Archive for the ‘seo news’ Category
Tuesday, November 8th, 2022
In 7 useful Excel formulas and functions for PPC, I shared tips to quickly identify high-impact PPC optimizations that will move the needle for your brand or client.
I am a firm believer in an analytical approach to search marketing. My “weapon of choice” for manipulating search data is Excel and one of my favorite features of the platform is pivot tables.
In this article, I’ll highlight a use case you might not be familiar with, along with some tips and shortcuts to enhance your pivot table skills.
Unique use case: Using pivot tables to QA bulk sheets
If you’ve come across pivot tables in your search marketing career, I’d expect it was likely in a performance report. However, they can be leveraged in creative, non-analytical ways.
One such approach I am a particularly big fan of is using pivot tables to QA bulk sheets.
Might be a given, but you need to build your bulk sheet before you can use this technique. I won’t cover bulk sheet tips in this article (just one teaser: the concatenate function could come in handy), but one step I’ll recommend for your QA is to compile a summary of the elements you expect to be included in your bulk sheet.
I generally build a table in the first sheet of my workbook, such as the one that you see below. For the sake of this example, there are two things I want to highlight.
- First is that there will be exactly 5 keywords in each ad group.
- Secondly, Ad Group #1 across all campaigns drives to the final URL with Page=A, Ad Group #2 drives to page=B, and Ad Group #3 will click to page=C.
In the screenshot, you’ll notice I included the formula bar, which contains a formula for how to count distinct values in a data set.
Rather than discuss the nuts and bolts of how it works, just know that the referenced cells (D4:D18 in this example) need to be identical across the match functions and you should get the correct results.
Once you’ve built out your bulk sheet, it’s time to create the pivot table.
The key here is to make sure you are highlighting all rows/columns that comprise the bulk sheet before you create the pivot table.
Now that we have our pivot table created, we can use the count feature to ensure that the bulk sheet is accurately created.
When you drag non-numeric fields into the Values area, the output will automatically become a count, instead of a sum. It’s important to note that the pivot table will not reflect just the unique values.
This is illustrated in the example below, where you can see that the count of all campaign elements is 75, which reflects the total number of keywords we expect in the bulk sheet.
It’s important to recognize this, as it has an impact on how you should design your pivot table for accurate QA.
The best practice I recommend is to focus the count on the most granular element of the campaign. Move the campaigns and ad groups to the Rows area of the pivot table.
One final transformation to make, which is more stylistic than anything. If you right-click on the Campaigns field and navigate to field settings, you can adjust the view of your pivot table.
By making the selections highlighted in the view below, you can make the pivot table less vertical.
The screenshot below shows the differences in pivot table formats, with the corresponding field settings underneath.
Again, more of a stylistic tip than anything; however, this will format the pivot table in a way that is more friendly for copy/pasting into the Editor.
With these pivot table views, we’ve completed the first part of our QA. We’ve also confirmed that we have 5 keywords in each of the 15 ad groups.
If you wanted to audit the keyword text for accuracy, you would just move Keywords into the rows column below Campaign and Ad Group.
In the second part of our QA, we want to make sure that the ad groups in each campaign are driving to the correct landing page.
One of the beautiful things about pivot tables is that there are multiple ways to get to the same conclusion.
Below I’ve highlighted two ways you can use pivot tables to confirm we’ve trafficked the bulk sheet correctly.
The first option is similar to how we QA’d the count of keywords in each ad group. All I did was remove Keywords from the pivot table and added Landing Page underneath Ad Groups in the row. This will create a view that’s very easy to compare to our summary table.
The second option flips things on its head a bit. Since we know that all Ad Group #1s should drive to page=a, we can put Landing Page at the top rows area in our pivot table. By doing this, we will see all the Ad Groups within the bulk sheet that are driving to Page=A. A different view, yet one I would argue is more effective for QA’ing.
I’m only highlighting a few different views that I like. I challenge you to attempt leveraging a pivot table in your next bulk sheet QA and don’t be confined to the examples I’ve included here.
One of the greatest advantages of pivot tables is their flexibility. Play around and figure out what methods/approaches make the most sense for you.
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4 tips and tricks for pivot table analysis
To reiterate, the most common way that pivot tables are used in search marketing is for performance-based reporting.
In order to optimize the quality of your analysis, I want to highlight a few key tips.
1. Use custom calculations for maximum accuracy
I can’t stress this one enough. Accuracy is crucial for any analysis you are conducting.
To be honest, I don’t even export data sets with metrics such as CTR, CPC, or CVR, as I am a proponent of creating these as custom fields in the pivot table to ensure these metrics are accurately reflected.
