https://www.qantas.com/au/en/business-rewards/news/member-stories/yoghurt-digital.html

Details to come

Love dark mode on your operating system but hate it in Chrome? Same.

Unfortunately, Chrome hasn’t yet added any ability for users to easily toggle this on and off and as such Chrome will always replicate whatever the operating system theme is. If it’s light, Chrome will be light – if dark, well you get the picture. Given that Chrome’s incognito function was always themed as “dark”, this can become confusing when switching between the browser types.

Good news is it’s easily solved via command line. Here’s how to go about it.

1. Open terminal
2. Type the following

write com.google.Chrome NSRequiresAquaSystemAppearance -bool yes

That’s it! To reverse the process, simply replace “yes” with “no” at the end of your terminal line. You’ll need to re-launch Chrome in order to see the changes.

Happy Chromin’!

It’s been a hell of a long time since I’ve done anything with this site. Too long, actually. Between running an agency and life itself I’ve been keeping pretty busy in recent years. Nothin’ like a pandemic to kick me back into gear huh?

A big reason why this site was left to rest for quite some time (my last post was in August 2016 :|) was due to things taking off at Yoghurt Digital – any time I had to write content would be spent there instead. Then, around mid-2018 I noticed my site had been hacked and so I threw up a simple maintenance page and never really returned. Enter 4-months into 2020 and I decided it’s time to revive it.

WTF Happened

I’m still not entirely sure – I’ve seen my fair share of exploits caused by outdated versions of WordPress and it’s many, many offending plugins, however, this was different. Specific files were deleted, almost intentionally so things kinda half-worked, but never properly. Fortunately, I had an old backup but lost a bunch of things in the process. Onto restoration.

Almost There…

After giving up on diagnosing what happened, I decided to start somewhat fresh and deleted my entire web directory, opting for a fresh install of WordPress along with the removal of plugins, migration of content I’ve written elsewhere over the years and a bunch of other things. The result is what you see now, which for the most part works how I want it to, however, I’m yet to fix the PHP errors at the bottom of each post, which leads me to my next point.

I’m Building Something New

I’ve loved the Thesis framework for a very, very long time (almost a decade, actually!) but now it’s time for something different. Not that I have thousands of posts or anything on this site, but I didn’t want to lose any of the data I had as a result of using Thesis so as per the title post, I made a plugin for the first time a few weeks ago to help migrate custom-field data from Thesis over to my new setup, which was very enjoyable and went better than I expected. Mainly because my very rusty PHP hands came back to me and the plugin works and works great!

Needless to say, I am very excited for what’s to come.

If you’d like to know more, hit me up or simply wait – I’m not in a rush and I’m confident you aren’t either!

After 25 years, the Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP) will finally become a standard. If you are a webmaster or search specialist and haven’t heard of this protocol before, you’d almost definitely be familiar with robots.txt files – small lines of text that sit in a single file at the root of a domain to help automated crawlers and search engines better understand where and what they should and shouldn’t access.

Having been around for so long, many webmasters interpret the rules differently and as such, there has never been a ‘standard’ way of using the REP, sometimes creating confusion amongst webmasters – until now. 

Google has officially teamed up with Martijn Koster (creator of the REP), various webmasters and other search engines to properly document how the REP should be used for the modern web.

Google is contributing their 20 years of experience to the project, including their data of about half a billion websites that rely on robots.txt to ensure their websites are crawled efficiently.

What do we need to know?

1. Where REP was originally limited to HTTP requests, REP will now be available for FTP and other protocols.
2. A maximum cache time of 24hrs will apply to the files so webmasters can update their robots.txt file whenever they want and crawlers won’t overload web servers with robots requests.
3. When a previously available robots.txt file fails to become accessible due to server failures, known blocked pages will not be crawled for a reasonably long period of time. This alleviates concerns around search engines suddenly crawling and indexing pages they weren’t supposed to during the time server issues took place.

