Webmaster Tools Links With Google Analytics

You can now view Google Search Data from Webmaster Tools directly in your Google Analytics account. You can also access Analytics reports directly with Webmaster Tools. These reports are available from the ‘Links to your site’ and ‘Search queries’ pages under the ‘Your Site On The Web’ menu in Webmaster Tools and also the ‘Sitelinks’ page under the ‘Site Configuration’ menu. Back in June, Google began conducting a pilot program to test these feature and have been making refinements and tweaks based on user feedback, finally culminating in making the new reports available to all users on the 4th October, 2011.

How To Link Webmaster Tools To Google Analytics

Before you can begin playing with your new reports, you need to link Webmaster Tools to Google Analytics.

Here are the steps:

  1. Head to your Webmaster Tools home page.
  2. Click Manage Site next to the site you want to hook up.
  3. And then click Google Analytics property.
  4. Select the web property you want to associate with the site and then click Save.
Naturally, the Google Account associated with your Webmaster Tools account must also be the one that has access to the Analytics Account. Yawn.

What Reports Do I Get?

You will find three new reports based on the Webmaster Tools data. Google has created a new section for these reports called Search Engine Optimisation (oh Google, you make me laugh) which can be found under the Traffic Sources section in your Analytics Account. These reports are:

  • Queries: impressions, clicks, position and CTR info for the top 1,000 daily queries
  • Landing Pages: ditto for the top 1,000 daily landing pages
  • Geographical Summary: impressions, clicks and CTR by country
Webmaster Tools Queries

Why Are My Numbers Different?

The data from Webmaster Tools may differ to the information from Google Analytics. This can happen for a variety of reasons:

  • Google Analytics will not track users who have disabled javascript
  • Analytics only tracks visitors to pages which include the Analytics code
  • Analytics describes ‘keywords’ as both search engine queries and AdWords queries

More Info

The Google Analytics Blog Post on the new features.

The Help Centre article on linking your accounts.

If you have any trouble linking your Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools, feel free to give us a call. More than happy to help.