It is surprisingly easy to create these metrics in a pivot table.
Once you’ve created your pivot table, navigate to the pivot table Analyze menu, go to Fields, Items, & Sets, and finally Calculated Field.
Here, you can name and create custom fields that will automatically update with any changes you make to the filters/contents of the pivot table.
Although it defaults to a “Sum of” label, you can see in the screenshot it is not a Sum. I typically just find and replace “Sum of” once I’ve finished creating my calculated fields to avoid any confusion.
To illustrate the difference, I’ve included the average platform CTRs in my dataset in the screenshot below. You can then see how I get to the calculated fields menu and how I create the calculated field.
Notice how the average of CTRs does not accurately represent the true CTR for this data set. However, our Custom CTR is spot on. (Feel free to check the calculation yourself!)
2. Pull data at the most granular level
The beauty of Excel and pivot tables is that it is prepared to handle relatively large data sets (about 1M rows). Pull your data at a keyword or ad level, add segments (i.e., device) and always pull by day if looking at a time period.
In doing so, you will ensure that you can drill down to the main drivers of impact. Refer to my first Excel article for tips on adding additional filters, such as transforming dates to a weekly view or how VLOOKUP can help create filters.
3. Build reports for the long term
PivotTable data can be refreshed and updated easily using the refresh feature (see screenshot below). Think about how you can design your report for the long term so that all you need to do is update the back-end data to create an updated view of performance.
This means maximizing the use of formulas in data manipulation (such as adding filters) and designing the data source in a way that those formulas won’t break when you paste in the updated data.
While this may seem like a heavy lift upfront, your end goal is a simple button click to refresh your performance report. The squeeze is worth the juice, trust me!
A quick comment on the difference between Refreshing a pivot table and Changing the Data Source. If you click Refresh, it will update the data within the originally defined data source.
When you change the data source, you are redefining what rows/columns should be included in the pivot table data.
If you expect the number of rows in the data set to vary over time, I recommend becoming familiar with the Change Data Source option, as this will ensure you have always included all rows/columns in the report. It’s an extra step, but one that ensures your data set is comprehensive.
4. Use shortcuts for pivot tables (PC users)
Last but not least, sharing a handful of shortcuts that have improved my speed when manipulating pivot tables.
These are a bit more complex, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll be flying around your workbook! For those on a Mac, #1 I’m sorry you’re missing out on Excel for a PC, but #2 your shortcuts are different!
- Alt + N + V + T: This creates a pivot table
- Alt + J + T: This opens the pivot table Analyze menu, when your cursor is on a cell within the pivot table. Adding a few keystrokes to the end gets you to commonly used features/menus
- Alt + J + T + J + F: This opens the Calculated Fields menu
- Alt + J + T + F + R: This refreshes the pivot table
- Alt + J + T + I + D: This allows you to change the data source
- Alt + J + T + C: This opens up the chart creation menu for the contents of your pivot table
- Alt + J + T + E + C: This clears the contents of your pivot table
Improving your Excel skills takes practice
Similar to the functions I covered previously, it is going to take practice and time before you see the efficiency benefits that come with these techniques. However, put in the time now and I can assure you that you will see the payoff.
In addition, I encourage you to not limit yourselves to the applications of pivot tables covered here. As shown in the Bulk Sheet QA example, there are multiple ways to get to the same output.
PivotTables are incredibly powerful tools that you can use to ensure you have both the 30,000-foot view of performance, as well as the more granular shifts that show your mastery of the funnel.
Use the Calculated Fields to create metrics specific to your business and think about how the QA techniques can be applied to other parts of your role.
The applications of these techniques are far-reaching.
Want to learn more Excel tips and tricks from me? Sign up for SMX Next. Check out my session on how to level up your analytical skills with Excel, plus you’ll hear from plenty of other amazing speakers.
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Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Tuesday, November 8th, 2022
Join thousands of search marketers online next week at SMX — November 15-16 — to learn actionable tactics that will take your SEO and PPC campaigns to a new level of success.
Your FREE All Access pass unlocks nearly 50 tactic-rich sessions programmed by the Search Engine Land editors that explore the latest search marketing issues — from machine learning to E-A-T, critical GA4 reports, winning site structure, and more. Each day kicks off with exclusive keynote conversations with Google – loaded with invaluable advice and tips straight from the source!
Instant on-demand access is included so you can train at your own pace – no plane ticket, no hotel, no travel risks required.
By the end of next week, you’ll be ready to…
- Increase the visibility and discoverability of your digital content
- Drive significant conversion rate and revenue gains
- Earn trust and build engaging conversations with prospects
… and much more. Check out the complete agenda, including live Q&A (Overtime!) with 30+ expert speakers, invigorating topic-driven Coffee Talks, and more!
What are you waiting for? You and your career deserve this. Grab your free pass now and join us online, November 15-16!
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Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Tuesday, November 8th, 2022
SEO and content marketing go together so well. They just work.
For best results, you shouldn’t do content marketing without considering how SEO fits in.
Conversely, you shouldn’t do SEO without understanding how content provides substance and connection to what ultimately matters at the heart of it all: your audience.
With both content and SEO working together, you’ll hit two bullseyes:
- SEO drives targeted, relevant traffic from Google – not random people who won’t care about what you do or sell, but rather prospects who could join your audience and convert at some point. It’s so powerful, SEO drives 1,000% more traffic than organic social media.
- Content marketing builds trust, authority, and loyalty with those prospects. If you’ve been paying attention, most modern consumers do diligent research before making purchases, and they want to like and trust the brands they give their money. 55% of buyers rely more deeply on content for researching and making purchase decisions than they did a year ago.
To put it lightly, SEO and content marketing have an incredibly symbiotic relationship. Let’s explore how they harmonize.
First, what is content marketing?
Content marketing is the creation, publication, and distribution of online content (from blogs and videos to ebooks and podcasts).
This content is not intended to sell something or promote the brand, but rather educate, entertain, or empower prospects. This nurtures their interest, engagement, and trust over time so they eventually become customers.
What is SEO?
SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of optimizing and improving your website (and your website content) so it’s visible in search results, where people are hunting for information, answers, products, and services.
It can’t be understated how important it is these days to show up in search engines, especially Google. Google Search, Images, and Maps drive 92.96% of global traffic. If your website and pages rank highly in the search engine, you’ll earn a good slice of that.
What are the major differences between SEO and content marketing?
SEO and content marketing are different but related.
Let’s put it this way:
- SEO is what brings targeted traffic to your site, including your content.
- SEO includes a set of actions you can carry out to optimize your website and content to show up in searches.
- Content is how you keep those people on your pages, nurture and eventually convert them into customers.
- Content can be optimized for specific keyword searches that connect to the audience (and buyer’s journey stage) you want to bring in.
To sum up, each one supports the other.
But how, exactly? In what specific ways do content marketing and SEO intertwine for the benefit of brands, search engines, and the users who need them?
How does SEO complement content marketing? (and vice versa?)
SEO and content marketing are very much a yin and yang situation. One improves the other and vice versa.
With both in your strategy, the results will be much more impressive than using either alone.
1. SEO drives relevant traffic to nurture content
You don’t write content so it gets sucked into the black hole of the internet. You write content with the hopes that some weary readers will find it and come away with giant light bulb moments.
They’ll associate those moments with your brand and your expertise. That’s formidable.
Content that doesn’t get read is useless. If you want it to contribute to the success of your marketing, you need people reading it so it can do its job nurturing leads.
One of the best ways to ensure the right eyes land on your content? Use SEO tactics to optimize it with keywords your targets are searching for.
68% of all website traffic comes from searches. That means, whenever someone in the world opens a browser, they’re starting their online session with a search most of the time. SEO helps drive the chunk of people who need you to your nurturing content.
2. SEO and content boost visibility and brand awareness
Want more people to associate your name with key industry terms? Start showing up consistently in their searches for those terms with SEO.
Even better, start showing up with amazing content that answers their questions and eases their specific pains – the ones only you can solve with what you know and what you sell (or, if you’re a marketer or SEO specialist, what your client knows and sells).
The better you do this, the higher your site and content will show up in results. Ultimately, earning a top 5 spot in organic (non-paid) results in Google promises the best chance people will not just see your listing, but also click on it.
CTR, or click-through rate, is the percentage of people visiting a webpage who click a specific link. The best CTRs on a search engine results page belong to the top 5 positions.
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3. SEO and content work together to improve the user experience
SEO and content aren’t just about ranking in a search engine and driving traffic and leads.
Together, they also help you provide a better user experience to your audience across your website.
SEO is laden with rules and guidelines that govern:
- How your website should be structured and optimized.
- How you should approach building pages and content.
- How you should link to other sites and your own.
- The level of quality you should aim for.
- And more.
It also prohibits deceptive or manipulative behaviors that aim to trick users or game the ranking system.
Following the guidelines for your site and content doesn’t just ensure you’ll rank better – it also ensures your audience will have a good experience once they find you.
And that contributes to everyone’s goals:
- Search engines want users to find what they’re looking for quickly and efficiently, and they want to provide results that are relevant and helpful.