Furthermore, Google has also announced they are retiring all code that handles unsupported rules (such as noindex) as of 1st September, 2019.

Retiring Unsupported Rules

The newly proposed internet draft for REP standards have extensive architecture for rules that are not part of the standard, meaning if crawlers wanted to support their own custom lines such as “Unicorns: allowed” they could. This is quite similar to the “Sitemap:” line most search specialists would be familiar with.

While open-sourcing their library, Google analysed how robots.txt files were used and assessed unsupported usage such as crawl-delay, nofollow and noindex. As these were never official and rarely used (Google claims only 0.001% of all robots.txt files on the internet used these rules), Google will officially retire unsupported robots rules such as “noindex” on 1st September, 2019. 

What Should We Do?

If you’ve been reliant on the unsupported rules, it’s important your robots.txt files are updated as soon as possible and you use the correct methods for blocking and removing content detailed at the end of this article.

Let’s Talk

Need help with your robots.txt files or just want to know what Google thinks of your site? Get in touch with our expert team and learn how we can help!

Users of Google have long complained that performing certain queries would sometimes display multiple listings from the same domain, in effect creating somewhat of an unfair playing field. Now, Google has announced they’ve changed the way the search results are displayed to be more “diverse”, effectively allowing for a greater mix of properties to be displayed in the organic search results.

Google stated the change means you typically won’t see more than two listings from the same site on the first page of results, but also added that wherever their systems determine it’s relevant, they’ll show more than two (such as when searching for brand names).

As for its impact on featured snippets and other search results, Google further confirmed this update is only in relation to the main web search listings and doesn’t affect things like featured snippets, answer boxes or map listings, which makes sense given they never really had the same issue.

Why Should We Care?

Whilst it is entirely possible you’ll still see the top 5+ spots being held by the same prominent domain name, it should now occur less often and be considered somewhat of a rarity.

If you have a site that’s typically owned lots of real estate on the first page, you may no longer have that stronghold and you could start to receive less traffic – even though you still rank highly for competitive terms. If you have a site that’s been strongarmed by the bigger players in your industry, this could be just the opportunity you needed to get up to where you’ve always wanted to be!

Update:Now that the update is fully rolled out, we’re still seeing results dominated by industry heavyweights. Take the query “buy an apartment” for example, where we see almost the entire first page of results held by Australian property powerhouse RealEstate.com.au. Not only does this provide the user with a lack of diversity and choice, it also makes it increasingly difficult for competitors to rank for the same terms. See before here and after here.

Now that the update is fully rolled out, we’re still seeing results dominated by industry heavyweights. Take the query “buy an apartment” for example, where we see almost the entire first page of results held by Australian property powerhouse RealEstate.com.au. Not only does this provide the user with a lack of diversity and choice, it also makes it increasingly difficult for competitors to rank for the same terms.

What Should We Do?

As with most Google updates, there are typically clear winners and losers, while some specific queries don’t change much at all.

The best practice for any website owners following such an update is to leave an annotation in Google Analytics and continue to monitor website traffic and other important KPIs to see if there are any major swings in performance.

If your site seems to have been impacted by the above update, the best practice would be to take a step back and monitor the major tenants that Google has been preaching recently: speed, user experience, mobile performance and content quality.

Let’s Talk

Think you might be impacted by a Google update? Don’t panic! Get in touch to learn how we can help.

Last week, the Club of United Business (CUB) hosted an intimate interview with Mark Bouris, an Australian entrepreneur best known for Wizard Home Loans, Yellow Brick Road and as the star of The Apprentice Australia TV show. Daniel Hakim, the founder of CUB, hosted a candid live discussion with Mark for 45 minutes to an audience of 120 entrepreneurs, focusing on Mark’s humble beginnings, the incredible success he’s achieved, the challenges he faced along the way and how his ability to leverage the media helped him build his profile and forge an empire.

Here’s our summary of key takeaways from the event:

1. Decision-Making

We make thousands of decisions every hour – and the strength of our decision-making ability diminishes throughout the day. It’s called decision fatigue.

