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Getting Ready For GA4: Saving Your Historical Data

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As you’re preparing to set up Google Analytics (GA4), you’re probably asking the same thing we were: What’s the best method for migrating our historical data?

There should be a way to do this, right?

In this column, you’ll learn whether we can merge data in GA4 and three DIY ways to save your historical data.

Can You Migrate Your Data To GA4?

The primary concern is whether GA users can transfer or migrate Universal Analytics data into their Google Analytics 4 property.

Unfortunately, you cannot migrate your data to GA4, and it’s not likely to be a feature we’ll see added in the coming months.

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Migrating your data to GA4 is not likely to be a feature because the two versions use completely different data models.

I spoke with Charles Farina, Head of Innovation at Adswerve, and he explained that:

“It is the difference in schema and dimension definitions/calculations that make merging the data not possible.”

Schema refers to how the data is organized and the language used to ensure compatibility. Essentially it is the blueprint.

He explains you can see the differences in schema well when comparing the BigQuery integrations for UA and GA4.

“The UA export is sessionized, meaning each row in the export is a session, and every interaction is nested in that row. The GA4 export is very different, where each row is the event (interaction) itself,” shared Farina.

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Another key reason is how dimensions and metrics are defined and calculated in GA4 compared to UA.

Google has a great support page that goes over many of these.

For example, let’s look at one of the most common KPIs, “Users.”

Universal Analytics reports on Total Users or all users, while GA4 focuses on Active Users or users that have visited the website at least once in the past 28 days.

Even if we could migrate UA data to GA4, it would be like comparing apples to oranges.

If you’re wondering why this change is happening, you’ll find the answer in our article, Google Analytics 4 FAQs: Stay Calm & Keep Tracking.

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How To Export Google Analytics Historical Data

Google does empathize and encourages users to export their historical data.

“We know your data is important to you, and we strongly encourage you to export your historical reports during this time.”

Screenshot from Google Help, April 2022GA4 help

Google hints that more guidance on how to export may be coming in the future.

The good news is while we cannot migrate our data, we can still save it.

Google allows GA360 (paid product) users to export Universal Analytics data to BigQuery. However, the cost of this product makes it inaccessible for smaller organizations.

So, what about standard users? How do the rest of us export historical data?

I will show you three DIY methods and a few tools that can handle more complex requests.

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1. Manual Export

The easiest way to export data is to get it directly from your Google Analytics account.

Open the GA standard report you want to keep. For example Acquisition > All Traffic > Source/Medium.

Set any customizations you want, such as a segment for a particular country, a filter for a particular page grouping, or a secondary dimension for landing pages.

Click EXPORT in the top right corner.

Select the file format from the drop-down menu. You can choose PDF, Google Sheets, Excel (xlsv), or CSV.

UA Historical Data_Manual Export exampleUA Historical Data_Manual Export example

Though this is the easiest way to export your historical data, there are limitations.

You can only apply two dimensions and are limited to a maximum of 5,000 rows.

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If you are registering thousands of hits per day your data may be sampled.

Check for the green checkmark shield in the top left near the title of the report you’re viewing; this means your data is not sampled.

2. Google Analytics Dev Tools: Query Explorer

Google Analytics dev tools sound off-putting (and technical), but you are likely already familiar with one of the tools.

The Campaign URL Builder is commonly used to create UTM parameters for campaigns.

GA dev tools also have a query explorer.

This is an easy (and free) way to export data for non-technical users (yeah!).

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Open Query Explorer and click the orange button, LOGIN.

Sign in to your Google Analytics account that has access to the property you are working on.

UA Query ExplorerScreenshot from UA Query Explorer, April 2022UA Query Explorer

Select the account, property, and view you want to save data for.

The tool will automatically set the GA ID, so you don’t need to worry about that.