- Brands want prospects who find them on Google to eventually turn into customers – and there’s a better chance of that happening if the brand provides a good user experience: from relevant, useful content to a fast-loading site that’s well-structured.
4. High-quality SEO content helps your pages rank better
It’s no secret that high-quality content will help your blogs, articles, and even your landing pages and sales pages climb the search rankings.
Content quality is, in fact, one of the most important elements that will influence your SEO success – if not the most important.
As Search Engine Land’s What Is SEO guide puts it:
“Content should be your first priority when thinking about SEO.”
After all, the content on your website:
- Determines whether you’re relevant to a user’s search query and whether you’ll add value to their lives or waste their time.
- Influences how long they’ll stay on your site (will they read that entire blog? Browse your other content? Look at your “about” page and services/products?).
- Should provide evidence that they can trust you.
These are essential signals to send out to your prospects, and all of them begin and end with your content and its quality.
Don’t leave home without both SEO and content marketing working in tandem
Let’s not mince words here.
Content marketing set up in a strategy by itself does not have the same power as when it’s mashed together with SEO.
Content without smart SEO will get far less traffic, fewer reads, less engagement, and fewer conversions.
SEO without high-quality content equals a thin, uninspiring, useless website that attracts no one and earns nothing.
The secret sauce comes together when you blend the two.
SEO pulls in traffic and leads. SEO gets a brand seen on a different level. SEO ensures the user experience measures up to high standards and satisfies users.
Content engages leads and keeps them on your site. Content nurtures their interest, trust, and loyalty. Content keeps them coming back for more.
Don’t leave home without a healthy mixture of both in your strategy.
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Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Friday, November 4th, 2022
Apple is currently holding discussions with advertising partners and MLS sponsors with the plan to launch next February.
The push for more ad space. Apple has been pushing aggressively lately to generate more demand and ad space for advertisers.
A deal with the MLS. Apple recently closed a 10-year deal to air MLS games in a new subscription service, as well as Apple TV+ streaming platform. They will also stream a portion of games for free to users of the Apple TV app. They’ll offer three different tiers: the dedicated package, paid TV+ subscriptions and the free TV app.
The contract has been estimated to cost $250 million per season or $2.5 billion over the next decade.
Why we care. New ad space is a good thing for advertisers who may be struggling to find their place in a crowded ad landscape. Stay tuned for more information when Apple makes an official announcement.
The post Apple could be building an ad network for live TV appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Friday, November 4th, 2022
Creators can now co-stream live videos with their friends on Twitch and TikTok. The new YouTube feature is called Go Live Together, and it’s rolling out over the next couple of weeks.
Not new. The new feature is compared to TikTok’s multi-guest and Twitch’s Guest Stars. YouTube’s newest addition Go Live Together can only be accessed through the YouTube app, which all parties must have installed.
What’s included. Hosts who want to co-host with their friends must have at least 50 subs and a verified channel. Additionally, guests must have a channel with no strikes on it.
On Twitch and TikTok, co-hosting supports up to five guests, but with Go Live Together, only one guest can join.
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Ads are allowed. YouTube’s co-hosted streams are allowed to run advertisements, but guests won’t see any of the revenue. The ads will head to the host, and the tandem stream won’t even show up on the guest’s channel. In the Creator Insider video, a YouTube rep admitted that visibility on guest channels is “so important to creators,” so that perk could arrive soon on Go Live Together.
Why we care. Creators will have the opportunity to bring on guests to share experiences, collaborate, or “hang out. The addition of advertisements also gives an additional opportunity to monetize their content.
We aren’t sure if monetization will ever be afforded to both participants on the channel, but there should be an option to at least split revenue. Brands will also have an opportunity to advertise their products and services in a collaborative environment.
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Thursday, November 3rd, 2022
Meta has just announced new tools to help creators reach new audiences, grow their communities, and monetize their content. Let’s jump in.
1. Updates to digital collectibles
Creators will soon have the ability to make and sell their own digital collectibles on and off Instagram. About creators, Meta says “They’ll have an end-to-end toolkit — from creation (starting on the Polygon blockchain) and showcasing, to selling. People can easily support their favorite creators by buying their digital collectibles directly within Instagram. We’re testing these new features with a small group of creators in the US first, and hope to expand to more countries soon.”
Meta is also expanding the types of digital collectibles that you can showcase on Instagram to include video and adding support for the Solana blockchain and Phantom wallet
Information for select collections where the metadata has been enriched by OpenSea, such as collection names and descriptions, will also be available on Instagram.
2. Subscriptions on Instagram
Meta is expanding access to subscriptions on Instagram to all eligible creators in the U.S., so more creators can earn predictable income and connect more deeply with their most engaged followers.