Mark advised that the less time we spend on “controllable” decisions – like what to wear, or what and when to eat – the more time we can save for critical thinking and real decision making. Minimising the need for menial decision-making, he argued, saves time and increases our mental capacity for the more important choices encountered in everyday life.

Mark wakes up early every morning and prioritises exercise as the very first task of the day; for him, that means the hardest part of his to-do list is then over, and he’s ready for the day ahead. Mark takes the same approach with tasks; dealing with the most important or hardest items first in order to get them out of the way as quickly as possible.

Next on the list is dressing for work. Mark keeps it simple and only wears blue or black suits, a white collared shirt and black shoes. When it comes to more casual attire, he’ll only ever wear a black t-shirt, jeans, boots and a jacket. This not only saves Mark time in the morning, but also saves him from frequent decisions around what to purchase and how often.

During the week, Mark eats the same breakfast, at the same time and the same location. When he arrives at his regular cafe, his food is already served. He knows what he’s getting and what it’s going to cost – once again freeing up time and decision making power to focus on the more important decisions to come.

2. Learning

Whilst it’s important to be immersed in the industry you work in and learn as much as you can on the topics relevant to you, Mark also dedicates at least 30 minutes per day to learning something new outside of his areas of expertise. Right now, for example, he’s studying mathematical science. He sees this as a way to keep the creative juices flowing and his brain stimulated.

3. Finances

One of the most common ways businesses get themselves into trouble is by spending money before they have it. Mark recommends not spending anything until the cash is in the bank. While this can feel like stagnated growth and create extra work in the short term, it will also toughen your organisation and protect it in the long term, allowing more effective and sustainable growth.

4. Partnerships

Mark says it’s important to recognise your strengths and your weaknesses and learn to complement where possible. He never works alone and always has partners in the businesses he involves himself with. His thinking on this is that you can’t be good at everything and it’s not realistic for you to ever be – so spend some time learning what your strengths are, and find people you can hire that complement your weaknesses.

This reminded us of our own founding team at Yoghurt Digital: Matthew Forzan, Michael Laps, and Ian Fong – who all have varied but complementary skill sets. Matt’s bread and butter is SEO, Operations and Finance, Michael specialises in Growth, Sales and Account Management, and Ian leads Innovation, Conversion Optimisation and User Experience.

The rest of our team continues to grow with a range of specialists in areas outside of the founding base. We leverage each other’s skills wherever we can; further helping our clients, the company and each other.

Mark is also a big believer in recognising the power of networking and being nice to people. There are plenty of opportunities for everyone – so get out there, make friends and help each other open doors!

5. Accountability

Mark attributes much of his success to accountability; both to himself and the people he works with. He ensures any goals set are realistic, and links them back to rewards and consequences for maximum transparency and effectiveness.

Sometimes you’ll win, sometimes you’ll lose, but being accountable gives you the best chance of success. No matter the outcome, you own the process and adapt as you go. Don’t be afraid to fail – having failed in the past demonstrates your ability to learn, grow and deal with rejection. Failing builds resilience – a vital quality for achieving and overcoming challenges.

Mark will begin an action of a project with his end goal in mind, and then reverse-engineer the process. For example, if you want to achieve something in 5 years time, outline all the necessary steps between now and then, and measure yourself along the way. Break all activities into workable chunks and be accountable as you progress through the work. You can, of course, adjust along the way, but always keep your eyes on the prize and make sure you’re chipping away at it.

6. Purpose

Mark reflected on some of the many valuable lessons he learnt during his time partnered with media mogul Kerry Packer, focusing on a conversation they had about Wizard Home Loans and what business he considers himself to be in. Whilst Wizard sold “Home loans”, Mark considers himself to have been in the business of “helping everyday Australians achieve their dreams”.

The lesson here is to understand what your business represents to you, and how it connects you with people. What’s your core purpose? Does your message connect with people on a personal level? Will they want to do business with you?

