Google Webmaster Central Blog - Official news on crawling and indexing sites for the Google index

More data and charts in Top Search Queries

Wednesday, April 14, 2010 at 11:47 AM

Webmaster Level: All

We've got good news for site owners who are frequent users of the Top search queries feature in Webmaster Tools: we’re now providing more detailed data for each individual search query. We previously just reported the average position at which your site’s pages appeared in the search results for a particular query. Now you can click on a given search query in the Top search queries report to see a breakdown of the number of impressions and the amount of clickthrough for each position that your site’s pages appeared at in the search results associated with that query. Impressions are the number of times that your site’s pages appeared in the search results for the query. Clickthrough is the number of times searchers clicked on that query’s search results to visit a page from your site. In addition to impressions and clickthrough numbers, you’ll also see a list of your site's pages that were linked to from the search results for that search query. As we went about increasing the amount of data available, we also implemented measures to increase the detail of the data overall.



It used to be that you could only see Top search queries data for your site's top 100 queries. We’ve significantly increased the number of queries we show. Now if your site ranks for more than 100 queries, you’ll see new pagination buttons at the bottom of the Top Search Queries table allowing you to page through a much larger sampling of the queries that return your site in search results.



Previously, if you wanted to visualize your Top search queries data you could download your site's data and generate your own charts. To save you some time and effort, we're now generating a chart for you, and displaying it right within the page.



The Top search queries chart includes a date range selector similar to what Google Analytics offers. So now if you really want to see what your site's top search queries were for a particular week in the past, you can see the data for just that slice in time.



Finally, for sites that have numerous keywords that change frequently, we’ve added the ability to search through your site’s top search queries so that you can filter the data to exactly what you’re looking for in your query haystack.



We hope you enjoy these updates to the Top search queries feature and that it's even more useful for understanding how your site appears and performs in our search results. If you've got feedback or questions about the new Top search queries, please share your thoughts in our Webmaster Help Forum.

The comments you read here belong only to the person who posted them. We do, however, reserve the right to remove off-topic comments.

114 comments:

Jared Dees, M.Ed. said...

I like the extra data, but it was also nice to have an average position displayed without making any extra clicks. Any way I can do this without clicking individual terms?

Rebecca Gill said...

WOW! So happy about these new changes. Webmaster Tools just keeps getting better and better.

Thanks Google for making your free tools so awesome, user friendly, and relevant!

Cormac M said...

This is a really great addition. But when will be able to see regionalized data? I would like to see my top queries for google.co.uk/.fr/.ie/ etc... as well as .com.

Andrew said...

This is really insightful data, much appreciated webmaster team.

anh said...

good google , read more .. http://24hseo.com/quang-ba-website/443/2010/04/15/

Sahala Swenson said...

@Cormac M

You can filter search-queries by country by using the country dropdown. Hope that helps.

Michael Thomas said...

This is Phenomenal! Thanks so much Google for adding this tool. I logged into my account, saw the changes and had to check the Blog to see what we did right to get the extra data! Kudos!

Tim said...

I am so happy right now!!!!

David said...

Thank you! This is very kind to do all of this for free. Excellent work!

Magnus said...

Nice, but can you differ between generic search listing positions and social circle results? http://www.bravenewme.com/2010/04/google-webmaster-tools-and-social-search-mess/

Pod1 said...

That's all great, but where is the Google Shopping data gone?

I can only filter by web, mobile or images, but not products.

VSG said...

It's good. But I think we could add "filter" section like Google Analytics to include/exclude some keywords...

But first just want to say thank you to webmaster central!

lucy198731 said...

so thanks for your share and i have work for a blogger website. i share my idea in this blogger
http://www.warmfromyourfeettoyouheart.blogspot.com

Mike Andersen said...

I am glad to see such a wonderful improvement in webmaster tools.
It is the feature I've wanted.

lvkitty said...

LOVE this new feature! Almost as much data as provided through Adwords & Analytics :)

Jim said...

Awesome!

wjaspers4 said...

I love this new feature; but what happened to some of Google's international engines?
The list seems significantly shorter.

Will Google put the link back into a live search query at the bottom of each result?

Otherwise, this is even BETTER than the google analytics functionality.

Travel Admin said...

Great update!

Can you allow us to exclude terms from the search?

I'd like to only see my non-branded keyword performance.

Rainmaker said...

Just.simply.awesome.

Incredibly useful.

ncstrike said...

It is a great way to study conversion rates...

However 1 thing i hate about this new update is that it is saying:
"3rd page +" now i really want to know is it the 3rd page or it is coming from other than that.

Also when you say "3rd page +" do you count beyond the 10th page?

Thanks

Swine Flu said...

Hey,

I like this new feature very much, but i have one question for you, the number impressions are same for the top 10 results, is 100 users type same called 'online education' from US. The clicks will vary from 1st position to 2nd position.

