In this article, you'll learn how to read the Website report: who's visiting your site, how it ranks on Google, which local businesses you're up against, and how new customers first reach you. It's the one place to see whether the website is pulling its weight.
To open the Website report:
- In the dashboard menu, click Reports.
- Click Website.
Picking a site
Your sites sit in a row of tabs at the top. Your main site comes first with a Main site tag, then each microsite, ordered by Google clicks over the last 28 days. Each tab shows the domain underneath. Click a tab to load that site's numbers.
A microsite that Google hasn't confirmed yet carries a Verifying tag.
While Google is still connecting
Two cards can show in place of the charts:
- Ranking and traffic with the line "Your site is being connected to Google." Review Monster makes the Google connection for you, so there's nothing to click. Numbers appear within a few days.
- Waiting for Google to verify this site. The site is connected but Google hasn't confirmed ownership. The card shows when it was last checked. Verification goes through on its own.
Visitors
The Visitors card counts people on the site over the last few weeks, measured by the site itself. It shows Visits, Unique visitors, Page views, Pages per visit, Visit duration and Bounce rate. Hover the small i next to any figure for what it means.
Under it, Where visitors come from lists each source (Google, Facebook, typed in, another site) with a bar and a visit count.
Metrics and Years
Above the charts you'll find a Metrics / Years switch and two menus. Whatever you pick here applies to every chart below.
To change the range in Metrics:
- Click the calendar menu (it starts on Last year).
- Pick Last 3 months, Last 6 months, Last year, Last 2 years, Last 3 years, Last 5 years or All time.
- Click the Weekly menu to switch to Monthly, or back.
Years lays each calendar year over the others so you can compare the same weeks year on year. Tick the years you want in the strip, pick Daily or Monthly, and choose the metric from the menu next to the Performance title.
Performance
Performance draws up to seven lines: Referring domains, Domain Rating, Traffic, Avg. impressions, Organic keywords, Organic pages and Crawled pages. Each has a coloured checkbox in the legend. Click a box to hide or show that line. Referring domains starts unchecked.
Each line is drawn on its own scale, so they share the chart without squashing each other. Hover anywhere on the chart for that week's values. The hover moves across every chart on the page at once.
Traffic and impressions are Google Search Console's own numbers. The rest are estimates read once a week, and the note at the bottom of the page says when the last reading was.
Organic positions
This chart stacks how many searches your site shows up for, by where it lands: 1–3, 4–10, 11–20, 21–50 and 51+. The first three are on by default. Hover for the count in each band and the All positions total.
Top organic competitors
This section is local to your business: nearby companies that show up for the same searches. The bubble chart plots Organic keywords across, Organic traffic up, and circle size as Organic pages. Your own site is the blue circle marked target. Hover a bubble for its three numbers.
The table below lists Domain, Keyword overlap, Common keywords, Share and Competitor's keywords. Tick the box next to a domain to add it to the bubble chart. Five show at first. Click Show all (or Show top 20) to see the rest.
SERP features
SERP features counts searches where your site gets a special spot on Google, like the map pack or a featured answer. Each feature in the legend has a small i with a one-line explanation. Untick a feature to drop its line.
Top organic keywords and Top organic pages
Two tables follow. Top organic keywords lists Keyword, Volume, Traffic and Position. Click a keyword to open that Google search. Top organic pages lists URL, Traffic and Keywords. Each shows five rows. Click View all for the full list and Show less to fold it back.
Sources: how new customers first reach you
The Sources card at the bottom is your first point of contact. One line per source: your website, each microsite, each tracking number and each phone line, with a checkbox for each.
Hover the chart and the card turns into a breakdown table: for each source, Quote, Form, Booking, Chat, Text, Call, Other and All. Under the chart, Over this range totals the same columns for the whole period. Each new contact counts once.
G markers, green dots and View changes
Along the bottom of every chart you may see two kinds of marker:
- A circle with a G marks a Google ranking update. Hover it for the date, the update's name, what it is in plain words and a Learn more link. Several updates in one period show a number instead of the G.
- A green dot marks changes made to your site, sized by how much changed: Minor, Moderate, Major or Overhaul. Hover it, then click View changes.
View changes opens the Site changes panel. Each entry is tagged by kind (Page edited, Blog post, Pages added) and shows clicks and impressions for the 14 days before and after, plus the keyword and top 10 readings either side. Click show all to see every change in the range, and the × or Escape to close.
Why the last week is dashed
A week or month that isn't over yet reads low, because only some of its days are in. For anything counted up day by day (Traffic, Avg. impressions and the Sources counts), the report projects the unfinished period from what's in so far plus a normal rest of the period, based on this site's recent pace. That stretch is drawn as a dashed line, and the hover says projected. Readings like Domain Rating, keywords and pages are current as they stand and are never projected. The note under the charts spells this out whenever it applies.