UA Historical Data_Query Explorer_Select account exampleScreenshot from UA Query Explorer, April 2022UA Historical Data_Query Explorer_Select account example

Set the remaining query parameters: Date range in the format YYYY-MM-DD, metrics, dimensions, and any filters or segments you would like to apply.

For metrics, select the columns from your Google Analytics report that you are extracting data from.

You can choose every metric in the report you want to replicate or just a few metrics that help achieve your goals like “Users,” “bounceRate,” “avgSessionsDuration” and “goalCompletionsAll.”

UA Historical Data_Query Explorer_Query paramters exampleScreenshot from UA Query Explorer, April 2022UA Historical Data_Query Explorer_Query paramters example

Dimensions will be the rows from the Google Analytics report from which we are exporting data.

For example, if we want to see metrics (users, bounce rate, duration, and goal completions) by traffic source select “ga:sourceMedium” as the dimension.

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Note: If you plan to visualize this information in Data Studio, you will need to set the dimensions “ga:Medium” and “ga:Source” separately.

“ga:SourceMedium” does not work in Data Studio. More on visualizing to come.

UA Historical Data_Query Explorer_Dimensions exampleUA Historical Data_Query Explorer_Dimensions example
Screenshot from UA Query Explorer, April 2022

The rest of the query parameters are optional. I recommend leaving these blank in this use case to pull the max amount of data.

You can always sort, filter, and segment within your spreadsheet.

Scroll to the bottom and click the orange button RUN QUERY.

From here, download the data as .tsv (tab separated values) and open it in Excel or Google Sheets.

GA Query Explorer_Data download exampleScreenshot from UA Query Explorer, April 2022GA Query Explorer_Data download example

Note: Notice the UA – GA4 toggle in the left-hand menu navigation. By clicking this toggle, you can access Query explorer for GA4 accounts.

3. Google Analytics Sheets Add-On

This option is a tad more complex but connects Google Analytics directly to Sheets, so you don’t have the extra steps of downloading and uploading.

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Create a folder in your Google Drive that will hold your historical data. Create a new Google Sheet and name something that will make sense for future team members, like “UA Historical Data_Traffic Acquisition_2021.”

Along the top menu navigation, click Extensions > Add-Ons > Get Add-Ons.

screenshot_Google Sheets Extensions Get Add-OnsScreenshot from Google Sheets, April 2022screenshot_Google Sheets Extensions Get Add-Ons

Search for the Google Analytics app in the Google Workspace Marketplace. Click to install and follow the onscreen prompts.

screenshot_Google Analytics Sheets ExtensionScreenshot from Google Workspace Marketplace, April 2022screenshot_Google Analytics Sheets Extension

Back to your Google Sheet. Click Extensions again. This time you should see the app for Google Analytics.

Hover and click Create new report.

Now it’s time to export your historical data.

screenshot_Google Analytics Sheets Add-on_create new reportScreenshot from Google Sheets, April 2022screenshot_Google Analytics Sheets Add-on_create new report

Step 1. Name your report something that makes sense for your fellow team members. For example, we will pull data by financial quarter, so report no. 1 will be named “Q1 2021.”

Step 2. Select the Analytics view you want to extract data from by choosing our Account, Property, and View.

Step 3. Configure report. Here we will choose our metrics, dimensions, and segments.

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I am going to keep it simple for this example and choose “Users,” “Bounce Rate,” and “Goal Conversions” for my metrics and “source” and “medium” for my dimensions.

Note: ga:sourceMedium is not compatible with Data Studio. If you plan on visualizing this sheet, it is best to pull the traffic source dimensions separately like ga: Medium, ga:Source.

Leave Segments empty to see all users.

screenshot_GA Sheets Add-On configuration for historical dataScreenshot from Google Sheets, April 2022screenshot_GA Sheets Add-On configuration for historical data

Clicking the blue button Create Report will lead you to configuration options.

There are more options to customize our report that are not available on the previous screen.

We can adjust the date range using the format YYYY-MM-DD.

