We don’t know yet know if it’s a test or a permanent addition, but at least some webmasters are seeing clickthrough statistics in their Google Webmaster Tools accounts. We assume this is strictly organic clickthrough data. This appears to have been noticed first by Dutch search marketer, Karel Geenen. And I’m seeing it in my Webmaster Tools account, too:
(That’s a screenshot with data from my site about the rock band U2.)
To see if you also have this organic clickthrough data, go to the “Your site on the web” tab and then click on “Top search queries.” The display defaults to showing the previous 30 days, and has dropdowns that allow filtering by about 15 countries as well as search type: All, Image, Mobile, Mobile (smartphone), and Web. The calendar, at least in my account, lets me go only as far back as March 10.
We have an email in to Google looking for more information about this and will update this post if/when we learn more.
Postscript: My apologies, this feature was part of a group of things that Google announced earlier today. Barry Schwartz wrote about them here.
Related Topics: Google: Webmaster Central | Top News
I hope this is permanent, this is the best change I’ve seen to WMT in a long time.
This is a really interesting update. Although we always knew the success rates were in the top one or two SERP positions, even at position 3 we can see a huge drop in clickthrough rates. This is great info too, to see those results that are at the top but may not have the clickthroughs you expect to come from that, so we can focus on the user experience right at this level.
It’s good to walk clients through this as well.
Julie
We have it here in the UK too. Any ideas yet on how precide the info is?
A cool way to use this: Look at a query that normally leads to your homepage, like your brand name. Drill down to the landing pages (other than the homepage) and see if any are given a seemingly mathematically impossible 100% click-thru rate. Are those pages coincidentally the past and present Sitelinks? I don’t think I’d be revealing proprietary info to reveal that in our Google account, they sure ARE the Sitelinks. My manager Jeremiah Wilson suggested that they call it 100% due to the inability to know when each Sitelink was in effect and cannot count “impressions.” They perhaps just count it when someone clicks.
I’ve been somewhat tracking Sitelinks by looking for “wrong landing pages” for homepage keywords but that only covers it once the user gets there. This tool can help complete the path.
People before you start high-5ing Google for this change. How accurate do you think the data is?
http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/google-webmaster-tools-2.html
We all know that the ranking data that has been in there for years hasn’t been to close real. We also know that Google keyword tool data is not accurate at all either.
wonder why I get almost everywhere better Impression and CTR when a keyword is ranking 2nd or lower than 1st…
Thanks for this post Matt. I had run accross this in my tools but was uncertain what it was reporting on. I like the info and can’t wait to build some history.
I’ve also gotta check out your U2 site as I’ll be attending the 360 tour in June!
Long live Edge!
have been testing this for the past week or so. So far it has been HIGHLY inaccurate for my brands.
Comparing organic clicks for brand names which we hold #1 for in Google I see a difference of several thousand between GA and webmaster tools. I know that webmaster tools filters out robot visits but the data is still way off. Additionally we are seeing click through rates much higher when keywords are in lower positions. Hopefully this tool improves as these insights would be great.
oh and @davide corradi the data is showing you click throughs by position – so your keyword could have been at a lower position longer – which would lead to more clicks then if it was a few spots higher for only a day or 2