web-analytics

AI Search traffic versus organic search traffic.

AI Search Currently Drives Less Than 1% of Traffic To Most Sites, Google Is Still Dominant, and Watch The Long-term Risk of Ignoring Google Search

In this post, I’ll explain how to set up AI Search tracking in Google Analytics 4 to view the difference between AI Search traffic compared to Google Search and organic search overall. I’ll also explain how ignoring Google Search could lead to a drop in quality, which could cause problems with Google’s broad core updates … Read more

The Forgotten Coupling of clicks and impressions.

The Forgotten Coupling – With AI Overviews Surging in Web Search, Don’t Overlook Image Search, Video Mode, and the News Tab in Search

With the rise and surge of AI Overviews, and soon AI Mode, site owners are dealing with an unprecedented situation from a search traffic standpoint. Impressions in search might be stable, or even increasing, yet clicks might be dropping. And that’s often due to AI Overviews ranking in the SERPs for important queries that typically … Read more

How to compare hourly data from Google Search Console via the GSC API and Analytics Edge

How to compare hourly Google Search Console Data (GSC) to track impact from major algorithm updates using the GSC API and Analytics Edge [Tutorial]

When a major algorithm update rolls out, it’s often helpful to view hourly data in Google Analytics to see the impact in near-real time. If a site is impacted heavily (surging or dropping), you can typically see when the update actually lands and the stark difference in traffic when that happens. One of my most … Read more

AI mode tracking in Google Search Console

How Google’s AI Mode Is Tracked In Google Search Console (Desktop and Mobile Examples)

Update: June 17, 2025 – AI Mode is now being tracked in Search Console.It’s official, AI Mode is now being tracked in Google Search Console (GSC). Google updated its documentation on June 16, 2025 and explained that AI Mode will be tracked in GSC, how the tracking will work, etc. First, Google explained that AI … Read more

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