Google Search Console — Webmaster Tools is dead! Long live Webmaster Tools! — has updated their Search Analytics feature set with a powerful new piece of functionality. Now webmasters can compare the performance of specific queries against one another.
This comparative analysis was previously possible across the other major dimensions of Search Analytics (Pages, Countries, Devices, Dates, etc.).
To compare dates in Search Console, go to your site’s Search Analytics click the filter dropdown under “Queries.”
STEP 1: Click the filter drop down under Queries
From there, select “Compare Queries.” A modal will pop-up, allowing you to enter in two specific queries. For now, it looks like you can only use “exact” queries. Hopefully, this comparison will include the full filter set, but baby steps.
STEP 2: Enter two exact queries that you want to compare.
Once you selected the two queries you’d like to compare, you can continue to plot all the standard metrics (Impressions, Clicks, CTR, and Position) as well as configure against other dimension filters.
This certainly feels like the first pass of what could be an incredibly powerful feature, allowing webmasters to idenitfy correlations and divergent trends between queries.
It’s an incredibly exciting addition to Search Console, and Google appears to be following up on their promise to really develop Search Console into integral tool for maximizing search performance.