3. Stars and gifts
For creators already using Stars, Meta is launching additional features to make it easier to earn Stars and interact with Star senders. Meta is testing the new feature with a select number of creators globally.
From the Meta help guide:
- Bringing Stars Party to Reels. A Stars Party is a Stars community challenge that ends in a celebration if the creator reaches their goal.
- Testing a new set of virtual gifts tailored to specific content. For example, if you’re watching a puppy reel from your favorite pet creator, you’ll be able to send that creator a dog-themed gift.
- Giving creators more tools to engage with Stars senders, like adding a filter in Comments Manager that displays all of a creator’s Stars comments in one place. In this surface, creators will be able to reply to multiple comments at once.
- Bringing Stars to non-video public content like photos and text posts.
Gifts on Instagram have been introduced so creators have a new way to earn money from fans who like their Reels. Fans can send gifts on Reels by purchasing Stars within Instagram.
Meta is testing this with a small group of creators in the US.
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4. Professional mode for Facebook profiles
Professional mode offers creators a set of tools to begin growing a global community from their personal profile. Creators can become eligible to earn money through Stars, ads on Facebook Reels, in-stream ads and Reels Play. They will also have access to content and audience analytics, educational resources and more.
Why we care. Both seasoned and brand-new or aspiring creators can use these new tools to reach communities, grow their audiences, and earn money through Facebook and Instagram.
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Thursday, November 3rd, 2022
Five years after it first launched, the video sharing-focused social network TikTok has taken the world by storm.
Downloaded more than 2 billion times by users in 150 countries, people have flocked to the mobile app which presents them with a stream of algorithmically selected short videos filled with music, dancing, cooking demos, and other short bits of user-created entertainment.
For this report, DISQO surveyed 39,452 adult consumers in the United States with the goal of better understanding TikTok usage and consumer attitudes, particularly about brand advertising on the social media platform, including:
- How does TikTok usage vary across demographic cohorts?
- What do TikTok users think about efforts to market to them on the platform?
- What actions do TikTok users take after watching brand videos, and how does that map to the consumer marketing funnel?
Visit Digital Marketing Depot to download TikTok is all that… and a bag of clips. Insights into the TikTok audience from DISQO.
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Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Thursday, November 3rd, 2022
Google has confirmed it has fixed a bug that affected some search features, such as the top stories section. The bug was “noticeable” around October 18th and 19th, and was fixed around October 28th. Google said the bug fix can take about a week to fully rollout.
What happened. It is unclear exactly what the bug was, outside of there being a bug with “some search features” including the top stories section, as well as other search features. Google posted about this issue in the data anomalies Search Console report. Google wrote that on October 28th, the search performance report may be impacted due to this bug. Google wrote:
“Google released a fix to a bug that primarily affected some search features, such as Top Stories, and that became most noticeable around October 18-19. The bug fix will take about a week to fully rollout.”
Theories. We did ask Google for more details but did not yet hear back, so we can come up with some theories about what this bug was. Google did mention top stories specifically but I also noticed that Google had issues with other search features, like the people also ask and local pack results, amongst others, not showing up as often in the Google Search results listings.
Stay tuned. We hope to get a more detailed statement from Google about this issue and if and when we do, we will update this story.
Why we care. This bug may have had a temporary impact on your traffic and visibility in Google Search. It may have resulted in fewer impressions and clicks in Google Search. Google fixed the issue but you should see things rebound specific to this issue in the upcoming days or weeks.
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Thursday, November 3rd, 2022
Google has just added hour and date dimensions for Google Analytics 4.
A dimension is an attribute of your data. It describes your data and it’s usually text as opposed to numbers. An example of a dimension is Event name, which shows the name of an event that someone triggers on your website or application (such as “click”).
The new dimensions. An explanation of the new dimensions is below:
- Hour is the hour when an event was collected.
- Nth hour is the number of hours since the start of a specified date range.
- Date + hour is the date and hour when an event was collected.
- Week is the week of the event, a two-digit number from 01 to 53. Each week starts on Sunday, and January 1st is always in Week 1.
- Month is the month of the event, a two-digit integer from 01 to 12.
What the dimensions do. Google says you can use these dimensions to quickly answer questions like:
- How did my online sales data trend, hourly, after our Superbowl commercial aired?
- What months do I see the most traffic on my website?
- Are users of my app more likely to convert in the evening hours, or during the day? What about users of my website?
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Add custom dimensions and metrics as primary dimensions in saved reports. Google just announced that you can now add custom dimensions and metrics to your custom reports as primary dimensions, enabling you to more easily report on custom information that’s important to your business.