We can apply filters like country, ga:country==United States.

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Double-check that everything looks correct, then click Extensions > Google Analytics > Run reports to export your historical data.

GA Sheets Extension Run Report exampleScreenshot from Google Sheets, April 2022GA Sheets Extension Run Report example

Note: Speed up this process by copying and pasting the configuration over to the next column, updating the date range, and running multiple reports simultaneously.

A report status popup will let you know if you’ve made any mistakes or once the report is completed successfully.

Row Number 6 will show us if the data is sampled or not. Row number 7 will tell us how much if the sheet contains sampled data.

GA Sheets Extension_Sampled data screenshotScreenshot from Google Sheets, April 2022GA Sheets Extension_Sampled data screenshot

In Universal Analytics, data sampling happens after 500,000 sessions in the timeframe.

So, you can adjust your report data range to reduce the number of sessions in your timeframe.

Or, if you need the full dataset and want to skip the back and forth, use a third-party tool to avoid data sampling.

Third-Party Tools

Optimizesmart.com has a 46-step walkthrough of using Supermetrics for sending GA data to BigQuery.

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On March 12, 2022, JR Oaks announced that they are working on releasing an open-source GA to BigQuery backup script/workflow to the public.

There are pre-built data pipelines by companies like Hevo and Electrik AI that export historical data from Google Analytics to a database file or data warehouse of your choice.

You may also consider switching to a paid Analytics provider.

A few have already launched a Google Analytics historical data import option.

Visualizing Historical Data With Data Studio

Now that you have pulled your historical data, you want to make something easy to compare to GA4.

Note: I have to forewarn you that attempting to compare UA and GA4 will be really rough because the data models are completely different.

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Farina adds,

“Google intends for you to run GA4 side-by-side with UA and, instead of merging the data, just cut over to GA4 as soon as it has 13 months of historical data.”

Be assured that a lot of your hard-earned knowledge and skills carry over to GA4! Read, Getting started with GA4 to learn where to find site traffic, user engagement, events, and conversion reports.

Ok, back to visualizing historical data.

Follow these steps to create a Data Studio report that will stack a historical data table on top of a GA4 data table, so your YoY results are at least in one place.

Open Data Studio and click to start a Blank Report.

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Data Studio create a blank report_screenshotScreenshot from Google Data Studio, April 2022Data Studio create a blank report_screenshot

There will be an overlay screen to select the data source you want to connect. Select Google Sheets.

Google Sheets connector for Data Studio screenshotScreenshot from Google Data Studio, April 2022Google Sheets connector for Data Studio screenshot

Locate the spreadsheet you made above when exporting your data. If you followed the steps exactly, it will be named “UA Historical Data _Traffic Acquisition_2021.”

Select the worksheet “Q1 2021.”

Using the first row as headers will automatically name your metrics and dimensions, so keep boxes both checked.

Select the optional range that matches your sheet.

For example, my headers start at A15, and the last number in my sheet is E62, so my range will be “A15:E62.”

Connecting Sheets with Data Studio exampleScreenshot from Google Data Studio, April 2022Connecting Sheets with Data Studio example

Data Studio will automatically create a table. Double-check that the configuration is the same as your sheet in the right-hand menu.

Medium is the primary dimension. Flip the toggle to add a secondary dimension of Source.

Metrics are Users, Bounce Rate, and Goal Completions.

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Your historical data table will look similar to the screenshot below.

Google to offer more guidance on data export_quote screenshotScreenshot from Google Data Studio, April 2022Google to offer more guidance on data export_quote screenshot

Next, we will create the same table but for our GA4 data in the same time frame: Q1 2022.

Right-click to copy and paste your table, then change the data source from UA Historical Data to your Google Analytics 4 account.

Because the metrics have different names, you will see an error – invalid metric.

Click on each metric and update it to something similar like “Total Users,” “Engagement Rate,” and “Conversions.”

