Google Make an Impression with More Data

Almost out of nowhere and with no apparent warning, on Wednesday 14th April 2010 Google started showing more detailed information for organic search results in Webmaster Tools. They then cheerfully blogged about it like nothing much had happened. However, rather than ponder the pros and cons (we’ll do this at a later date after giving the new data a good work out) we thought we’d just talk about what is now available.

Making an Impression with More Data

Using the new data, you can now click on a search query and see a more detailed breakdown. Most importantly this includes impressions and clickthroughs allowing you to see what search queries your pages ranked for and what was clicked on.

Increased Queries

Traditionally, you could only see the top 100 search queries but this has been considerably increased. Plus, you are also no longer bound by dates as flexibility to chose and pinpoint a particular period can allow you to gain the information pertaining to those dates. The increased search queries will allow you to view more of the terms you rank for.

Let Google Put the Reports Together for You

Previously you could get the information you needed and put together your own charts, now Google are doing it for you. Webmasters versed in Google AdWords will find some of these additions familiar.

This offering of more detailed information from Google has been greeted with both excitement and suspicion but when used in conjunction with other analytics it could prove to be very useful.

However, one initial concern is how this data is collated and what it includes. Because this is a little murky, especially with some people calling for the information to be regionalised, it is hard to predict how useful the results are. Alas, we are jumping the gun a little and these things will be discussed at greater length in a follow-up post.