When wrapping up the interview, Mark said that working hard and being obsessed with everything you do will get you far but remember: don’t be too critical of yourself, give yourself time to reflect, and show admiration for yourself and what you’ve achieved so far. Take time to relax and unwind, and disconnect from business as usual once in a while.

“What gets measured, gets managed” – Peter Drucker

Do you have a Google My Business listing? You know, these things:

If you’re like most, then visits to your website via your map listing will be simply tracked as “Organic” in your Google Analytics profile, leaving you with no way to attribute traffic and sales to this traffic source. Fortunately, there’s a very simple method to implement such tracking in your Google Analytics profile. Even better news, this method works just as well for one listing as it does multiples!

Custom Campaigns

In order to collect the extra data, we need to setup what’s known as a “Custom Campaign”. Google explains these as:

“When you have a URL in your ad, for example, in a web ad or in an email, you can add parameters to that URL in order to capture important reporting data about your campaign like the site on which the ad appeared, the campaign name, and keywords you used in the ad.”

Sound simple? It is!

Step 1: Identify Pages To Track

Firstly, we need to identify the pages we want to drive traffic to and track. Depending on how your business is structured and how your website is setup, you’ll most likely be driving users to one of the below pages:

• Your homepage
  • https://www.yoghurtdigital.com.au

• A contact page
  • https://www.yoghurtdigital.com.au/contact

• Individual location page(s)
  • https://www.yoghurtdigital.com.au/sydney
  • https://www.yoghurtdigital.com.au/melbourne

For the purpose of this article, we’ll be using the Yoghurt Digital homepage as an example.

Step 2: Build Tracking URLs

Now that we’ve identified the pages we’ll be tracking, we need to create a modified URL string to contain some extra information that will then help feed data into Google Analytics. Thankfully this is a relatively easy process using the Campaign URL Builder that Google provides.

Navigate to the Campaign URL Builder and fill in the fields as below, but replacing our domain with yours:

You’ll then be presented with a new URL containing all the extra information you need to push through to Google Analytics. Ours looks like this:

What If I’ve Got Multiple Listings / Locations?

Sticking with the example of our own business above, you’ll want to ensure that the “Campaign Content” field in the URL builder is filled in correctly by making sure it contains a unique identifier for each listing, such as “sydney” or “melbourne” (we recommend using lowercase here for simplicity). This will make sifting through the data much easier – more on that later!

Step 3: Update Google My Business

Once we’ve got our new trackable URL, we need to login to Google My Business and let them know of our changes. Head on over to the Google My Business portal and login and scroll down to find the listing you want to update and click “MANAGE LOCATION”. Then click “Info” on the left side menu:

Scroll down to see your current website URL. Click the pencil icon to edit and copy your new URL in, clicking “Apply” to save.

You may receive a warning that your changes are pending review and make take three days to be published. We’ve found that as long as you aren’t making dramatic changes like updating your physical location, this isn’t anything to worry about – our changes were reflected almost instantly.

Our newly updated website button with tracking! Woo!

Step 4: View Campaign Data in Google Analytics

Now all of the hard work is complete, we’re able to tap into our Google Analytics account and learn more about who’s clicking on the Google Maps listing! We’ll be looking purely at sessions in this example.

Login to your Google Analytics account and select the appropriate profile. Then navigate to: Acquisition > Campaigns > All Campaigns. Find the campaign “gmb”. This will show you all of the visits through to your website that came from the “WEBSITE” button on the map listing:

To see data on multiple locations, click into the “gmb” campaign and set a secondary dimension of “Ad Content”, which will split out the campaign into the relevant subsets – like so:

Next Steps

Once everything is tracking along nicely, you only need to login to Analytics to gain a quick snapshot of how the listings are performing over time. There are of course many more things we can do with this data by creating custom segments and following the user journey, however that will most likely be an article all in itself. For now, you’ve at least got more visibility into what your Google My Business listings are actually doing for you!

If you’ve got a traditional “bricks and mortar” location, it’s critical to ensure your trading hours are kept up-to-date within the Google My Business platform. With many users relying on the results Google shows them when searching for such information, you’ll want to make sure that potential visitors see when you’re open and closed so they can plan accordingly. Having consistent, up-to-date information about your business is essential to creating a positive customer experience both online and offline.

Thankfully, this is relatively painless to do within the Google My Business platform, and this article details exactly how to do it yourself!

Updating Special Hours

Head over to the Google My Business portal and login. Next, you’ll need to find the listing you want to update and click the “MANAGE LOCATION” text, where you’ll enter the settings area for that listing.

You’ll then be presented with a screen similar to the one below, where you need to click “INFO” at the top.

Click the edit pencil icon underneath the standard hours to add/modify special trading hours. Simply click “ADD NEW DATE” and continue through until you’re done, then hit “APPLY”.

Once saved they’ll typically be reflected in Google’s search results within a matter of minutes. However, depending on the edits, Google may decide they’d like to review them first before pushing them live.

Our updated listing – easy peasy!

It’s as easy as that! You should make a conscious effort to keep these updated throughout various public holidays and other days where your hours might be affected. For now at least it’s a manual process that, if not carried out effectively, can stand to annoy your existing and potential customers. We recommend using a promotional calendar for your business that ties into such dates.

The steps outlined above are detailed for a single physical location, but if you have multiple stores there are advanced ways to update them in one batch, which is described in Google’s own documentation here.

Only two truths exist in the world of digital marketing:

• The consumer is always right.
  They know what they want, and if you don’t deliver it they’ll simply go elsewhere
• Data doesn’t lie.
  Understanding what your potential customers actually want is far better than understanding what you think they want.

Therefore, it stands to reason that to successfully improve the design, usability and functionality of a website, you must learn what consumers want and make changes accordingly – supply and demand. And continuing that thought pattern, it would also stand to reason that the vast majority of companies who are refreshing or optimising their website are investing in data to drive their decision-making processes.

Right?

Painfully wrong.

Part 1: Data, Not Opinions

Most companies who approach us for assistance with optimising their website give us fairly standard reasons about what spurred them into action:

• “Our site is old and outdated, so we need a refresh.”
• “Our enquiries / revenue have been stagnant, and we should be doing more.”
• “Our competitor is doing X, Y and Z, and we don’t want to get left behind.”
• “I want 17 flashing banners on the homepage to showcase our best products.”

With the exception of the last one, those are all technically valid reasons. But not one of them starts with “Our consumers told us…” or “The data showed us…”.

Every company knows what they like and need internally, but have almost no idea what their consumers like and need. Yet time and time again we see companies use opinions and “gut feel” to make critical decisions that could exponentially accelerate or obliterate their online performance.

This article details part of our process and aims to provide better insight into what’s involved and how to go about improving website performance using science vs. guesswork.

Part 2: Types of Tracking

We’re a data-heavy agency and as such don’t make any decisions without consulting the numbers first. When it comes to improving website design and UX, there are various tools and processes we follow to help improve the performance of a website – whether it be engagement metrics such as time on site, or conversion metrics like enquiries and sales.

Besides the usual server logs and various analytics softwares, there are several tools and analysis methods marketers can utilise (we mainly reference Hotjar in this article) to better understand user frustrations and how we can reduce or remove their friction points.

Heat Maps

Heatmaps are visual representations of user interactions on web pages. They allow us to better understand what users are doing and how they interact with a website by visually representing their clicks, screen taps, movement and scrolling behaviour.

Click Maps

As a specific area of a page receives more clicks, the colour on the heat map changes. The brighter the area, the more popular it is; the darker the area, the less popular it is.

A click map example.

Scroll Maps

Scroll maps allow us to see how far down the page users scroll. Knowing this can help determine the ideal visual heirarchy for the page, including key content placements.

Oh look, a rainbow! Just kidding – it’s a scroll map.

