Thursday, May 06, 2010 at 12:41 PM
Webmaster Level: AllSince we released the latest version of Top Search Queries in Webmaster Tools we've gotten a bunch of feedback, most of which was overwhelmingly positive. Today, we're happy to bring even more improvements to Top Search Queries that we've implemented as a direct result of your feedback. First of all we've shortened "Top Search Queries" to be just "Search Queries" to better reflect all of the data provided by this feature. In addition to the name change you'll notice that Search Queries has several new updates. As requested by many of you, we're now showing an "Average position" column right on the main Search Queries page. This provides a quick at-a-glance way to see where your site is showing in the search results for specific queries. The other change you'll notice is that we're showing a "Displaying" number for Impressions and Clicks. This number represents a total count of the data displayed in the Search Queries table. The number in bold appearing just above it is a total count of all queries including the "long tail" of queries which are not displayed in the Search Queries table. When the "Displaying" number is not visible, such as when you select a specific country from the "All countries" drop-down menu, then the bold number is the total count of the data displayed in the Search Queries table.
We've also added an Average position column to the Search Queries download.
The other addition we've made to Search Queries is a "Starred" tab. Next to each Query on the Search Queries page there is now a clickable star icon. You can click the star icon for all of the queries that are of most interest to you. All of the queries that you "star" will be consolidated under the Starred tab providing a super easy way to view just the queries you care about.
We hope that this update makes Search Queries even more useful. If you've got feedback or suggestions for Search Queries please let us know in the Webmaster Help Forum.
68 comments:
Great additions to already useful service, but how about making the keyword rank data exportable in finer detail? At the moment can only get top level.
We're pretty excited about these new click-through metrics. The more detailed this information gets the better. This is a great update!
This addition has already proven to be so helpful. Finally a meaningful method of seeing your "share" of click throughs for a particular query. I wonder how the new 3 column look to Google will affect everything...
This looks pretty good. I like the charting, I like the data. Being able to star items seems like a critical feature.
A search box for a query might be nice :)
great innovation and great addition.
regards,
edith hadiansyah
general question about the ranking info: do the positions include local business listing spots, or does "#1" position start AFTER the business listings, as in this search:
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=tim+mcgraw+tickets+jacksonville
Does 'ticketmaster' in the result show up in GWT as a #2 position or is it #3
@dude
The positions reported in Search Queries include the Google Maps onebox for local business listings. So for the query you mention 'ticketmaster' would be reported as being in position #3.
How much trailing history is maintained? From what I recall, the stats started showing up around March 23...? Now the earliest historical info I can see is March 30??
Historical data is key to allow diagnosis of trend - i.e. am I doing better or worse over time?
In fact, if you could show the historical average rank across all queries (or the top 100, or a selected query, say) it would make a very useful graph visualization.
Now - do the same for links, so we can check out how our linkscape changed in diagnosing traffic drops - let us compete with the big guys!
PS @jonathan simon - thanks for the response :-)
@Dude based on Google's tagging local is counted in the first 3-10 results depending on which local pack is shown.
So if you have a 10 pack and you are shown up as #5 you are technically #15... not sure how Google might adjust this for GWT
are there plans tp expose this data through an api? id love to include it in reports...
I second what Nick Gerner, with over a thousand queries a search box would be very useful - for the rest, great stuff!
i want to see ranking for exact domains. i hope this will be possible in the future.
for example -->
3rd in google.com.tr
4th in google.de
etc.
@Nick Gerner @SEO Italy - these is a search box top right, its even in the screen shot
@dude - The data is available for the last 35 days.
@Guava Yeap, thanks noticed it a second after I pressed the "Submit" button to my comment... sorry!
I still don't understand the results I see. It is showing 90% of the results for the top query phrase on page 2/3 but it is always on page 1 somewhere.
@Bill: Probably the results are not based on the localized Google search results displayed for your region.
By the way, it would be nice to know which Google results are considered for the calculation of the average position: US, all, the ones of the country the site is targeted to, other?
Cheers.
Ask and ye shall receive. Thanks guys. Its great to see a company respond to feedback so quickly and efficiently.
To be honest I don't use this tool very much. I will have to check it out and see what I'm missing.
idearius It does this if it's filtered for the US too. Different numbers naturally but the proportions are the same 90% on page 2/3. It works out fine for other items and I am getting the hang of this, but this one result just doesn't make any sense and it is the top keyword phrase. More than all the others combined, so naturally I pay more attention to it. I like it with the new additions, I just don't understand it all.
See here http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=6070b05b671befa0&hl=en&fid=6070b05b671befa00004860236761620
Thanks for the clickable star.
This tools is wonderfull. Thanks a lot. You are the greatest.
Great initiative!! I like the charting of data. Especially clicks and impressions. Best is the starring feature
So is that the average of all the placements for the keyword ranked? or is it the average ranking for the top placement considering personalization and localization? Explain please.
To read easily the data, it should be interesting to use a different background colors a line on two.
Anyway, thanks for this helpful tool.
Yeah, it's great. But for us, a tiny, very niche site, all the detail has been lost in "<10"
We're not trying to make money off the site, it's mainly for support; but we still need to know that people can find it easily, so can we have the actual numbers back pls, at least when they're all small numbers?
two thumbs up!!!
Great additions starred option is very useful. Is it maintaining the trailing history the stats from April 1st to till date, before it from march. its not possible for checking previous history.
I like this new functions too.
Much more useful information, a great addition. Thanks
Awesome! I love this new addition.
thanks for the updates these are really useful additions to a great feature.
We have found some issues with the "average position" data:
This is excellent but when will we see this integrated in Google Analytics and Adwords and then Salesforce.com?
