Organic traffic vs. GWT data

[arielbortz]

Hi, how are you?

I'm having a question becasue of an inconsistency between the data GWT gives and the one GA gives me.

When I see the ammount of clics GWT tells me in february, it says 32850. When I go to Channels --> Organic Search, it says 51014. The difference is really big!

Do you happen to know why this huge gap between data?

[arielbortz]

Ah! That would explain it!

Thanks!

[ThompsonPaul]

There's a specific quirk of Webmaster Tools that most folks aren't aware of, Ariel. Google themselves tell us that Webmaster Tools will only report on the top 2000 queries to your site. So any clicks from the keywords past 2000 won't be recorded in Webmaster Tools but will show up in Analytics as usual. Here's Google's actual quote:

“Webmaster Tools shows data for the top 2,000 queries that returned your site at least once or twice in search results in the selected period."

I'm betting this accounts for pretty well all of the discrepancy in the numbers you're seeing. Analytics is always the more accurate source for information about actual visits, because it's recording what's actually happening on your site. Webmaster Tools is just Google showing you some of what they see happening in the search pages themselves.

Hope that helps explain it?

Paul

P.S. The trick to getting around this limitation is to verify subfolders/categories of your site as additional sites in Webmaster Tools. You'll then see up to 2000 queries for each of those smaller areas of your site, so less likely to run over the limit.)

[Brafton1]

One of my brilliant strategists may have figured out the discrepancy:

Why doesn't Webmaster Tools data match Google Analytics data?

Webmaster Tools data may differ from the data displayed in other tools, such as Google Analytics. Possible reasons for this include:

• Webmaster Tools does some additional data processing—for example, to handle duplicate content and visits from robots—that may cause your stats to differ from stats listed in other sources. Some tools, such as Google Analytics, track traffic only from users who have enabled JavaScript in their browser.
• Google Analytics tracks visits only to pages which include the correctly configured Analytics Javascript code. If pages on the site don't have the code, Analytics will not track visits to those pages. Visits to pages without the Analytics tracking code will, however, be tracked in Webmaster Tools if users reach them via search results or if Google crawls or otherwise discovers them.
• Some tools define "keywords" differently. For example:
  • The Keywords page in Webmaster Tools displays the most significant words Google found on your site.
  • The Keywords tool in Google Adwords displays the total number of user queries for that keyword across the web.
  • Analytics uses the term "keywords" to describe both search engine queries and AdWords paid keywords.
  • The Webmaster Tools Search Queries page lists shows the total number of keyword search queries in which your page's listing was seen in search results, and this is a smaller number. Also, Webmaster Tools rounds search query data to one or two significant digits.

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1120006?hl=en

[arielbortz]

Just Google traffic, in fatc, just organic google traffic.

Free search engine traffic is 51102. But from those, only 31.418 are new visitors.

GWT says I had 32.850 clics. Could this be it? It only counts new visitors?

[Brafton1]

Hi Ariel,

From my experience it's usually pretty close, albeit still an estimate.  When you go into GA are you looking at just Google traffic or ALL organic?  That might make for a smaller discrepancy.

Jim