Mouseflow

Similar to a click map, we’re able to record and analyse mouse movement which gives us extra insight into how users are digesting information on the page. We can see where they focus, what they ignore, and what gets missed completely.

A mouseflow example.

Session Recordings

Session recordings allow us to view users anonymously as they browse the website. Essentially, it’s a screencast that follows all of their movements while they’re on your website. This allows us to isolate any potential friction points during their experience, uncover usability and functionality issues and analyse how they flow through the website.

Obviously watching every single video isn’t a reasonable expectation – especially if you’re getting tens or hundreds of thousands of visits per month. To optimise our time, we use Google Analytics and the various heat maps to identify pages that have potential issues and watch the session recordings for these pages. We’ll also watch sessions on major conversion pages – such as enquiry forms and checkout pages – where users typically struggle the most. These observations are then combined with the various heat map data to draw conclusions on potential optimisations to these pages.

Part 3: Processes

Now that we’ve described the various collection methods, lets talk about the process overall.

1. Setup
2. Data Collection
3. Analysis
4. Planning
5. Implementation
6. Measure
7. Rinse & Repeat

Step 1 – Setup

We start the process by setting up relevant tools on the website and appropriate web pages. This involves adding JavaScript snippets (a piece of code) in the head of the HTML pages we want to track. While it’s possible to do this through something like Google Tag Manager, we don’t recommend it as it can cause bugs in the tracking and skew the data.

Next, we need to configure the tools to ensure they’re collecting the data that we need. We start by determining the pages that need to be tracked and then update the system to accommodate. We select the most critical pages on the website and track each of them across various device types (desktop, tablet, mobile). Typically, we would track:

• Home page
• Several of the major category pages
• Several of the major product / services pages
• Conversion pages (e.g. pages with enquiry forms, cart pages, checkout pages)
• Any other pages critical to the business and its goals

We use Google Analytics data to determine which pages have the most views and are most important in the conversion funnel, allowing us to collect data faster and in relation to relevant pages.

Step 2 – Data Collection

Tools like Hotjar and Crazy Egg seamlessly run in the background for as long as we need them to. In order for the sample size of data to be deemed statistically significant, we need around 2,000 sessions recorded on each page we’re tracking. This can be trickier for pages that are deeper in the conversion funnel (e.g. checkout page), but be patient. It’s important to base your decisions on accurate data, not just any data.

Step 3 – Analysis

Once the data has been collected, we need to analyse each map and session recording in detail to determine where and how the user’s experience can be improved. To do this, we:

• Study Google Analytics data (this is another blog post in itself)
• Review the heat maps
• Review the scroll maps
• Review the mouseflow maps
• Watch session recordings

Step 4 – Planning

After the analysis is completed, our outcome is a list of action items stored in an implementation plan that determines what changes should be made to the website in order to improve the user experience and, therefore, conversions.

The types of action items are sorted by difficulty vs potential impact and split into two categories:

Immediate Implementation

These are action items derived from our analysis that should be implemented immediately, without testing. They’re usually smaller changes that are causing clear issues in the conversion process.

Test & Learn

These are usually bigger changes that would noticeably affect a user’s path-to-conversion. In these instances we prefer to build hypotheses and test them, allowing us to prove performance before investing in implementing it on the live site.

Before making major changes to any page, we use a scientific method:

• Make an observation
  (Example: the ‘contact us’ button is too small and users can’t see it.)
• Form a question
  (Example: what would happen if the button was bigger?)
• Form a hypothesis
  (Example: bigger buttons are easier for users to see and interact with, which would lead to an increase in conversion rate.)
• Conduct an experiment
  (Example: show 50% of users the current button and show the other 50% of users the new button)
• Analyse the data and draw a conclusion

Step 5 – Implementation

Once the plan is created and the recommendations approved, we start working with the client’s web development team to start making changes – both directly and via multivariate testing.

We use tools like Optimizely and Visual Website Optimizer to develop designs for testing, splitting the traffic equally between our variation and the control.