Thank you guys!
I really like this starred feature. It would be a great additional to google analytics, too. It would be really helpful if I could star the keywords that I care about most i.e. the ones that people type in when they are purchasing, and get stats specific to those keywords e.g. bounce rate
It is a great product. I would like to see a keyword overexposure/underexposure utility to verify if a keyword is repeated too many time in my pages.
Thanks,
Carl
http://www.couponshouse.com
I think if these features are useful on one hand then on the other hand they have made google webmasters tool difficult to run on slow internet connections.
http://www.risedream.com/blog/
I need this info, thanks
Great change! I like the list of pages within each keyword and the charting. Starring keywords is great. how about a search box for queries?
一句話,那就是,"船到橋頭自然直."
It's a good addition
thanks
It would be very helpfull if I could also fill in my own list of KW. so I could check how my website ranks for them.
Thank you google so much - "Top Search Queries" is truely a great and usefull feature that I have longed for.
THis is a great addition. Thanks!
I want to know why I am seraching web sites in the US and more and more sites in the UK shows ?
Great initiative, Google!
Its a very helpful feature, will add in my report.
To me the next place to take this is do something like AdWords. Tie this into Google Analytics transaction conversions then give us a conversion rate for each row. I would just love to see the impact of organic SERP on conversion across all my terms. Because everyone knows SERP impacts traffic (nothing new) but how does it impact conversion? Am I gaining more buyers or spyers?
the webmasters become more and more functional,not bad
i have a little problem at my blog http://hugelol.blogspot.com the analytics is not loading the traffic details what should i do ?
i suggest in the translation section that google add the latin language. so we can translate from latin ... it's very important language ..
If you could add your own list of keywords this would quickly become one of the most useful features imaginable.
Thank you, average position is a fantastic feature to get a quick overview.
It seems like it is a very useful tool, but like most tools their requires some time to develop skill in using it. Right now I am having a difficult time understanding the results for queries. ie.
Position in search results
5
6 to 10
I looked for the 5th position in the results and I looked on the sixth to 10th page and can't find that particular url.
Can someone shine some light on this for me?
Thanks to anyone who can help.
I'm also confused about the search results - it says my site shows as the 3rd result on the search term "Youtube Music" But I don't see my site anywhere in the first 10 pages of search results (I stopped looking after that) and I wouldn't expect to either, since this search query is extremely popular...
So what does this mean?
@jesse @elissa
This is due to the fact that Google is showing "national" rank and when you actually search and look the the SERP's, it is a "local search" result centered around your IP AND your search "profile"
Why is Google Webmaster Tools under-reporting keyword clicks/visits data compared to Google Analytics? Which one is more accurate? I just compared several identical keywords
I noticed what I think is a bug in the tool. Under the stared keywords tab there is a link to "download this table," but instead of exporting only the stared keywords you get the entire set of keywords.
Would it be possible to update the tool so only the stared keywords export when the stared tab is selected?
Thank you!
Hello
I have read so much that I am becoming a reclusive person. I have tried building links the 'correct' way. On topic, good articles, etc. etc. but they don't seem to be getting me anywhere. Can anyone tell me what it is I am doing wrong please. I don't have they money to pay anyone to do this for me, and from what I read, it actually may be counter-productive anyway.
Thanks
You all are doing such an awesome job! The ideas keep flowing I see. Thank you for sharing with me and everyone – I can't get enough!
Take care!
yu havent defined ,what is avg.position?
My suggestion may sound silly but it would be great if there were numbers indicating the position of the keywords on top search queries for impressions and clicks.
I do a lot of reports and what i'm suggesting would save me some precious seconds haha
Thanks!
I love the new additions; however I do agree that it would make it so much more helpful if you could preview metrics beyond the last 35 days. How would one be able to go back and see how well the site has performed over a period of time?
Recent changes also include % change data, except that no where on webmaster central does it say what time frame the % change is relative to? Is it a month over month change, or?? I see that the data also does not match Google analytics and other reporting tools, and this is explained on web central as being because the data is made from sampled data and includes rankings across all google 'verticals' such as images , news, etc.. But Seriously C'mon Gooole.. all anyone really cares about is the web rankings CTR.. maybe if there was a setting so that the CTR was for just your web rank positions and didn't muddle in Google images, news, etc.. then perhaps the CTR data would be more useful, and might actually even get close to other reporting tools, even though you are using sampled data, I think Google has missed the mark with the CTR reporting.. its neat, interesting, and also completely useless at the moment. But that probably just the way you want it, dont you Google? Jeez!
http://www.seo-cubed.com
What happened to the historical information of the search queries?
I logged in today and could only see info from the 5th of December 2010 onwards - the dates before then are not accessible.
What gives?
Christine
I think the "average position" results are inaccurate. It shows my in the top 10 for some keywords that I'm not even in the top 100.
Star is very useful..would be great if stars you click on were considered by google keywords that you're after.
I do need help Hi my name Robert .I am new in working with webmaster search queries.In webmaster search queries it says that i have ad 110,000 Impressions and 5,500 Clicks from Sep 2, 2011 to Oct 7,2011 . but when i look in my Adsence it says 18,865 Impressions and 104 clicks Sep 2, 2011 to Oct 7,2011.i dont no if am missing something here.??? can any one help me work it out why its not the same as Adsence Impressions our Clicks.???? i will be Gratful for your help Thanks
This Help full information is very best.. I'm try for it. thanks...
Hi everyone,
Since over a year has passed since we published this post, we're closing the comments to help us focus on the work ahead. If you still have a question or comment you'd like to discuss, free to visit and/or post your topic in our Webmaster Central Help Forum.
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