Dimensions will update to “session/source” and “session/medium.”

Last, in the same menu, scroll down and set the date range so it matches your historical data: January 01 – January 31, 2022.

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The final report will look similar to the screenshot below.

screenshot of historical data to GA4 comparison in Data Studioscreenshot of historical data to GA4 comparison in Data Studio
Screenshot from Google Data Studio, April 2022

You can easily see primary metrics year over year by comparing historical data with GA4.

Although, it’s fairly bare-bones.

You can not blend this data because the definitions and calculations of the dimensions and metrics are fundamentally different.

For more robust historical reporting options, such as graphic users or goal completions over a period of time, you may want to consider BigQuery.

Final Thoughts

Unfortunately, migrating your data to GA4 is not currently possible (and not likely to come) because the two versions are fundamentally different data models.

There are a few DIY solutions for saving your historical data, but the outputs are fairly bare-bones.

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If you need more robust information and reporting capabilities of historical data, look into a data warehouse like BigQuery.

Google hints that additional information on exporting historical data will come before the July 2023 end date.

Maybe that will be a data connector for BigQuery for Google Analytics standard users – one can hope.

More resources:


Featured Image: Paulo Bobita

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Content Pruning: Why It Works, and How to Do It

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Content Pruning: Why It Works, and How to Do It

Content pruning sounds pretty appealing: delete a ton of content and see your organic traffic improve. But pruning has risks (like deleting useful pages and useful backlinks), and benefits are not guaranteed: So how does pruning actually work? And when

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8 Free SEO Reporting Tools

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8 Free SEO Reporting Tools

There’s no shortage of SEO reporting tools to choose from—but what are the core tools you need to put together an SEO report?

In this article, I’ll share eight of my favorite SEO reporting tools to help you create a comprehensive SEO report for free.

Price: Free

Google Search Console, often called GSC, is one of the most widely used tools to track important SEO metrics from Google Search.

Most common reporting use case

GSC has a ton of data to dive into, but the main performance indicator SEOs look at first in GSC is Clicks on the main Overview dashboard.

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As the data is from Google, SEOs consider it to be a good barometer for tracking organic search performance. As well as clicks data, you can also track the following from the Performance report:

  • Total Impressions
  • Average CTR
  • Average Position
gsc-performance-overviewgsc-performance-overview

Tip

If you’ve signed up for AWT using Google Search Console, you can view your GSC performance data in Ahrefs by clicking “GSC Performance” from the main dashboard.

But for most SEO reporting, GSC clicks data is exported into a spreadsheet and turned into a chart to visualize year-over-year performance.

organic-traffic-graph-showing-clicks-year-over-yearorganic-traffic-graph-showing-clicks-year-over-year

Favorite feature

One of my favorite reports in GSC is the Indexing report. It’s useful for SEO reporting because you can share the indexed to non-indexed pages ratio in your SEO report.

google-search-console-indexed-pages-reportgoogle-search-console-indexed-pages-report

If the website has a lot of non-indexed pages, then it’s worth reviewing the pages to understand why they haven’t been indexed.

Price: Free

Google Looker Studio (GLS), previously known as Google Data Studio (GDS), is a free tool that helps visualize data in shareable dashboards.

Most common reporting use case

Dashboards are an important part of SEO reporting, and GLS allows you to get a total view of search performance from multiple sources through its integrations.

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Out of the box, GLS allows you to connect to many different data sources.

Such as:

  • Marketing products – Google Ads, Google Analytics, Display & Video 360, Search Ads 360
  • Consumer products – Google Sheets, YouTube, and Google Search Console
  • Databases – BigQuery, MySQL, and PostgreSQL
  • Social media platformsFacebook, Reddit, and Twitter
  • Files – CSV file upload and Google Cloud Storage

Sidenote.

