Google Analytics Features SEO Reports

Google has just announced a new service feature to use in you Google Analytics. The popular analytics utility now offers a set of reports called "Search Engine Optimization." This feature is now out of beta testing and is available for public consumption.

The Webmaster Tools section contains three reports based on the Webmaster Tools data that Google feels will offer a better understanding of how your site performs within search results.

Google has created a new section for these reports called Search Engine Optimization that will live under the Traffic Sources section.
You will need to have a Google Webmaster account before you can use this feature and will have to connect your Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools accounts. Once you are setup, the data is displayed almost immediately, although data metrics from the last two days is not available. Following is a brief summary of some of the features offered in the new reports.

seo reports

The reports you’ll find there are:

Queries: impressions, clicks, position, and CTR info for the top 1,000 daily queries. One point to keep in mind here is that Google is showing the "average position" and is not actually displaying your true "rank." Google is not displaying rank, but instead they record the position of each impression.

Landing Pages: impressions, clicks, position, and CTR info for the top 1,000 daily landing pages. The Landing Pages report shows how many times your top landing pages were shown in search results, again along with average position and CTR.

Geographical Summary: impressions, clicks, and CTR by country. This is useful when you are targeting other countries in your SEO strategy. There is also a Google Property Report which is useful for seeing how your site performs among different search results like image, mobile and video searches.

It seems in this instance that Google is trying to play catch up to Blekko but both companies have some fine tuning to do on their SEO reports features before they are fully functional. The new SEO reports does make Google a little more transparent which many feel they have been severely lacking for some time.

Once the rough spots are smoothed out with the new reports they will undoubtedly offer some very insight into how your site is performing but some very good insight into how the Google SERPs actual function in a reality.