Additionally, the dimensions and metrics pickers in the Reports Builder have been updated to allow for easier navigation to help you find dimensions and metrics quickly.
Dig deeper. Learn more about analytics dimensions here.
Why we care. Advertisers will be able to see more information about their events so they can better optimize their campaigns. Use the dimensions to see the date and hour your event received clicks, conversions, or any other event name that’s specified.
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Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Wednesday, November 2nd, 2022
Google Search Console is an amazing tool that provides invaluable search data by real users directly from Google. While the charts and tables are friendly to work with, a large part of the data is not accessible from the UI.
The only way to get to this hidden data is to use the API and extract all that valuable search data that is available to you – if you know how. This is possible with regular expressions.
Here’s how you can maximize the Google Search Console API using regular expressions, according to Eric Wu, VP of Product Growth at Honey, a PayPal Company, who spoke at SMX Advanced.
Diagnosing SEO issues with GSC
Working on a website experiencing stagnant or declining growth or a core update drop?
Most SEO professionals turn to Google Search Console (GSC) to diagnose such issues.
(Or if resources permit, you may even use a paid tool like Ryte or build your own platform.)
Fortunately for the SEO community, there’s no shortage of Looker Studio dashboards (formerly Google Data Studio) useful for GSC analysis, including:
Dashboards allow SEOs to look at an overview of different trends as opposed to using GSC and doing multiple clicks to get to the data you need.
But if you’re analyzing enterprise sites, you can run into some roadblocks.
- Looker Studio and Google Sheets both load slowly, especially when you’re dealing with large sites.
- GSC’s interface has a 1,000-row export limit.
- GSC has a huge sampling problem. Enterprise SEO teams miss 90% of their GSC keywords, according to Similar.ai. And if you know how to extract the data, you can actually get 14x the keywords.
Overcoming GSC’s sampling problem
Explorer for Search is another tool that you can use for GSC analysis. From Noah Learner and the team at Two Octobers, it is built with data pipelines using GSC’s API which then outputs data to BigQuery (basically bypassing Google Sheets and downloading CSV files), and then visualizes information with Data Studio.
With this, you can have confidence that you’re getting to almost all the data.
There’s still a caveat due to GSC’s sampling problem, especially for large, ecommerce sites with lots of different categories. GSC won’t necessarily show all the data that’s coming in from those directories.
After conducting various tests to get the most data out of the GSC API, the Similar.ai team discovered a way to close the GSC sampling gap.
They found that by adding more subdirectories as different profiles within your GSC dashboard, you can extract even more data as Google gives you more information at that lower level.
For example, if you’re looking at example.com/televisions and you add “televisions” as a subdirectory in your GSC profile, Google will give you only the keywords and the click information for that subdirectory and down.
And by adding a lot of these different subdirectories, you can extract a lot more information.
That solves the sampling problem, but you can get even more data by using regular expressions.
Getting more GSC data with regular expressions
Regular expression, or regex, is a powerful tool to understand your data.
In April 2021, Google added regex support to GSC – giving SEOs more ways to slice and dice organic search data.
A lot of times, data is not useful unless you can comprehend it. And regex helps to extract actionable insights from GSC’s rich data.
But as powerful as it may be, regex can be difficult to learn.
The best place to understand and dive deep into regular expressions is Google’s official documentation on GitHub. (Google uses RE2 in its products, which is a flavor of regular expression.)
While regex is available in all kinds of different programming languages, you’ll find it almost everywhere even to those who are modifying .htaccess files.
In the next few sections are use cases for leveraging regex for GSC.
Regex informational queries
When looking at actual informational search queries in GSC, you typically want to understand:
- How are people actually coming to your site?
- What questions are they extracting?
Looking at those things from a one-off standpoint, within GSC can be difficult.
You’re always searching for the words “what,” “how,” “why” and then “when.”
There are a couple of ways to make extracting informational queries less tedious with regex.
Daniel K. Cheung shared a regex string that will show you all queries containing “what,” “how,” “why” and “when” that either got a click or an impression:
And this regex string shared by Steve Toth takes the previous example up a notch:
^(who|what|where|when|why|how)[" "]
You can use this string if you want to capture question-based queries that start with either “who,” “what,” “where,” “when,” “why” and “how” and then followed by a space.
This is a great list to use when you’re looking for any type of word that would start a question:
- are, can, can’t, could, couldn’t, did, didn’t, do, does, doesn’t, how, if, is, isn’t, should, shouldn’t, was, wasn’t, were, weren’t, what, when, where, who, whom, whose, why, will, won’t, would, wouldn’t
Putting all this into regex form would look something like this:
^(are|can|can't|could|couldn't|did|didn't|do|does|doesn't|how|if|is|isn't|should|shouldn't|was|wasn't|were|weren't|what|when|where|who|whom|whose|why|will|won't|would|wouldn't)\s
In this 178-character string:
- You have the caret (
^) which tells you the query needs to begin with this word:
- The words are separated with pipes (
|) instead of commas.
- All the words are wrapped in parentheses.
- There’s a backslash and the “s” (
\s) which denotes a space after the word.
This is good, but can also get tedious to do.
Below, Wu simplified the previous list of words to be more regex-friendly and shorter which is ideal for copying and pasting. Maintaining it this way also helps with efficiency.
In the first column are the normal words and in the second column, the compressed regex.
For instance, the word “can” uses the compressed version can(‘t)?.
What the question mark indicates is that anything within the parentheses is optional. The compressed syntax allows you to cover both the word “can” and “can’t.”
More interestingly, you can do this with could/couldn’t, should/shouldn’t, and would/wouldn’t where the -ould part of the words is the common base, like (c|sh|w)ould(n’t)?. This short string covers all six of those cases.
While simplifying that long list of words turned the string less readable, what’s great is that it fits more into the regex field and allows you to copy-paste easier.
^(are|can('t)?|(c|sh|w)ould(n't)?|did(n't)?|do(es)?(n't)?|how|if|is(n't)?|was(n't)?|were(n't)?|wh(at|en|ere|y)who(m|se)?|will|won't)\s
If you go a step further, you can compress it even more. In this case, Wu reduced the character count from 135 to 113 characters.
^(are|can('t)?|how|if|wh(at|en|ere|y)|who(m|se)?|will|won't|((c|sh|w)ould|did(n't)?|do(es)?|was|is|were)(n't)?)\s
Regular expressions can get really complicated. If you’re getting a regex string from someone else and would like to disambiguate what is doing what, you can use Regexper to help you visualize it.
Below you’ll see a comparison of the different regex string versions. It’s easier to maintain the first one, and obviously harder to maintain and read the last one.
But sometimes character count really will matter especially when you have longer regular expressions.
Regex filter limits for GSC is 4,096 characters, according to Google Search Advocate Daniel Waisberg.
That would seem quite a bit. However, if you have an ecommerce site and have to add domain names, subdomains or longer directories, you’ll most likely hit that limit.
Regex branded queries
Another instance where you may start hitting the regex character limit in GSC is when you use it for branded queries.
When you think about all the different types of misspellings of a brand name that a person could type, you’ll quickly run into that 4,096 character count. For instance:
- aamaung, damsung, mamsang, sam sung, samaung, samdung, samesung, sameung, samgsung, samgung, samsang, samsaung, samsgu, samshgg, samshng, samsing, samsnug, samssung, samsu, samsuag, samsubg, samsubng, samsug, samsumg, samsumng, samsun g, samsunb, samsund, samsund, samsunh, samsunt …
This is where understanding regex helps. With this string, you can capture the brand name “samsung” along with misspellings:
(s+|a|d|z)[a-z\s]{1,4}m?[a-z\s]{1,6}(m|u|n|g|t|h|b|v)
A lot of times, people will misspell the middle parts of the word. But in general, they get the format and length right and you can approach your syntax this way.
For brand query misspellings, consider the following:
- Main letters that make up the brand query.
- Consonants.
- Letters surrounding hard consonants.
In red are the hard consonants that people typically don’t miss when they’re typing in a brand name. These are the main letters that make up that particular brand. For “samsung”, the “s” in the beginning, the ”m” in the middle, and then “n” and “g” at the end.
The blue letters surrounding those main consonants on the keyboard are the ones people typically mistype. In the example, around “s”, you see the “a”, “d” and “z”. (While the layout is different for international keyboards, the concept is still the same.)
The regex string above captures all the possible variants of “samsung.”
The other major trick here is in [a-z\s]{1,4}.
In regex form, this basically says, “I want to match any letter “a” to “z”, or a space, one to four times.”
This captures all those weird misspellings that can happen in the middle of a brand query – where a person can potentially hit the same key multiple times or accidentally press space.
Additionally, the brand name is a certain length (“samsung” has seven characters). People likely won’t end up typing 20–50 characters.
So in this regular expression, we’re guessing that between “s” and “m” in “samsung,” someone’s going to mistype 1–4 characters. And then from “m” to “g” at the end, they’ll mistype 1–6 characters, with spaces included.
Adding all this allows you to capture the many variations of a branded query comprehensively.
The other thing to note is that the brand name could appear in different parts of the query.