If you don’t have the time to create your own report manually, Ahrefs has three Google Looker Studio connectors that can help you create automated SEO reporting for any website in a few clicks

google-looker-studio-partner-connectorsgoogle-looker-studio-partner-connectors

Here’s what a dashboard in GLS looks like:

ahrefs-seo-audit-dashboardahrefs-seo-audit-dashboard
Ahrefs Google Looker Studio integration

With this type of dashboard, you share reports that are easy to understand with clients or other stakeholders.

Favorite feature

The ability to blend and filter data from different sources, like GA and GSC, means you can get a customized overview of your total search performance, tailored to your website.

Price: Free for 500 URLs

Screaming Frog is a website crawler that helps you audit your website.

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Screaming Frog’s free version of its crawler is perfect if you want to run a quick audit on a bunch of URLs. The free version is limited to 500 URLs—making it ideal for crawling smaller websites.

screaming-frog-user-interface-screenshotscreaming-frog-user-interface-screenshot

Most common reporting use case

When it comes to reporting, the Reports menu in Screaming Frog SEO Spider has a wealth of information you can look over that covers all the technical aspects of your website, such as analyzing, redirects, canonicals, pagination, hreflang, structured data, and more.

Once you’ve crawled your site, it’s just a matter of downloading the reports you need and working out the main issues to summarize in your SEO report.

Favorite feature

Screaming Frog can pull in data from other tools, including Ahrefs, using APIs. 

If you already had access to a few SEO tools’ APIs, you could pull data from all of them directly into Screaming Frog. This is useful if you want to combine crawl data with performance data or other 3rd party tools.

screaming-frog-api-accessscreaming-frog-api-access

Even if you’ve never configured an API, connecting other tools to Screaming Frog is straightforward.

Price: Free

Ahrefs has a large selection of free SEO tools to help you at every stage of your SEO campaign, and many of these can be used to provide insights for your SEO reporting.

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when-to-use-ahrefs-free-tools-across-the-seo-process-illustrationwhen-to-use-ahrefs-free-tools-across-the-seo-process-illustration

For example, you could use our:

Most common reporting use case

One of our most popular free SEO tools is Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (AWT), which you can use for your SEO reporting.

With AWT, you can:

  • Monitor your SEO health over time by setting up scheduled SEO audits
  • See the performance of your website
  • Check all known backlinks for your website
ahrefs-overviewahrefs-overview

Favorite feature

Of all the Ahrefs free tools, my favorite is AWT. Within it, site auditing is my favorite feature—once you’ve set it up, it’s a completely hands-free way to keep track of your website’s technical performance and monitor its health.

If you already have access to Google Search Console, it’s a no-brainer to set up a free AWT account and schedule a technical crawl of your website(s).

Price: Free

Ahrefs’ SEO Toolbar is a free Chrome and Firefox extension useful for diagnosing on-page technical issues and performing quick spot checks on your website’s pages.

Most common reporting use case

For SEO reporting, it’s useful to run an on-page check on your website’s top pages to ensure there aren’t any serious on-page issues.

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ahrefs-seo-toolbar-overviewahrefs-seo-toolbar-overview

With the free version, you get the following features:

  • On-page SEO report
  • Redirect tracer with HTTP Headers
  • Outgoing links report with link highlighter and broken link checker
  • SERP positions
  • Country changer for SERP

The SEO toolbar is excellent for spot-checking issues with pages on your website. If you are not confident with inspecting the code, it can also give you valuable pointers on what elements you need to include on your pages to make them search-friendly.

If anything is wrong with the page, the toolbar highlights it, with red indicating a critical issue.

severity-highlight-ahrefs-seo-toolbarseverity-highlight-ahrefs-seo-toolbar

Favorite feature

The section I use the most frequently in the SEO toolbar is the Indexability tab. In this section, you can see whether the page can be crawled and indexed by Google.

indexability-tab-ahrefs-seo-toolbarindexability-tab-ahrefs-seo-toolbar

Although you can do this by inspecting the code manually, using the toolbar is much faster.

