When using both of Google’s reporting tools for SEO – Analytics and Search Console – even the most similar metrics, such as sessions and clicks, don’t match exactly but what’s important is that the general trends have the same pattern. We have reviewed why there may be differences and how any larger discrepancies can be minimised by SEO practitioners.
Small discrepancies
If the difference is small, the discrepancies can be ignored. Since the systems are different, it’s normal and expected that the numbers will be a little different and it’s not something that needs to be fixed.
Big discrepancies
If the difference is considerable, it may be possible to minimise the issue or at least pinpoint the reason why the numbers vary.
When looking at the organic Google Search traffic dashboard, or when comparing sessions to clicks data exported from the tools, there might be more than one reason depending on your website configurations, audience, and traffic composition.
This list includes the most common issues, but some of these reasons can’t be effectively debugged (due to the nature of the systems). However, knowing about them will help to make reasonable inference:
Implementation in Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a tool that collects behavioural data by implementing a tag on a business’s website or app, so it depends on what and how that’s been implemented. In Google Analytics, there are implementation and configuration issues that can affect the data quality. For example, there could be pages on the website where the Analytics tag is missing so it’s important to ensure that Analytics is set up properly.
On the other hand, Search Console is a tool that provides access to Google Search data, which is processed by Google for all properties uniformly. This means that the way those settings are configured will have less impact on the data.
Cookies or tracking
If the site is asking users to accept tracking and users opt out, that can skew Google Analytics data. More can be learnt about how to handle this User consent management from an Analytics perspective.
Time zone
A time zone can be chosen in Google Analytics, but that can’t be customised in Search Console, where the default time zone is PST. This is particularly noticeable if the time zone in Google Analytics is set to a location that has a big offset from PST (for example, if the site primarily serves users in Australia).
Attribution
There are three attribution models available in Google Analytics, while Search Console counts every click in Google Search. The closest attribution model available is the default model in Google Analytics.
Canonical URLs
Search Console reports only on the Google Search canonical URL, whereas Google Analytics reports on any URL that includes the tracking code. That means that you’ll likely see higher numbers of URLs in Google Analytics.
Traffic breakdowns
Search Console breaks down the traffic by web, image, video, news and Discover. These category breakdowns are different in Google Analytics.
Non-HTML pages
If the website site has non-HTML pages (for example, PDFs), Search Console includes these pages by default if they’re shown or clicked in Search. Google Analytics may not be configured to measure them, so a good place to start is turning on the enhanced measurement events.
Bot traffic
Google Analytics automatically excludes traffic from known bots and spiders, while Search Console doesn’t necessarily filter them out.
More can be learnt about other ways to analyse and visualise Search Console and Google Analytics together:
- Connect Search Console to Google Analytics
This makes a few Search Console reports available within Google Analytics, which can be helpful as a quick way to access the queries and landing pages that drove Google organic search traffic to the website. - Site Kit plugin for WordPress
If the site is on WordPress, both Google Analytics and Search Console data can be viewed in a single dashboard within WordPress. - Search Console Bulk data export and Google Analytics export to BigQuery
To get the most details and minimise data discrepancies, an effective recommendation is to export Search Console data to BigQuery and merge it with data from the Google Analytics BigQuery export.
If you want to know more about how minimising the data discrepancies between Google Analytics and Search Console could help your business get a more accurate picture of the data, please get in touch.