Please share your thoughts here.


Regards,
Vasu.

Costa Rica said...

Good job and well done, it is becoming very interesting to spend more time inside webmasters pages, how ever, it will be nice to see other strange websites taking credit for our jobs in our websites, or at least Google's bot to recognize where the pictures and content are coming from original

Chintala Radhika said...

thanks webmaster team for new update its helps more

i checked for my site, i have a doubt whether he impressions are for search results in 1st page? and the what meant by '3rd page +'(the keyword is placed beyond the 3rd page)

I would like to suggest you to filtering the keywords option like Google analytics

very happy
thank you

Igor Petrushenko said...

Great morning for mytaskhelper.com

thank you very much for this update. Great work, well done!

Igor Petrushenko said...

but what if I need to show http://mytaskhelper.com geolocation search results. We do have domains in a several countries...it would be really helpful!!!

Igor Petrushenko said...

Sorry I mean MyTaskHelper.ru domain. So we can several in our webmasters and we may want to join results also to show regionalized data?!

יניב said...

At last! This is great! Thank you Google!

Rohit Tripathi said...

great work guys

ananth said...

guys, nice feature but I guess data is not correct as of now.

The impression data shown in webmaster and the traffic thats shown in KeywordTool
(https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) don't match by a very large distance.
And yes, I'm talking about keywords where our website appears inside top10 consistently

craig said...

This is probably the best google webmaster tool...

Stefan said...

I love the update but is the data accurate?

For instance, the feature says I'm getting xyz amount of impressions on one keyword but the google keyword tool says I should be getting 100 times more impressions than what xyz is.

I know about local search factors...

Stefan

ravi shrivastav said...

It's look like Google local data..
any ways thanks

Hermes said...

wow nice one

Danilo said...

Google tools are always changing for the better.
Excellent implementation for Analytics!

Deeapk said...

really good .....thanks Google :)

Alban said...

Awesome, really a useful bunch of info

Wyerarch said...

Nice update ;-)

india143.org said...

wow, one of the better updation in Google webmaster, I like it.It will help us in many way to target new visitors.

Julie Yeardye said...

Very revealing. Seeing great clickthroughs in positions 1 and 2, but a massive drop off after position 3. Search users are very demanding.
A great tool for really getting to the nitty gritty of your sites. I really love this!
Julie Yeardye

Craig Parker said...

Thanks for the update guys this is a fun one!

Salman said...

That is gr8, makes you guys more reliable :)

DVD Home Cinema said...

One of the best updates to GWT in years - genuinely useful and time saving. Awesome - and thanks!

Webnauts said...

Now this update is awesome! Very much appreciated!

Shahid Awan said...

Oh man, you have to love Google for allowing webmasters to see vital data about their sites....

Gareth Jax said...

Well... it's a nice improvement, but the data shown is quite...well... strange.

I've immediatly watched the WMC of a client and the brand name has ZERO ctr. Zero ctr on the brand name ?!

It's also a very particular name: there are no similarly named companies in italy and the official website is on the first position (as it should be).

So... what are these CTR ?

Tim said...

Fantastic data!

However, it would be FAR more useful if you could extract + download the 'expanded' data (i.e. every search terms with data for all positions).

At the moment the download option only gives the totals per keyword.

Is this something that's likely to change? Or are we likely to be able to pull this data via an API or similar in future?

Thanks,
Tim.

Shahid Awan said...

Would be good if we could export the data in excel or .csv format....

David Kurniawan said...

Bagus sekali, saya harapkan bisa melihat top key word sekaligus posisi atau peringkat sebenarnya dari hasil pencarian google

Ehsan said...

A great tool for checking keyword ranking positions. Should save quite a lot of time and effort.

Also a chance to improve search traffic for keyterms that are appearing low down the order.

richard.hellier said...

Improvements to UI are always welcome but please, please, please bring back the ability to display 'Product' from the drop down list

This is so important for us to be able to monitor the success of Google Merchant Feeds for our websites.

Could a rep. from Google respond please as this isn't the first time this has been mentioned.

Thanks in advance.

Richard.

RUCraft - Create, make & mend

Zurli said...

AWESOME !!!

Prav said...

This is mind blowing... awesome... It will save hell lot of time...

Richard said...

Noooooooo! This new data is lovely but for the last 8 months I've been copying out the table contents (including average position) and using it for tracking purposes in a way that the new data does not provide.

Any chance you could provide a
link that downloads/displays the table in the old format as the only alternative I can see at the moment is to either write a complicated scraper that converts the new data to the old data format or to throw away 8 months of detailed and interesting tracking work.

Meenam009 said...

Great feature in GWT.

Has anyone compare this data to Google Analytics???

I have seen some variations with top traffic drive keywords

Fz said...

