As many of our users well know, G. Analytics (and any other tracking software) is not reliable in providing data regarding visits from Google. Which has caused many users to use G. Webmaster Tools for that purpose. Our software allows grabbing data from G. Webmaster Tools regarding the keywords that brought you traffic for the advanced and pro packages. You can see what it gives you here (see the 2 right columns):

Recently, Google has made some changes in G. Webmaster Tools. First, it is now called Google Search Console. Second, we need you to authorize our access to your data. Same way which is already done for G. Analytics.

So, either new or existing users to this data, will need to first allow our software to view the data from Google Search Console and then activate it on our end (basically letting our software know that your data is accessible for us). Now, let’s explain step by step what needs to be done:

1. Go to Google Search Console (used to be called Google Webmaster Tools): . If you’re not a user for that yet, you’ll need to identify yourself as the site owner. They have a few methods to do that.
2. Once you’re in the relevant account in the Search Console. Go to settings>Users and Property Owners screen. As seen here:
   
3. Now, press the “add a new user” button:
   
4. In the pop up window that is opened, put the user 1097503045745@developer.gserviceaccount.com
   , and press the “add” button. Note that we only need restricted access. That means we can only view the data, not change it.
5. You should now see that the user is added to the property. like here:
   
6. Now, last step is to go to sheerseo.com, and activate the G. Search Console integration in settings>domain settings>account details screen. See here:
   

If all went well, you should see a success message and your data in the rankings screen should be updated (visits and impressions columns).
If there is any problem, contact our support using the contact form.

We used to show Google Supplemental Index Ratio. That used to allow people to see if they have their PageRank wasted on pages that don’t have a chance of showing up in Google’s results anyhow.
It seems that there is no reliable way these days to pull this information. If I’m wrong, please show me how this can be done.

As a result, we have to remove this feature for now.

Well, the title says it all.
This only applies to agencies and master accounts, who have this screen.
The accounts that use the advanced or pro features have data coming also from G. Analytics and G. Webmaster Tools.
We already had data from Google Analytics in the domains overview, and now added also the data from G. Webmaster Tools.
Here is a snapshot of the 2 new columns taken from Webmaster Tools: impressions and visits:

I was recently interviewed by Media Shower as part of their Expert Interview program. Click here to read the interview and let me know what you think!

Google have recently changed something about their API. This forced us to make some changes on our end, and we also need your cooperation.
If you’re using G. Analytics in your SheerSEO account (advanced and pro accounts only), and you’re not using the integration with G. Webmaster Tools (which overrides G. Analytics data since it is more reliable), then you need to make a little change to keep the integration with G. Analytics working.

In short, we need you to authorize access to our new G. account and notify our system that the change is done.
In more detail:
Step 1 – Share G. Analytics Data with Our User:
a. Users page:
Login to your G. Analytics account, select your domain, and go to “Admin” screen. Find the ”View” column (right most column ) and select “User Management”

b. Add Permission
On the second block, add our email (1097503045745-7ngk3ar3qbolhhh8ujika397g2se0bb0@developer.gserviceaccount.com) make sure that the right permission is given and please don’t check the “Notify this user by email”.
If everything is OK, Clicking the “Add” button will immediately add a new row on the block above (users list).

adding google analytics API to SheerSEO software

Step 2 – Notify SheerSEO About the Change
Login to your SheerSEO account and go to “Settings” > “Domain Settings” > “Account Details” screen.

At the bottom of the screen, under the “Google Analytics Activation” section, click the “enable” button.
If everything is OK, the activation section will disappear and the status (marked in green) will change from “disabled” to “active”.

If this didn’t work, you’ll see an error message. Failure will probably be caused because the data sharing wasn’t done properly. If all goes well, you should now be able to go to “Rankings” > “Current” screen and see the “Real Clicks” column.

Google announced this on they blog: “Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results”.

What this means for us, the people that take care of the presence of websites in Google’s search results, is that we are forced to make our websites more mobile friendly. I personally hate the idea, since usually being mobile friendly means that the website is stripped from the graphics and the fonts becomes larger. Then, you can’t see all the content in the page in a brief look, and zoom in as I do today. You just see 2-3 paragraphs at a time, and you have to scroll endlessly to see all the content. If I have the option, I always choose to see websites with their regular looks instead. But now, with this recent Google change, most websites will be forced to make those changes.

