Google Search Console is the most honest SEO data most sites have. It shows real clicks and real impressions from Google, not estimates. The trouble is the interface: comparing months takes a few clicks, filtering out branded searches takes a regex, and nothing connects what you see to the work your team did. RankThat brings Search Console and Google Analytics 4 into the same place as your rankings, audits and reports, so the numbers sit next to the decisions they should inform.
This article covers how to connect both, what each screen shows, how to read the common patterns, and where the data has limits that are easy to misread.
Connecting Google once
- Go to Settings and click Connect Google Search Console, then Connect Google Analytics. You sign in with the Google account that has access to the sites. Search Console and Analytics data are read-only; the Search Console sign-in also asks for Google Docs access, which is used when you export a content brief to Google Docs.
- Open each project’s Project Settings. Set the GSC Property URL (pick the domain property if you have one, as it covers every version of the site) and choose the GA4 Property from the dropdown.
- That’s it. The first sync brings in up to 16 months of Search Console history (as much as Google keeps), so month-on-month and year-on-year comparisons work straight away.
You can disconnect Google at any time from Settings. Nothing is shared outside your account and team. If Search Console terms are new to you, the glossary covers Google Search Console, impressions, clicks and click-through rate.
The Search Performance page
Open a project and go to SEO › Search Performance. The top half is a monthly view.
- Pick a month, up to 16 months back. Click Update for the latest data.
- Four tiles: clicks, impressions, click rate and average position, each compared with the previous month and the same month last year.
- A chart you can switch between monthly and daily.
- Pages and Searches lists, each with three views: Top, Gaining and Losing.
- Brand vs non-brand clicks: the share of clicks from searches containing the business’s name, worked out from the project name and domain.
The bottom half, All searches and pages, is the detail view. Choose a range (the last import, 7 days, 28 days, or 3, 6 or 12 months), switch between searches and pages, and read the position split: how many are in the top 3, positions 4 to 10, page two, 21 to 50 and beyond 50. Every table downloads as CSV.
Why rows don’t add up to the total
The page says it openly, and it’s worth repeating to clients: the searches listed add up to less than the site’s total clicks. Google leaves out rare searches to protect privacy. That gap is normal, not missing data.
Reading the common patterns
| What you see | What it usually means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Impressions up, clicks flat | You appear for more searches, but low on the page or with weak titles | Check Opportunities for “Seen, not clicked” |
| Clicks down, impressions flat | Lower click rate: a SERP feature, an AI Overview, or a competitor’s better title | Look at the losing searches and the result pages |
| Clicks and impressions down together | Lost positions or pages dropped from the index | Check the Rank Tracker and the Google index tab |
| Branded share rising, non-brand flat | Growth from reputation, not SEO | Fine, but non-brand is where SEO work shows |
| One page in Losing every month | Content decay | Send it to Content Refresh |
The brand split is the number agencies most often wish Search Console had. A client whose clicks are 80% branded searches is being found by people who already know them. Growth in non-brand clicks is new customers finding them through search, which is usually what they’re paying you for. See organic traffic for more on the difference.
One more pattern worth knowing: average position can fall while clicks rise. When a site starts appearing for many new, long-tail searches at lower positions, the average drops even though more people are finding it. Read position alongside impressions before calling it a decline.
The Google index tab
Search Console’s indexing data lives under Site Audit › Google index, because it answers the same question the audit does: can this page rank? RankThat uses Google’s URL Inspection data to check the home page, your top Search Console pages, the latest audit’s pages, and articles published from RankThat. It checks up to 300 pages per run, each page at most once a week, and stops if Google’s daily limit for the property is reached. It also runs automatically after the monthly audit, and Check pages now runs it on demand.
The tab lists pages checked, indexed and not indexed, then “Why pages aren’t indexed” with advice for each reason, the pages not in Google, and pages where “Google picked a different main page” (a canonical problem). If an important page drops out of the index, you get an alert.
Google Analytics 4: where it shows up
GA4 data appears in three places, and it’s worth being precise about each.
- The monthly report’s Website Traffic section is the full-site view: sessions, users, new users, key events, engagement rate, average session length and page views, plus organic sessions and key events, the top channels, devices and a 12-month trend. This is the GA4 view clients see.
- Analytics & Reports › Google Analytics shows sessions, engagement rate, bounce rate and conversions for articles published from RankThat, over 7, 14, 28 or 90 days. It answers “is our content bringing in engaged visitors?”, not “how is the whole site doing?”.
- Content Performance lists RankThat articles with their clicks, impressions, average position, top keywords and a decay score, so you can see which posts earn their keep and which need a refresh.
If you want a page-by-page GA4 view of the whole site, Google Analytics itself is still the place. RankThat focuses GA4 on the report and on the content it publishes.
Fair comparisons across months
A 31-day month gets more clicks than a 30-day month for no reason other than the extra day. On the Projects page (the portfolio view of every site) and in the monthly report, Search Console clicks and impressions are compared per day, so a shorter month isn’t shown as a decline that didn’t happen. A comparison needs at least 14 days of data in the earlier month to be shown at all. The Search Performance page itself compares monthly totals, so keep month length in mind when you read its tiles for February.
A worked example: Coastline Plumbing in July
Coastline Plumbing’s July tiles show clicks down 9% on June but up 22% on last July. The agency opens the Losing view under Searches. The biggest losers are “ac not cooling” and “ac repair austin”: Coastline doesn’t do AC, and those searches spiked in June’s heat wave. Non-brand clicks for plumbing searches actually rose.
The Pages list shows the water heater repair page gaining for the third month running, after its title was rewritten in May. The Google index tab shows two new service area pages as “Crawled, currently not indexed”. The agency adds internal links to them from the main service page and requests indexing.
In the client report, the comparison is set to the same month last year, which tells the true story: a seasonal business growing year on year.
What this part of RankThat doesn’t do
- It doesn’t change Google’s data. Delays, sampling and privacy filtering in Search Console and GA4 carry through.
- The Search Performance page shows monthly totals, not per-day comparisons. Per-day comparisons are on the Projects page and in reports.
- The Google Analytics page covers RankThat articles, not every page on the site.
- URL Inspection has daily limits set by Google, so very large sites are checked in stages.
- It needs access. Someone with access to the Search Console property and GA4 property has to connect them.
A monthly reading routine
| Step | Where | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Compare the month with last year, not just last month | Search Performance tiles | 2 minutes |
| Read the Losing searches and pages | Search Performance | 5 minutes |
| Check brand vs non-brand share | Search Performance | 1 minute |
| Review not-indexed pages | Site Audit › Google index | 5 minutes |
| Check which articles need a refresh | Content Performance | 5 minutes |
The same data drives Opportunities and the “close to the top” estimates for keywords in the Rank Tracker, and Claude can read it through the Claude connector.
Tip: when a client asks “why are we down?”, check last year’s same month before anything else. Half of all scary drops are the calendar.