Step 6 – Measure

Measurement is only possible if you’ve properly defined the performance metrics for the test. Are you looking at engagement metrics? Conversion metrics? Behavioural metrics? Once these are defined, you can accurately track how each metric performs across the control and the variation.

We run our tests for at least two full weeks until we reach a level of statistical confidence (over 95%), at which point we can call a winner. If a level of statistical confidence isn’t reached, we take the learnings from the test and tweak it to measure the impact.

Step 7 – Rinse & Repeat

It’s important to remember that this is an iterative process. It’s not done once and then pushed to the side. The point of this is to do it constantly and consistently. Big wins can be had in this initial process, as you’re at the very start of your journey and should have a long list of items to implement and test.

It’s also worth noting that higher engagement rates and conversion rates have a DIRECT correlation with organic search performance and, as such, the two go hand-in-hand when it comes to online success.

Part 4: Conclusion

As this wonderful comic illustrates, having personal opinions thrown into the design and usability conversations during a website refresh project can wreak utter havoc. And while it’s hard not to revert back to what you think is right, it’s important to remember that your end goal is to deliver an improved experience for existing and prospective customers alike.

Others may find it hard not to take it personally when you shoot them down, but as long as you keep pointing to the data to back you up, they don’t have much of a leg to stand on. Always remember: don’t just copy others, because then you’re always one step behind. Listen to the voice of your customers, deliver what they want, and lead from the front.

All images courtesy of Hotjar.

I was about to call it a night when I saw this tweet from Alec Bertram:

You might not ever see a Keyword Planner in Search Console; but you can now see Search Console in Keyword Planner pic.twitter.com/XZlNhFwXjl

— Alec Bertram (@KiwiAlec) August 23, 2016

Naturally, I was pretty keen to get it connected, have a poke around and to learn what was achievable. First, let’s talk about what’s new.

New Reports

In Keyword Planner

As shown in the screenshot above, the below sets of data are available to be added as columns.

• Organic Impression Share – will be interesting to see data around this as it’s not something we currently have access to.
• Organic Average Position – imagine this would be the same data from GSC

In AdWords Dimensions

After properly setting up a “Paid and Organic” report, you’ll be able to see the regular paid data such as clicks, CTR average position etc. as well as organic data from Google Search Console:

• Clicks
• Queries
• Clicks/Queries
• Listings/query
• Avg Position

A “Combined Ads and Organic” set of data is also available, covering a combination of the two sets of data:

• Ads and Organic Clicks
• Ads and Organic Queries
• Ads and Organic Clicks/Query

How to Set It Up

I found that linking the two together was a very straightforward process, similar to that of linking Google Analytics and Search Console.

1. Login to AdWords
2. Navigate to Settings > Linked Accounts
3. Click “View Details…” under Search Console and follow the prompts. Make sure you’re logged into the same account – multiple acc management can sometimes break things

Full instructions are available here.

Reading the Data

Unfortunately, the way the data is collected is similar to the way that Property Set data only collects when the process is started, so this data isn’t available immediately.

Your organic data is only reported back to the date you started importing it from webmaster tools, so you won’t see historical organic data before you established that link. – Google

After connecting our agency account we were presented with somewhat of a “check back later” message:

Click to Enlarge.

————————————————————————————————————-

UPDATE 7th September 2016:

Exactly two weeks later and the data still isn’t available! Still being shown the below message:

“You recently linked your Search Console account. Check back in a few weeks to see this data.”

UPDATE 26th September 2016:

It’s been almost a month and am still being told to check back in a few weeks. Has anyone got this to work or is this just a carrot Google is dangling to tease us?!

————————————————————————————————————-

As with all data, what you get out of it will vary from person to person. I myself however, am pretty excited! For Google to provide a way for us to better understand how paid and organic results work together is great news for marketers.

Oh One Last Thing…

They love pushing AdWords!

“Use the organic results to identify new, potentially valuable keywords.” – Google