The extra data give more idea to improve my blog on Google.

thank in advance

Sebastiaan E. said...

Great update of GWT. Gives me much better insight of what's really happening.

Is personalized search included in these data? For many keywords I see a whole range of positions in a relatively short period of time. Are these caused by different positions when personalized search is on?

nikolasSV said...

Great new Feature! Will I be able to integrate these data in my analytics-account?

Mareforzanove said...

Waiting for something like this from lots of time! Thanks! :-)

winelabels said...

Gives me lots to think about.

Matthew said...

this is an excellent addition to the web master tools.

Webmaster said...

Good interface, but make us spend more time. Think you have a global market business and want to compare the keywords between "Top Search" and "Google Insight Search" in the same Country? How to do... All we can do is pull the menu and click the ONE word one by one to see the different. I think the old version is better than this version. Another question, how can I download the data in old format? The new data cannot help us to improve our website.

Tom Critchlow said...

I'm not convinced about the quality of this data, I've written a quick analysis here:

http://www.distilled.co.uk/blog/seo/new-google-webmaster-tools-keyphrase-data-is-70-useless/

Tola Famakinwa said...

Great stuff! I just opened my GWT and was scared when I saw so much stuff!!!
It definitely gonna help analysis on websites a lot easier and more fun too...
Well done guys...

Seo Curitiba said...

The new functions Webmasters Tools were great. Congratulations Google!

Reforma said...

Congratulations Google. Always bring something new

vinod kumar said...

Foremost work for all publisher, webmasters and site owner. Thanks

SEO Content Girl said...

I thought something was different the minute I entered. This is neat.

Carter said...

way awesome keep it up... i love the features that have been coming out lately

Paige Taylor said...

Nice addition, very nice! Now I just need to improve some of those below 10 clickthrough rates.

info said...

I'm noticing huge differences between organic keywords in analytics and webmaster tools for the same period. These aren't small differences either - as much as 750 clickthrus difference. Why the differences and which one should we believe ?

searchengineman said...

Hey Webmaster Tools, It would be nice if you could offer CITY Level reporting as well. Some people are local and this would be more meaningful...Great Job on the new release!

Searchengineman

Matt N said...

I may be critical of Google a lot of the time, but this is by far one of the best features implemented on Google Webmaster Tools.

Great work Google team. You have even won over a critical jerk like myself on this one.

roseberry said...

just - thank you

Hackers said...

i thought this is the best news i,ve heard since last year....thanks

Shashikant said...

Thank you, folks.

Davidfree said...

Great improvement...

BUT: I also see a huge discrepancy between Google Analytics and this new GWT-feature...

For example, for 1 particular day I see 850 clicks from Google (organic) in GA, and only 300 in the GWT.

minduread.com said...

This a a great feature no the Webmaster toolkit. Thanks!

gordon.jackson said...

It would be nice if we could sort the columns by average search rank as well as the current sort orders.

This would help webmasters easily see if they are ranking low for queries important to their site - a good thing to know when you are considering buying AdWords, for example.

Albert T said...

Love the addition, makes it easy to find the information we seek.In time i'm sure we will have all we need. But Go Google!! I know I will this often.

Lee said...

Awesome, awesome, awesome. I'm starting to find better uses for this tool with every website I build.

Joydeep said...

GWT: Making webmasters life easy...

Luke said...

How can we not love you when you do things like that. THANK YOU!!

vishal.agrahari said...

Thanks Google. Its Gr8 data u have started showing in Webmaster. It will help me to measure the keywords performance. Day by Day webmaster tools getting better.


Thanks Again from http://www.seo-speaking.com

Typhoon said...

That's awesome guys..really, much more information to understand our websites.

But as Jared said at the top, "it was also nice to have an average position displayed without making any extra clicks"..

Thanks Again,
http://www.smartbloggerz.com

internet-consultant said...

Want to see the perfect tool to complement Google's new available data?

http://searchenginereports.net/

Export your TOP QUERIES keyword list into EXCEL. Then copy the KEYWORD cells into the tool. You can then see exactly where you rank for that keyword right now on Google, PLUS Yahoo and Bing, too.

It's free. Enjoy.

Blogger said...

Thank you Google for sharing these data. Extra Data is always welcome for Analyst. As Jared Dees mentioned it would have been really great if Google should average / actual position on Google Natural SERPs.

Does the impression means "Search Counts". Also one more thing to notice. You can only view 1,000,000 impressions only and their click through.

However, I wish all search analyst all the very best.

Ryan @ Techethos
http://www.makefreeinternationalcalls.com

chriscd said...

It would be great if this could be integrated with analytics and be able to show with Adsense data.

The Vicar said...

I miss clicking on my keyword or phrase and seeing it in context in Google search results, but beyond that there is loads of info that I'll have trouble finding a use for. 8/10, but as it's a free service 100/100.

