WebProNews

Tag: webmaster tools

  • SEO Reports in Google Analytics

    Google announced the launch of a limited pilot for SEO reports in Google Analytics, which are based on search queries data from Webmaster Tools.

    “Webmasters have long been asking for better integration between Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics,” Google says on the Webmaster Central Blog.

    The SEO reports also take advantage of Google Analytics’ filtering and visualization capabilities for deeper analysis, Google says. “For example, you can filter for queries that had more than 100 clicks and see a chart for how much each of those queries contributed to your overall clicks from top queries.”

    Google SEO Reports from Webmaster Tools data in Google Analytics

    Search queries data includes:

    • Queries: The total number of search queries that returned pages from your site results over the given period. (These numbers can be rounded, and may not be exact.)
    • Query: A list of the top search queries that returned pages from your site.
    • Impressions: The number of times pages from your site were viewed in search results, and the percentage increase/decrease in the daily average impressions compared to the previous period. (The number of days per period defaults to 30, but you can change it at any time.)
    • Clicks: The number of times your site’s listing was clicked in search results for a particular query, and the percentage increase/decrease in the average daily clicks compared to the previous period.
    • CTR (clickthrough rate): The percentage of impressions that resulted in a click to your site, and the increase/decrease in the daily average CTR compared to the previous period.
    • Avg. position: The average position of your site on the search results page for that query, and the change compared to the previous period. Green indicates that your site’s average position is improving.To calculate average position, we take into account the ranking of your site for a particular query (for example, if a query returns your site as the #1 and #2 result, then the average position would be 1.5).

    Webmasters can use the search queries data to review the query list for expected keywords and compare impressions and clickthrough rates. It can also be helpful for keyword ideas for paid search campaigns.

    “We hope this will be the first of many ways to surface Webmaster Tools data in Google Analytics to give you a more thorough picture of your site’s performance,” said Trevor Claiborne of the Google Analytics Team. “We’re looking forward to working with members of the pilot to help us identify the best ways to make this happen.”

    If you’re both a Webmaster Tools verified site owner and a Google Analytics admin, you can sign up for the pilot here. Each individual user must sign up for the pilot if they want access to the new reports.

  • Verify Your Site in Webmaster Tools with Google Analytics Snippet

    Google announced that you can now verify your site in Webmaster Tools with a Google Analytics JavaScript snippet.

    "Nobody likes to duplicate effort," said Google software engineer Sean Harding. "Unfortunately, sometimes it’s a fact of life. If you want to use Google Analytics, you need to add a JavaScript tracking code to your pages. When you’re ready to verify ownership of your site in other Google products (such as Webmaster Tools), you have to add a meta tag, HTML file or DNS record to your site. They’re very similar tasks, but also completely independent. Until today."

    "If you already have Google Analytics set up, verifying ownership is as simple as clicking a button,’ he says.

    Verify with Google Analytics

    Google notes that this method of verification only works if you’ve migrated to the newer asynchronous version of the tracking code. The JavaScript has to stay in place on your site or your verification will expire. You also have to remain an admin on the Google Analytics account that the code is associated with.

    If you’ve verified your site, you can add additional verified owners via the verification details page. The verification page has a new interface as well.

  • Submit Various Content Types to Google in One Sitemap File

    Google now lets you submit various content types in one sitemap. For example, if you want to submit videos, images, mobile URLs, etc. in the same sitemap, you can do so.

    "Site owners have been leveraging Sitemaps to let Google know about their sites’ content since Sitemaps were first introduced in 2005," explains Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Jonathan Simon. "Since that time additional specialized Sitemap formats have been introduced to better accommodate video, images, mobile, code or geographic content. With the increasing number of specialized formats, we’d like to make it easier for you by supporting Sitemaps that can include multiple content types in the same file."

    Google lets you upload various content types in sitemaps

    "The structure of a Sitemap with multiple content types is similar to a standard Sitemap, with the additional ability to contain URLs referencing different content types," he adds. You can see an example here.

    Google reminds webmasters that previous sitemap rules still apply. There is a 50,000 URL per file limit, and a 10MB uncompressed file size limit.

  • Bing Talks New Webmaster Tools

    Bing Talks New Webmaster Tools

    Microsoft made some significant announcements related to Bing at SMX Advanced in Seattle. Later this summer, Bing will offer a redesigned version of Bing Webmaster Tools based on feedback from webmasters. The tools will provide webmasters with a simplified, more intuitive experience that delivers a comprehensive view of how Bing indexes their sites, a representative for Bing tells WebProNews.

