Google Search Console Guide: Secrets of Performance Analysis

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Search Results Performance: Full Report
After accessing the full report, you can switch from the default “Last 3 Months” view to any other view and use the filters.

There are many filters and most of them are available in Filter mode as well as Comparison mode.

Avoid rabbit holes: ask questions before acting
Before you start digging into filters, as it can become a rabbit hole, write down a few questions:

How do I expect my users to find my domain? Will they search for images, keywords, etc.? For example, if your users are likely to come to your website searching for images, you'll want to select or change the filter to "Image" or use comparison mode to explore and answer this question. You may get unexpected results.

Are there seasonality in my products? Or spikes in a season? Some products or user queries can vary a lot during certain periods of the year. Once you analyze your product data and traffic if it is subject to seasonality, compare it to the previous year to avoid bias. If there is no seasonality, you could still have different user behaviors on weekdays and weekends, so make sure you compare not exactly the previous period, but the same days of the week in the previous period. In my experience, business products from accounting services to office chairs are subject to more searches during weekdays and traffic decreases due to fewer searches during weekends. In this case, you should not worry about the fluctuations because they are explained by changes in user behavior. In contrast, gaming or entertainment domains could see spikes during weekends.

PRO TIP: To compare same days of the week to the previous period, go to Analytics, select compare and choose to compare same days of the week, then copy the same dates from Analytics and use them in GSC.

Where are my users located? Are they in multiple countries or just one country or a specific location in a country? If your users are located in only one country, select that country. Unfortunately, GSC does not yet allow cross-country comparisons.
PRO TIP: If your target users are located in only one country, mark the URL with the country filter. This way, you will save time and immediately see the report you are interested in every time you check your performance report in GSC.

Which device do my users use the most? In my experience, work-related products are searched for most on desktop, while entertainment products are searched for most on mobile. It's highly recommended to track all devices and use filter mode to audit your domain and identify potential technical issues related to one of the devices. For example, if you have a traffic drop, one of the things you'll want to check is whether that traffic drop was similar on desktop and mobile.

NOTE: The Appearance filter in search will be explained in a later article related to structured data.

Filter by queries and URLs
Once you've answered all of the questions above and started playing around with the suggested filters, you can start looking at your top pages and top keywords.


First, look at your pages to get an idea of ​​which ones are generating the most traffic. For example, you might find that your blog is generating the most traffic to your domain.

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By choosing a specific URL you can filter and see only the keywords for that specific landing page.

Once you filter by a query or URL or a query for one or more URLs, you can choose from the options of:

– find queries that contain your keyword

– find queries that do not contain your keyword

– find the exact keyword

– use regular expression (regex)

Regex for Search Console
Regex is extremely useful for expanding the filtering opportunities in GSC. Regex, food and beverage email list short for regular expression, is a special way of writing patterns to search for specific text. It uses a combination of literal characters and symbols to define what you are looking for.


Search Console allows you to filter data using custom filters, and regex is very useful here. You can use regex to:

Specific URL Targeting: Match URLs with a specific pattern (for example, URLs containing “/product/” to filter product pages).
Find Keywords: Include or exclude keywords based on patterns (for example, exclude keywords containing “buy” to focus on informational searches).
Filter by device or click type: Match specific device types (e.g. mobile) or click types (e.g. image clicks).
Google Search Console has a 4,096 character limit for regex strings, keep this in mind to avoid breaking your regex formula.

Regex for branded and non-branded queries
A basic way to get started with regex for GSC is to include/exclude a list of keywords. James Oakes has created an amazing Google Sheet Regex builder template.

PRO TIP: Download the Regex builder template and save a copy to keep and edit.

If your users are finding your domain with branded searches, you may want to discover all non-branded keywords.


GSC regex is especially useful for filtering out all branded searches so you can define non-branded organic keywords.

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To exclude your branded queries, use the following formula and select “does not match regex”:

.*(brand name|brand name 2|brand name variation|brand name variation|brand name var).*

PRO TIP: You can constantly find new branded keywords, including misspellings of your brand. Keep adding all branded keyword variations to your regex list and bookmark the new version so you have an immediate view of your non-branded organic traffic.

Regex for transactional queries
You can use the following formula to find transactional queries in GSC, or add any other variations to find all transactional queries.

.*(buy|cheap|price|acquire|order).*

Regex for informative queries
Focus on queries that include terms like “what,” “when,” “where,” “why,” and “how.” These often indicate that users are searching for information rather than trying to complete a specific action. This can give you insight into your users’ pain points and help your content team develop new ideas for their content strategy.

.*(how|which|what|who).*

Queries with multiple words
Emma-Jane Stogdon has created a regex to find GSC queries of a certain keyword length. What she suggests is to use the following regex:

(\w*\W){#} and replace the # with the number of words in your query.

PRO TIP: Keep in mind the difference between long-tail keywords and multi-word keywords – they are often confused but are not the same thing. While the former are keywords that belong to the long tail of the search demand curve, the latter are keywords composed of multiple words. There is a high correlation between the former and the latter, but they are conceptually different.

Export your data to a spreadsheet
Remember to use as many filters as you can before exporting your data to a spreadsheet. Once you have the final view you want, either in comparison mode or filter mode, export your data to a csv file or directly to a Google Spreadsheets file.