Price: Free

Like GSC, Google Analytics is another tool you can use to track the performance of your website, tracking sessions and conversions and much more on your website.

google-analytics-screenshotgoogle-analytics-screenshot

Most common reporting use case

GA gives you a total view of website traffic from several different sources, such as direct, social, organic, paid traffic, and more.

Favorite feature

You can create and track up to 300 events and 30 conversions with GA4. Previously, with universal analytics, you could only track 20 conversions. This makes conversion and event tracking easier within GA4.

Price: Free

Google Slides is Google’s version of Microsoft PowerPoint. If you don’t have a dashboard set up to report on your SEO performance, the next best thing is to assemble a slide deck.

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Many SEO agencies present their report through dashboard insights and PowerPoint presentations. However, if you don’t have access to PowerPoint, then Google Slides is an excellent (free) alternative.

google-slides-screenshotgoogle-slides-screenshot

Most common reporting use cases

The most common use of Google Slides is to create a monthly SEO report. If you don’t know what to include in a monthly report, use our SEO report template.

Favorite feature

One of my favorite features is the ability to share your presentation on a video chat directly from Google Slides. You can do this by clicking the camera icon in the top right.

share-video-chat-google-slidesshare-video-chat-google-slides

This is useful if you are working with remote clients and makes sharing your reports easy.

Price: Free

Google Trends allows you to view a keyword’s popularity over time in any country. The data shown is the relative popularity ratio scaled from 0-100, not the direct volume of search queries.

Most common reporting use cases

Google Trends is useful for showing how the popularity of certain searches can increase or decrease over time. If you work with a website that often has trending products, services, or news, it can be useful to illustrate this visually in your SEO report.

Google Trends makes it easy to spot seasonal trends for product categories. For example, people want to buy BBQs when the weather is sunny.

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Using Google Trends, we can see that peak demand for BBQs usually happens in June-July every year.

bbq-google-trends-graphbbq-google-trends-graph

Using this data across the last five years, we could be fairly sure when the BBQ season would start and end.

Favorite feature

Comparing two or more search terms against each other over time is one of my favorite uses of Google Trends, as it can be used to tell its own story.

google-trends-comparison-examplegoogle-trends-comparison-example

Embellishing your report with trends data allows you to gain further insights into market trends.

You can even dig into trends at a regional level if you need to.

regional-trends-via-google-trendsregional-trends-via-google-trends

Final thoughts

These free tools will help you put together the foundations for a well-rounded SEO report.

The tools you use for SEO reporting don’t always have to be expensive—even large companies use many of the free tools mentioned to create insights for their client’s SEO reports.

Got more questions? Ping me on X 🙂

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Study Reveals Potential Disruption For Brands & SEO

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Study Reveals Potential Disruption For Brands & SEO

A new study by Authoritas suggests that Google’s AI-powered Search Generative Experience (SGE), currently being tested with a limited group of users, could adversely impact brand visibility and organic search traffic.

These findings include:

  • When an SGE box is expanded, the top organic result drops by over 1,200 pixels on average, significantly reducing visibility.
  • 62% of SGE links come from domains outside the top 10 organic results.
  • Ecommerce, electronics, and fashion-related searches saw the greatest disruption, though all verticals were somewhat impacted.

Adapting to generative search may require a shift in SEO strategies, focusing more on long-form content, expert insights, and multimedia formats.

As Google continues to invest in AI-powered search, the Authoritas study provides an early look at the potential challenges and opportunities ahead.

High Penetration Rate & Industry-Wide Effects

The study analyzed 2,900 brand and product-related keywords across 15 industry verticals and found that Google displays SGE results for 91.4% of all search queries.

The prevalence of SGE results indicates they impact a majority of websites across various industries.

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The research analyzed the typical composition of SGE results. On average, each SGE element contained between 10-11 links sourced from an average of four different domains.

