Google Analytics Question - Impressions & Queries Up, Sessions Down

[Corporate_Communications]

I'm working with a client who, according to the Google Query report, impressions and sessions are up since we've started work with them about 6 months ago, but Google sessions are down. In moz, we're seeing a gradual, but steady increase in search visibility specifically with Google. Note: this is all organic.

From when we started tracking queries, the first month we were tracking there were 43,581 impressions and 690 click throughs for the month. This past month there were 98,293 queries and 1015 clicks throughs for the month (granted not year over year data) - of these 1,015 clicks, 995 of them were from web. However, for those same time periods, sessions from Google are down over 30% - 1,750 vs. 1,189.

I'm not sure how to interpret this. I realize that clicks and sessions are not a straightforward comparison, but I would think that if clicks were up according to the query report that sessions would also be up. Is it that some of these clicks are bouncing and therefore not being tracked as a session? Is there a potential issue with how data is being tracked?

[Corporate_Communications]

Hi Gyorgy,

Thanks for the info. I did see that article in my own searching, but will do the Screaming Frog analysis to make sure there is no issue with the Analytics code.

thanks again!

[MattRoney]

Hi Corporate_Communications! Did Gyorgy answer your question? If so, please mark his response as a "Good Answer." It'll give him some bonus MozPoints, and it helps us keep track of things.

Otherwise, what further questions do you have on this?

[Gyorgy.B]

Firstly, use a website crawler (e.g. Screaming Frog) and check that every page on the website has Google Analytics tag, and also make sure it's implemented correctly.

Then I recommend reading this article, which explains the difference in more details: http://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2015/08/05/google-search-console-clicks-vs-google-analytics-sessions/

Three common reasons when there are more clicks than sessions (copied from the article):

1. Non-HTML pages like PDFs or Word docs are not counted in Google Analytics but are counted as Google Search Console clicks
2. The few users who do not have JavaScript enabled will go unnoticed by Google Analytics. (this can be SPAM bots too!)
3. The few users that click on a search result but bounce off the site before the GA snippet can be loaded will also go unnoticed by GA. (This number may be higher if the code snippet takes an unusually long time to execute – if it is at the bottom of the source code, for example.)

Hope it helps.