

[aakk9999]

How on earth do I land on the first page in searches for "cats"?

Perhaps some other filters were in use (negative filters, setting up the location in "more search tools", time period, etc.)

CTR figure in Search Queries

A caution on interpretation of CTR numbers you see listed on the main list of the Search Queries. The CTR is based on impressions, not on number of searches performed. So even if every search gets click to your site, if you have 2 entries on the first page of SERPs, the CTR will show as 50%

I was looking at the brand name + location query, which I know the vital result is the site I look after. They come as #1 and #2 (ignoring mega sitelinks).

In the period I looked the figures for, the CTR was shown as 50%. Once I drilled down (clicked on the search query shown in Search Queries list), it showed me:

position 1, 27 impressions, 27 clicks, CTR 100%
position 2, 27 impressions, 0 clicks, CTR 0%

So the 50% CTR shown on the first screen is completely misleading and you really need to drill down to see the real picture because if there were 27 searches where for each there was at least 1 (or more) impressions, and the site got a click from whichever result out of each search, the 100% CTR is the figure I would like to see.

[lucy24]

That reminds me that one thing is unchanged. If you look at the numbers for "pages" vs. the numbers for "searches", they seem to come from entirely different planets. The kind where the combined total of all the searches that could possibly result in page X don't add up to even a small fraction of the numbers for page X. Did anyone ever figure out how this works?

[aakk9999]

I think some figures are being witheld, but we do not know which. I have one small site that gets very little traffic (Google is not important) and this site was a good sample to study.

I have selected time period of 1 day. The figures I have are:

Queries 11
Impressions 88 (Displaying 34)
Clicks 5 (Displaying 0)

When I add up impressions for all 11 queries below the chart, I get 34 (which is "Displaying 34" shown above the chart for Impressions)
Likewise, when I add up clicks column for all queries, I get 0 (which is the "Displaying 0" shown above the chart for Clicks)

This means that there are more than half impressions not shown against the keywords as well as 5 clicks not shown against the keywords.

Where do they go ? Where should they be?

Are there some other queries that carry these 54 impressions and 5 clicks? WMT Search Queries report implies they are showing the total number of queries (i.e. does not say "displaying xx" next to queries figure.)

Or - if the number of queries is correct - is the data provided in WMT for some (or all) queries wrong because it is not known where these impressions and clicks should go? ?

I removed all filters, selected "All" under web properties, the site is small and has almost non-existent traffic, yet more than half of impressions and clicks were missing from the report.

[lucy24]

Do your total numbers match?

Queries:
Impressions: biggish-number, displaying small-number
Clicks: not-so-big-number, displaying tiny-number

Pages:
Impressions: same-biggish-number (everything displayed)
Clicks: same-not-so-big-number (everything displayed)

The maddening part is that I can't remember if it was always this way. That is, the totals given for "queries" are the same as the totals for "pages", but only "pages" displays the whole list. It can't be that they arbitrarily cut off at some number like 200, because there aren't that many.

[aakk9999]

On this site for this day I have:

Top Queries:
Queries: 11
Impressions: 88, displaying 34
Clicks: 5, displaying 0

Top Pages:
Pages: 14
Impressions: 88, displaying 88
Clicks: 5, displaying 5

So impressions and clicks match, but "displaying" does not.

This site is a small site and hardly gets any traffic so there is no reason why not to display all. Site's top performing queries (in fact the only queries bringing traffic) were not reported. Although these queries bringing 5 clicks might have had only 1 impression, on the queries list I have three other queries that brought no traffic, but which also show only 1 impression, so not showing queries with 1 impression could not be the reason.

Basically, although the numbers are now not rounded, there is still a piece of information missing. The only keywords bringing traffic were not reported under "queries" tab.

It can't be that they arbitrarily cut off at some number like 200, because there aren't that many.

I have another site where both, the Top Queries tab and Top Pages tab are not displaying part of the data. This is also for 1 day:

Top Queries:
Queries: 505
Impressions: 5785, displaying 2826
Clicks: 265, displaying 87

Top Pages:
Pages: 265
Impressions: 5785, displaying 4397
Clicks: 265, displaying 265


And another site, one day data, also busier and also has "displayed" not matching:

Top Queries:
Queries: 1019
Impressions: 60917, displaying 15035
Clicks: 5013, displaying 2659

Top Pages:
Pages: 464
Impressions: 60917, displaying 39628
Clicks: 5013, displaying 4397

[Dymero]

How on earth do I land on the first page in searches for "cats"?

It does happen. For example, we occasionally rank higher up for single word queries related to our niche, even though it would seem like this is impossible and these searches only ever have one or two other ecom sites.

[aristotle]

aakk9999 wrote:
Site's top performing queries (in fact the only queries bringing traffic) were not reported.

Do you meant that search queries that got clicks aren't in the list, but queries that didn't get clicks are? If so, why would Google do it this way? Is it intentional, as if they are intentionally hiding the best-performing queries for your site. I don't understand.

[aakk9999]

Do you meant that search queries that got clicks aren't in the list, but queries that didn't get clicks are?

Yes, I mean exactly this. I do not mind seeing queries that did not get clicks (in fact, this is a good information). But I would expect that I would see all queries that got clicks, especially on such a small site with such a low traffic.

Even weirder is that my "Top queries" from the Click Traffic point of view were not shown.

I am pretty certain that there was at least 1 query not shown in the query list, and possibly 3. The alternative is that all queries are shown, but the Click figure reported against each is not correct.

Five clicks from Google ties in with statcounter for that day.

[aristotle]

Do you meant that search queries that got clicks aren't in the list, but queries that didn't get clicks are?

Yes, I mean exactly this. I do not mind seeing queries that did not get clicks (in fact, this is a good information). But I would expect that I would see all queries that got clicks, especially on such a small site with such a low traffic.

Well what I was really trying to ask is whether Google did this intentionally, and if so, what would their motive be.

[lucy24]

Hypothesis.

The "queries" list displays only those queries that did not use https, i.e. the ones where the referer in your logs gives some information beyond "google sent me". The "pages" list displays everything. (Possibly some other exclusion, since it isn't always at 100% displayed, but not the same exclusion.)

Is this possible?

:: wandering off to investigate ::

[rustybrick]

aakk9999, maybe it is coming from different regions? Try filtering the report by your second most visited country?