Google Metrics Update as of February 20, 2023
Google is making changes to the reporting metrics. These changes will
cause analytics/traffic to appear lower than previously, but that is expected. The changes will improve accuracy and
give you true online presence analytics in Google.
These changes will only affect the data as of February 20, 2023.
Google has improved their duplicate traffic detection, which will reduce metric values. In addition, while some data will be removed, there will be new data added or replacing existing metrics:
1. Google map views and search views are now referred to as impressions.
2. Google search queries is being replaced by Google search term impressions.
3. The number of times a Google post was viewed will no longer be available.
4. The number of times the call to action button was clicked on a Google post will no longer be available.
EXAMPLE
A user is looking around for a restaurant to visit. They have typed "Restaurants near me" into Google Maps on their phone and are browsing that list. A business called "Pizza Place" appears in several locations in the app and is rendered a few times while looking around on the maps. As a result, the user sees this business seven times in this mobile maps session.
They decide to go to Pizza Place but want to print the directions out first. They go to their desktop computer and search "Pizza Place", thus logging a desktop search impression. They then click the directions button in the place sheet. This takes them to the desktop maps site, where they print the directions, thus logging another impression on desktop maps.
Previous Google Metrics: In total, we have nine impressions (seven mobile maps, one desktop search, and one desktop maps impression). The impressions for this user would have been reported as eight map views and one search view.
New Google Metrics: Now, a user is only counted once for each impression. So now we have three impressions (one mobile maps, one desktop search, and one desktop maps impression). Next, we only count the first impression type/metric per user. In this case, the user started on mobile maps, so that is the impression we keep.
Now, this user has gone from logging nine impressions to logging only a single impression with the new analytics.
less Google is making changes to the reporting metrics. These changes will
cause analytics/traffic to appear lower than previously, but that is expected. The changes will improve accuracy and
give you true online presence analytics in Google.
These changes will only affect the data as of February 20, 2023.
Google has improved their duplicate traffic detection, which will reduce metric values. ...read more