Google Search Console Vs Google Analytics

The importance of Google Console and Google Analytics for web admins, bloggers, businesses and SEOs can never be overemphasised. There are similarities between the two; they both allow you to break down traffic by URL, and they also allow you to distinguish between mobile vs desktop traffic. That is pretty much where it ends.

It's important to understand the differences between them to choose which tool to use. Which should you use to measure your website's success? What are the benefits of each? And how do you know which is the right tool for you?

This article will cover the similarities and differences between the two marketing tools. Stick with us as we delve in properly, analysing both tools and how you can use them to make decisions for your business.

What is Google Search Console?

Google Search Console is a package that helps you monitor your site's search engine visibility and performance. It is free to use. It gives you an insight into how your site appears on the Google search engine. 

Many businesses use the tool for website optimization. That is due to some of its metric analytical tools and reports, such as:

Performance

This feature provides you with several reports, such as

• Total clicks: this gives you an insight into how many times visitors clicked your website during a period.
• Impression: this metric show how many times ads were visible to website visitors
• Average Click-through Rate (CTR); this is the ratio of Ad clicks to Impressions on your website
• Average position: Average position is the numerical order by which Google displays your website in search positions

The performance feature also tells you which pages or words need more consideration or optimization. The performance tab provides you with a list of "pages", "countries", or "queries".

Index coverage

The index coverage tab reports how many of your website pages have been Google Indexed since the last update. It reports how many website pages aren't indexed and what errors and difficulties will have contributed to such—enabling you to rectify this error on their specific URLs. Every indexed page on your site increases your SEO score. 

Speed reports

This gives an idea of how fast your Website or web page loads on mobile and desktop. The speed of a website can impact your website's SEO significantly.

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a powerful tool that gives you a depth analysis and report of your website and how users interact with it. It offers a complex analysis that business owners can use to determine a website's performance.

It focuses on the users. It gives various metrics to determine website visitors' behaviour using cookies and other background data. Google Analytics helps you make data-backed decisions that lead to business growth as a webmaster.

Some of the data that can be gathered from this great tool includes:

• Number of users who arrive on your website
• Website users' behaviour
• Average Click-through Rate CTR
• Marketing campaign evaluation
• Custom reports
• Lifetime value: this tracks your Website visitors for a lifetime, from revisits, past and present purchases etc.
• The most active landing pages: this particular tool gives an insight into the most popular landing pages on your site. It helps you optimise those pages to generate more traffic.
• Tracks conversion data: number of visitors who use on-site "call to action" features, email subscription, etc.

These are just some of the many data you can gather using the Google Analytics Tool.

Let’s look into how you could get started in using the both tools

How do you use Google analytics?

To use google analytics, one must sign up first. To do that, head to https://www.google.com/analytics/. 

• Click on “start for free”, then create an account
•  Click on "create a property."
• Click on the website and add your site's URL and name.
• Select your appropriate industry
• Select your time zone
• Click on “Get Tracking ID”
• Install Tracking ID on your Website

How do you use Google Search Console?

To use Google Search Console, you need to own a Google account if you don't have one already. Having signed up, follow these steps to set up your Google Search Console account in under 5mins:

• Sign in to Google Console with your Google account
• In the “Add Property” box, enter your website domain and click Continue
• Verify your website: this can be done using different methods, including Uploading an HTML file to Google console.

What are the major differences between Google Search Console and Google Analytics?

Focus and Usage

The major difference between the two packages is that Google Search Console focuses on your website's performance in relation to the search engines and SEO. In contrast, Google analytics reports how website users interact with your website. Google Analytics provides much more complicated data than Google Search Console because it deals with thousands of website users and measures user activities and interactions with a website.

Other Differences

• Google Analytics reports website pages with tracking code, while Google search console reports on all website pages. 
• Google analytics gives reports on unlimited URLs; the search console only reports on 1000 URLs per day for a single website.

• Google analytics reports data for multiple domains, while Search Console Collects data for only one domain.
• Google analytics can only collect data if JavaScript is enabled on a browser, limiting it. In contrast, Google Search Console collects data regardless of Java Script Status.

Conclusion 

Both tools are of great importance to web admins. You can utilise them further to improve your website's SEO and overall performance. While comparing both, each has its benefits and serves specific purposes. 

They have their few similarities; however, we cannot overlook that they report almost different aspects that enable you to make data-backed decisions. It might be difficult to find the best tool for your promotional activities and strategy because there are so many options. 

Google Analytics focuses on users, whereas Google Search Console focuses on search engines. We hope this article has assisted you in getting off to a good start by utilising the appropriate resources to aid in the success of your firm's marketing activities. Here at The Digital Hub we set these up for you as part of our SEO packages and provide detailed analytics to improve your SEO and improve google rankings, so feel free to get in touch to find out more.