Ajay Kumar Singh said...

This is a wonderful feature, it allows us to see the clickthrough. It is nice feature to find out how the ranking brings traffic.

However it would be nice if we can still see the old ranking display as that presented us quick view of all keywords which are ranking higher.

With new feature we need to click on each keyword to find out where they are ranking.

Any one out there listening?

Kumaravadivel S said...

It is a really great job by Google.

If we can get with Googele.co.uk, . in, au, like wise the country based data and with some filters li Analytic it will be Great.

Sean Gallagher said...

The data in these tools is not accurate... I did a in depth study and analysis about this on my blog - Google Can't Add

VPS said...

If Webmaster tools data is true...

Now, I can see it clear.
Chaos theory says: no limit, only approximations.
But Google says: Limit exactly.

Implies: Google LIMITs daily impressions for some websites. What websites? E-commerce websites.


Is Webmaster tools data true ?

mcsquare.me said...

thanks google for this update, webmaster tools keeps innovating and getting better. Kudo

Micha said...

This latest feature gives the top search queries its credibility and usefulness back, which it has been lacking over the last months.
Additionally, it would be great to be able to export all the data including the positions in search results. Is this something that other users are also missing?

Olivier said...

I follow Jared comment, it was indeed very useful to have the average position, also I found the previous download report more useful to create our own reports. for ie, following month after month the positioning of keywords. Now I lose this possibility.
To have a clickthrougt is nice, but to now why we or do not have goodclikthrought due to position is also important not to say the most

Richard said...

I agree with both Olivier and Jared and the other people who mentioned this before.

Restoring the average position to the on-screen table would make the whole thing a lot more useful, both in terms of being able to copy the content into a spreadsheet to do long-term tracking, and in terms of being able to determine at a glance which are the highest ranking search phrases.

Ivan said...

I like the extra data, but it was also nice to have an average position displayed without making any extra clicks. Any way I can do this without clicking individual terms?

Edmonton SEO said...

http://www.distilled.co.uk/blog/seo/new-google-webmaster-tools-keyphrase-data-is-70-useless/ Google analytics and Google Webmaster tools seems to have quite different results. Can you comment as to why this is happening, and let us know what you're doing to help improve continuity between the two interfaces?

xpressguru said...

The comparison shopping rankings are now completely missing from Google Webmaster after this latest update.

Are we taking two steps forward and one step back? Please see this functionality is reimplemented!

sonia said...

wow great addition,i am really glad to hear that,thanks a lot..

marketer said...

For any affiliate marketer or a website owner who wants to rank well in the search engine he has to target a good keyword. To do that manually it is very tedious. Good post by the blog owner i appreciate this.
From imeye i suggest to read all this blog post.

google said...

Great tool! finally a way to check the organic results and CTR

Marco Barra said...

Are the impressions achieved based on paid, organic, or personalised search results? - or are they a combination of any of the above?

The reason i ask, is that we appear to have gained some impressions and a few click on high possitions for very competitive terms which we have never seen on the top spots.

Thanks,

@marcobarra

Sagar Kamdar said...

@marcobarra the information included in Top Search Queries is for organic listings only (personalized search is considered an organic listing).

twin said...

Thank you so much for all the information. These will surely be a great help.

Marco Barra said...

Thanks for the info Sagar, i'm still a little confused about the origin/quality of this data though.

I have now come accross two more conflicting stats.

Firstly, for one of our high ranking terms, WMT reports 5400 imps and 22 clicks. Yet when i look at the same term within Analytics, it reports we've received 1627 organic visits over the same period.

Secondly, for one of our long tail terms, WMT is reporting 5 imps but 22 clicks. how can we have more clicks than the number of times a listing has appeared?

I'd be grateful if anyone could shine a light to either or both of the above.

Tnx,

@marcobarra

Preeti said...

The keyword which have received max. impressions and clickthrough rate in WMT is not there in analytics report. Why is it so?

Sagar Kamdar said...

@marcobarra if you could provide me your site and the head and long tail keyword, I am happy to look at it further.

June said...

I like the extra data, but now I can't easily view the data of Position in search results. For me this data is the most relevant info. Please, make the tool user friendly.

John said...

Do you plan to implement average position soon? For me this is clearly a "required to have" in your tool.

Maverick Artist said...

Not sure if Google will add "average position". If they decide to have it then the idea of having a Black Box will soon be more competitive. I wish Google don't go the Yahoo PPC way for Natural Results by showing average position.

Regards
Ryan @ Solid Radicle
http://www.solidradicle.com

skynex66 said...

very nice and usefull. but it would be better if you can download the url's for each search query. Best Regards.

Carrie said...

How can I differentiate between the product/Google Shopping and our pure organic listings?

Kells said...

Thanks.For beginners, if you want to visualize your top search queries data you can download your site's data and generate your own charts.