Anyway, we just launched a new feature that allows you to track websites’ rankings on mobile searches. It could be different then your regular desktop rankings. So now, it is not enough to know how you rank for google. You need to know how you rank also on Google mobile searches. Our new feature enables you to do just that.

Here is how it looks like:
Notice that search engine selection box says “Google Mobile”. So, these are rankings for Google mobile and not the regular rankings you see when the search engine selected is “Google”. You can also see the mobile results in the historical data and of course, as always, you can export the data into PDF and CSV reports.

Now for the costs. The mobile collection doesn’t happen by default. You need to specifically activate it, and it doubles your keywords consumption. So, if you have for example a light license, that is limited to 20 keywords. If you activate the mobile collection, you are limited to 10 keywords. As another example, if you now have 13 keywords with a light license, and you want to activate the mobile collection, you’ll need to either expend your keywords limits (by upgrading the license), or delete some keywords, to be within the 10 keywords limit.

To activate the mobile collection, what you need to do is to go to settings>domain settings>account details screen. From there, find the “collect mobile” option, and select “yes”. See here:

It will show a warning message that you are doubling your keywords consumption. You should confirm. Then press submit. That is it. Your mobile rankings will start being collected and you can see them as described above.

I wanted to check the click through ratios of organic results in Google. As we published before, here: , we do have some kind of idea of the click through ratios based on some data that leaked from AOL a few years ago. Here it is:

But since I never trust anything I didn’t check myself, and sheerseo is unique in having a lot of data regarding both rankings in SERPS, visits from those SERPs and search volume numbers, we are in great position to be able to investigate this information.

So, here is what we got:

The results are based on about 10,000 keywords, taken from hundreds of domains. The data is based on Google Webmaster Tools for the actual clicks (visits). Note that we can’t use Google Analytics since it is no longer reliable for this information as many of the organic keywords information is not counted. The SERPs is based on our rankings collection of data. The search volume per keyword is based on Google Keyword Planner. One note is that I tried to weed out missleading data like the name of the site as a keyword. For example, sheerseo.com would be clicked more than the average click through rate for the keyword “sheerseo”, but this is unfair.

Now, let’s analyze the data.

1. You can see that the numbers are lower than the ones we have from AOL. The #1 rank for example, is 26.45% and in AOL it was 42.3%.
2. Rank 7 is a little higher than 4-6. Not sure why. Could be just an anomaly in the data we used, but might happen since it is many times at the bottom of the page you first see when you get the results, or the fact that even if you scroll to the bottom, #7 will appear, so it is in the screen no matter how you scroll the page. Just trying to understand it.
3. Notice the big drop from #1 to #2. Life is cruel.
4. #10 gets less than 20 times the traffic that #1 gets.
5. #4-#7 are more or less the same. So, no big deal in investing to promote a result that is #7. On the other side, you don’t want it to drop to #8, which gets just half the traffic of #7.

Now, let’s look at SERPs 11-20:

Not much to say about this. Just the sad fact that those results get a lot less clicks than the ones in first page. All of them are less then 1% click through rate.

Hope you enjoyed this data and hope to hear your thoughts on this.

Ayal

This is going to be very useful new feature!

If you look at the current rankings screen, you’ll see there is a new column with a graph showing the latest progress for each keyword:

Although there is no new information here, since you could already see this info by going to the historical graph for each keyword (by clicking on the history link), this is an eye opener and very convenient to see all the information at once. Well, at least for me.

Each little graph shows the last 8 or so samples for that keyword. If you want to see more historical information per that keyword, you can click on the history link right next to the keyword (on the left most column), and see the rest of the info.

We’ve just finished replacing the charts. The new charts function the same as old ones, but rely on a different charting API.

There are some advantages to the new charts, and there should be no disadvantages. The advantages are:

1. Since the new charts rely on Java Script and not Flash technology, they are much more portable. Flash is not supported in Apple devices for example. We had some solution for that even with the old charts, but now it is the same technology that runs on all platforms which makes it function more consistent, no matter what you’re using to view our website.
2. Flash needed installation, and users without flash installed were requested to install it. Now, this is no longer an issue. JavaScript is part of all browsers.
3. The old charts couldn’t stretch, so the size was fixed even if you needed it change. Now, the new charts adapt to your screen.
4. The new charts allow more export formats. Not just PDF, now you can also export the charts to SVG, PNG and JPG formats (images formats).

Few notes:

1. The export now usually works from a button in the upper left side of the chart. See here:

export button

2. The density lists are now pie charts (instead of bar charts). But the data is the same as before. Just different presentation. For example: