Have you used the new Google Webmaster Tools Search Analytics report?

[MichaelCorfman]

Buzzy first reported on the new Google Webmaster Tools Search Analytics report at the end of April. And Google officially announced it to the world in a Google webmaster central blog post on May 6th:

More precise data in the new Search Analytics report.

For this week's poll, I thought I'd ask folks if they have used the new report and what they think of it.

It shows Google search referrals to your site, and allows the referral data to be analyzed in ways that was not available before outside of Google Analytics. Although I find the new reports much better than Google Analytics in many ways if you are trying to focus on traffic coming to your site from Google.

For example, if you set the date range to the last 90 days, the traffic summary graph has marks to show the Google mobilegeddon update on April 21st, and also the previous update on March 31st. You can trivially filter or compare mobile versus desktop versus tablet device referrals, and you can also also trivially filter or compare referrals by country.

Besides sharing if you have used (or plan to use) the new report, if you have used the report be sure to share the insights you've gained from using it.

Personally, I've compared mobile versus desktop referrals to a few sites to see if the ratios changed. First let me give an example using the GPWA website:

Since mobilegeddon the GPWA has had 11,351 Google search referrals: 8,981 desktop, 1,972 mobile, and 398 tablet. That translates to 79.12% desktop, 17.37% mobile, and 3.51% tablet.

Between the previous update, on March 31 and the mobilegeddon update the GPWA had 7,595 search referrals: 5,850 desktop, 1,455 mobile, and 290 tablet. That translates to 77.02% desktop, 19.16% mobile, and 3.82% tablet.

So, for the GPWA website, mobile traffic shrank a little versus desktop traffic after the mobilegeddon update. Not surprising, since we didn't make any updates to the site to help make it mobile friendly in the eyes of Google. We will do this eventually, but we figure most webmasters are not looking at the GPWA website with mobile devices, or if they are, they are probably using the tapatalk app to view the forums from mobile devices.

For some other sites, we did work to make pages mobile friendly because we viewed the mobile traffic on those sites as being important. As one example, we changed the www.casinocitytimes.com site. For that site mobile traffic grew from 35.33% before mobilegeddon to 38.16% afterwards, and desktop traffic shrank proportionally from 56.57% to 53.41%. Overall, this represented growth in total traffic to the site due to increased mobile search referrals from Google.

Michael

[edgarf76]

I tried it out but cannot stand it. I am fine with the old one

[Christiaan]

I only tried it out one time. But in the future I think I will use it more.

[casinoaa]

I tried one time.. the old interface looks better...

[DanHorvat]

It's fantastic.

[TheGooner]

A little - after the initial thread - but didn't find anything exciting or particularly interesting.
IT shows the same stuff as google analytics front pages - no surprises.

I need to take a wee tutorial from SE experts who can explain to me what they find so exciting about these sort of stats that gets them spending hours pouring over them - because it leaves me a bit "meh".

[vardan]

I tried one time.. the old interface looks better...

I agree with you. Not only the interface, in general S. Queries seems better than S. Analytics.

[RyanWeb]

Will have to take a look.. I have been so busy with the mobile redesign I haven't had much time for much else!

[TravG]

I have "played around" with it but I do need to spend some time really looking at it. I hope the data is more accurate - that would be awesome. The old ones seemed suspect at times.

[hotfreebingo]

I prefer the old interface, but I think it might just need some getting used to.

[wettFORM.AT]

Absolutely! This is my daily business. The report is perfect to follow the ranking changes and I use it on a daily basis.

[upcoming]

Have not used it

[John Anthony]

Sure, I use it almost every day

[xecutable]

I was fine with analytics, but since wmt now offers the same functionality ( or similar ) i tend to look at it daily. It actually gave me a hint on some trending keywords and allowed me to act on it.

[Parth84]

Definitely ! They are doing really good for me. The extensive reporting seems to be awesome.