     Highlights include:

    – The Bing Webmaster Tools have been re-engineered from the ground up to offer more data, including enhanced charting functionality, through a modern, improved user interface. The new tools remain web-based, and basic functionality will be available through most web browsers.

    – The tools assess performance in several key areas, including crawl, index and traffic. Each area will offer granular data going back as far as six months with enhanced, on-the-fly adjustable charting, enabling webmasters to focus on the timeline trends that are most meaningful to them.

    – The update also includes a new experience built with Silverlight, featuring rich visual charts to help webmasters quickly analyze several months of data to identify trends and drive insights.

    Update: Bing’s Eric Gilmore tells us about the new Bing Webmaster Tools in the following interview:

     More here.

    Bing also announced social search, which uses public updates from Fan Pages and aggregated data from public updates to deliver real-time results. Doug Caverly talks more about this here.

  • New Data From Google Can Help You Optimize Your Site for Conversions

    Google has just started sharing more detailed data for each individual search query in the Top search queries feature in Webmaster Tools.  Google used to just report the average position at which your site’s pages appeared in the search results for a particular query. Now users can click on a given search query to see a breakdown of the number of impressions (number of times your site’s pages appeared in the results for the query), as well as the amount of clickthrough (number of times searchers clicked on that query’s search results to visit a page from your site) for each position your site’s pages appeared at in the results associated with that query. Google also shows a list of your site’s pages that were linked to from the search results for that search query.

    Is the new data being provided by Google of use to you? Tell us what you think.

    How This New Data Can Help Site Owners

    WebProNews spoke with industry veteran Jill Whalen of HighRankings about how this new data can help site owners. "In the past, I haven’t found the data in Webmaster Tools all that helpful other than the occasional finding of a crawl error," she says. "Some of the information they provide isn’t quite accurate, such as when they say that certain Meta descriptions are duplicates when they actually aren’t. These inaccuracies cause people to wonder what they’re doing wrong and in some cases they even panic or waste time ‘fixing’ things that were not broken in the first place, just because they believe everything that comes out of Google."

    "This new data–assuming it’s accurate–provides a new layer of information beyond that which we can typically get elsewhere," Whalen continues. "As far as I know, there’s no other way to know the actual number of times an organic listing in Google is shown to people for a given keyword phrase. That’s pretty interesting and important information!"

    Google Offers New Query Data for Impressions and Conversions

    "Where I see some real value, however, would be in conversion optimization–trying to increase the clickthroughs for your existing organic listings. Just knowing what your clickthrough conversion rate actually is, is a whole new set of data that we never had before."

    Another industry veteran, Aaron Wall of SEOBook, tells me, "For years Google has provided some mystery meat data of marginal value and so I typically have not recommended registering with their webmaster tools. But this is the first tool they have offered which flips that recommendation on its head, as these stats give you new insights into how you are doing in search – data that is not easy to get anywhere else." He’s got an interesting post up about it himself.

    How Accurate is the Data?

    Google’s addition of the new data has been met with a great deal of enthusiasm. Comments on Google’s announcement are overwhelmingly positive. That’s not to say, however, that there isn’t some amount of skepticism.

    "As I said, this data will be very useful if it is indeed accurate. There’s been some Twitter buzz from other SEOs whose data doesn’t match up with their Google Analytics," says Whalen. "For our High Rankings website, the clickthroughs for any given keyword phrase didn’t exactly match what my Google Analytics showed for the same keyword phrases, but it was fairly close. For instance, my top two Google organic keyword phrases showed 3,020 and 1,193 visits when using Google Analytics. Via Webmaster Tools, the same keyword phrases show 2900 and 1300, respectively. That’s pretty close. Perhaps they’re sort of just rounding off (in a strange kind of way!).  Other phrases had similar differences in the numbers."

    Regardless of how precise the information is, webmasters have some new numbers to sink their teeth into, and assuming that many more share similar views to Whalen’s this might make Webmaster Tools a great deal more useful to a lot of site owners. In fact, a lot more site owners may soon be using Webmaster Tools for the first time. Google also just announced a new deal that will insert Google Services for Websites into the latest version of the Plesk Panel, which is said to be used by millions of site owners. Webmaster Tools is part of that Services for Websites package.

    Will you find this new data from Google useful? Let us know.