So we need to make sure that the brand name itself, is captured. It should either be:
- At the start of the query.
- In the middle of the query (thus surrounded by spaces).
- Or at the end of the query.
The regular expression for this is as follows:
(^|\s)(s+|a|d|z)[a-z\s]{1,4}m?[a-z\s]{1,6}(m|u|n|g|t|h|b|v)(\s|$)
This captures all queries where the brand name “samsung” is either at the start, middle or end.
- Start of string =
^
- Surrounded by spaces =
\s
- End of string =
$
JC Chouinard’s post, Regular Expressions (RegEx) in Google Search Console, dives even deeper into regex examples.
Regex and the GSC API in action
Regular expressions came in useful for Wu and his team when they worked with a client that encountered traffic drops following a core update.
After looking at the ecommerce site’s different issues, they discovered that the problem resided in some product detail pages.
They needed to segment pagetypes for analysis in GSC. But this was a complex task because of the different URL structures for U.S. and international products.
The site’s international product URLs included language and country codes, whereas U.S. product URLs did not.
Even using regex syntax was tricky because letters and dashes exist in the product slug, categories and subcategories. Additionally, they needed to filter out the international product URLs to capture only U.S. pages.
To get all U.S. product landing + detail pages (not i18n pages), they came up with the following regex strings:
Include: /([^/]+/){1,2}p?
Exclude: /[a-zA-Z]{2}|[a-zA-Z]{2}-[a-zA-Z]{2}/
Here’s a breakdown:
The team wanted to match the category, the subcategory and all the products so they included:
- Any character that’s not a slash =
[^/]+
- 1 or 2 directories =
/){1,2}
- Sometimes followed by a product slug =
p?
A caret (^) typically means the start of the string. But when it’s inside brackets (as in [^/]), it indicates a negation (i.e., “not anything within this box”).
So this string /([^/]+/){1,2}p? means “I want any number of characters that is not a slash, leading up to a slash (which denotes the directory), and sometimes followed by the letter ‘p’ (the prefix for product slugs).”
At the same time, the team didn’t want to match the country and language combination which also contained letters and dashes, so they excluded:
- Any 2 letter directory =
[a-zA-Z]{2}
- 2 letter + 2 letter lang-country combo =
[a-zA-Z]{2}-[a-zA-Z]{2}
Creating a regular expression to match all the language and country codes on their own would be tedious because of all the possible combinations, so they were unable to approach this the way did for informational queries (where every single type of combination was excluded).
But even after creating these regex strings, they had a problem.
In Google Search Console, there’s only one field to paste a regex string. You’ll have to choose either Matches regex or Doesn’t match regex – you can’t use both at the same time.
This is where the GSC API came in handy as it allows joining regex strings.
In the Google Search Console API documentation, there’s a Try it now link.
Once clicked, it will open up a console that allows you to select a site and make your API request through the web view.
But to better manage API queries, Wu recommends using Postman on the desktop or Paw (which is native to Mac).
Postman allows you to create queries and save them for later. And if you have access to other sites, you don’t have to create a new query each time. You just simply change out the site name with a variable and then make multiple requests.
Paw, on the other hand, is much easier to look through and utilize.
To access the API, you’ll need to get your API keys. (Here’s a helpful tutorial from Chouinard.)
Once you get this info, you’ll have your client ID and client secrets, which you’ll add to your OAuth 2.0 authentication within either Postman or Paw.
From there, you’ll be able to sign in with your normal account.
Wu mainly made GSC API requests using the regex strings in Paw. The query is entered in the middle of the interface.
The response from Google is similar to that of the GSC API web view. The data can then be exported for processing.
Since the data is in JSON, the information can be messy and hard to read.
For this, you can use a free and open-source command-line JSON processor called JQ to pretty-print the information.
The data is not that useful until you get it into a spreadsheet. Pipe in the file you’ve exported from Paw to JQ. Open it and then iterate over each row – saving each element so you can output them to a CSV.
Here, you’ll need to convert clicks and impressions which are floats (a number that has a decimal place). Both need to be converted into strings compatible with a CSV.
JQ will then output the following much-simpler format.
Next, you’ll use Dasel to take this format and then make it into a CSV.
And here’s the end result.
What’s amazing for Wu’s team is that they were able to use the Google Search Console API and regular expressions to:
- Filter out all the international queries and look at just the U.S. where they were having the main issues.
- Identify the days the site was having issues.
Watch: Getting the most out of the Google Search Console API
Below is the complete video of Wu’s SMX Advanced presentation.
The post How to get the most out of the Google Search Console API using regex appeared first on Search Engine Land.
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