This indicates brands may need to earn multiple links and listings within these AI-curated results to maintain visibility and traffic.

The research also suggests that larger, well-established websites like Quora and Reddit will likely perform better in SGE results than smaller websites and lesser-known brands.

Shifting Dynamics In Organic Search Results

With SGE results occupying the entire first page, websites that currently hold the top positions may experience a significant decrease in traffic and click-through rates.

When a user clicks to expand the SGE element, the study found that, on average, the #1 ranked organic result drops a sizeable 1,255 pixels down the page.

Even if a website ranks number one in organic search, it may effectively be pushed down to the second page due to the prominence of SGE results.

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New Competition From Unexpected Sources

The study revealed that SGE frequently surfaces links and content from websites that didn’t appear in the top organic rankings.

On average, only 20.1% of SGE links exactly matched a URL from the first page of Google search results.

An additional 17.9% of SGE links were from the same domains as page one results but linked to different pages. The remaining 62% of SGE links came from sources outside the top organic results.

Challenges For Brand Term Optimization & Local Search

The study reveals that SGE results for branded terms may include competitors’ websites alongside the brand’s own site, potentially leading to increased competition for brand visibility.

Laurence O’Toole, CEO and founder of Authoritas, states:

“Brands are not immune. These new types of generative results introduce more opportunities for third-party sites and even competitors to rank for your brand terms and related brand and product terms that you care about.”

Additionally, local businesses may face similar challenges, as SGE results could feature competing local brands even when users search for a specific brand in a regional context.

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Methodology & Limitations

To arrive at these insights, Authoritas analyzed a robust dataset of 2,900 search keywords across a spectrum of query types, including specific brand names, brand + generic terms, brand + product names, generic terms, and specific product names. The keywords were distributed across 15 industry verticals.

The study utilized a consistent desktop browser viewport to quantify pixel-based changes in the search results. Authoritas also developed proprietary “alignment scores” to measure the degree of overlap between traditional organic search results and the new SGE links.

While acknowledging some limitations, such as the keyword set needing to be fully representative of each vertical and the still-evolving nature of SGE, Authoritas maintains that the insights hold value in preparing brands for the new realities of an AI-powered search ecosystem.

Why We Care

The findings of the Authoritas study have implications for businesses, marketers, and SEO professionals. As Google’s SGE becomes more prevalent, it could disrupt traditional organic search rankings and traffic patterns.

Brands that have invested heavily in SEO and have achieved top rankings for key terms may find their visibility and click-through rates diminished by the prominence of SGE results.

SGE introduces new competition from unexpected sources, as most SGE links come from domains outside the top 10 organic results. This means businesses may need to compete not only with their traditional rivals but also with a broader range of websites that gain visibility through SGE.

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As Google is a primary source of traffic and leads for many businesses, any changes to its search results can impact visibility, brand awareness, and revenue.

How This Could Help You

While the rise of SGE presents challenges, it also offers opportunities.

Taking into account what we’ve learned from the Authoritas study, here are some actionable takeaways:

  • As SGE favors in-depth, informative content, businesses may benefit from investing in comprehensive, well-researched articles and guides that provide value to users.
  • Incorporating expert quotes, interviews, and authoritative sources within your content could increase the likelihood of being featured in SGE results.
  • Enriching your content with images, videos, and other multimedia elements may help capture the attention of both users and the SGE algorithm.
  • Building a strong brand presence across multiple channels, including social media, industry forums, and relevant websites, can increase your chances of appearing in SGE.
  • Creating a trustworthy brand and managing your online reputation will be crucial, as SGE may feature competitors alongside your website.

Looking Ahead

While the long-term impact of SGE will depend on user adoption and the perceived usefulness of results, this study’s findings serve as a valuable starting point for businesses and SEO professionals.

By proactively addressing the challenges and opportunities SGE presents, you can increase your chances of success in the new search environment.


Featured Image: BestForBest/Shutterstock

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