Let’s get right into it – use the sidebar on the right to jump to a particular update.

Search Intent Updates

Discover the search query purpose behind your monitored terms and pages and make it easier to create valuable content which is highly relevant for your target audience. With the latest Search Intent detection algorithm update, we’ve narrowed down the list to 4 categories: Navigational, Informational, Commercial, and Transactional.

This update brings the URL Intent column to the Visibility-Landing pages report, the Search Intent column in the Ranking-Keywords and Comparison-Websites views (including intent changes since the previous month), as well as the option to save the selected intents as dynamic filters which allows you to focus your efforts based on the searchers’ purpose and its changes over time.

Dynamic Keyword Groups in Market Share View

The dynamic groups are being updated each time there are changes to the metrics based on which they are created. Therefore, the market share data will reflect the current configuration of each of your dynamically updated groups.

This comes in handy especially to:
– monitor the market share of a subset of terms organized by relevant criteria
– discover new market opportunities or threats

Looker Studio Improvements

Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio) integration has been upgraded with two new metrics: Local Search Volume and Global Search Volume, while a new split option by Branded and Non-branded keywords has been added.

Easier Keyword Management

The multiple keyword groups selection functionality has been extended to the Settings-Project settings-Keywords menu so you can manage your keywords more efficiently.

CTR Free Tool Upgrade

The clickthrough rate values in the SERP Features view of our free CTR tool can now be filtered by the newly added Direct Answer result type and by search intent. The list of search intent categories has also been updated (Navigational, Informational, Commercial and Transactional) and is now available for the US market (desktop and mobile queries).

And that’s pretty much it for December!

Want to be up-to-date with all the new features and improvements that we add? Make sure to follow our changelog.

And of course, please reach out if you have any feedback on this. We’d love to hear your thoughts!

So let’s get right into it – use the sidebar on the right to jump to a particular update.

Ranking Stats Quicker Shared via Permalinks

You can now generate permalinks directly from the UI reports, using the newly added Share button. This quick action will generate a share link with the current report’s preferences.

Year-over-Year Change Search Volume Column

The Search Volume column got upgraded with the YoY change metric. This Volume percent change is calculated by comparing the searches from the latest month with the ones of the corresponding month of the previous year.

Upgraded Ranking Notification Emails

Project summary and the Initial update overview notification emails have just got a more comprehensive and easier to skim look.

You can customize the notification emails frequency from the Settings-General Settings menu (‘Email updates’ section).

Email Notifications Frequency

The ranking notifications preferences have been changed. The default frequency of sending email updates for newly gathered rankings is now set to weekly on Mondays (instead of daily, as it used to be). 

More Search Depth Options 

New search depth options are now available: 1, 2, and respectively 3 pages. 

New Match Type Search Options

The keyword/URL search options have been renamed and extended. When opening the ‘Search options’ menu (next to the ‘Search for keyword/URL’ field), you’ll notice you can now choose between Exact, Partial, and Phrase match types. 

Let’s take for instance the keyword ‘recipe’. The Exact match will return results containing only the word ‘recipe’ alone, the Phrase match will return keywords that contain this word (such as ‘meatloaf recipe’, ‘recipe of the year’), while the Partial match will return results with the word as part of the keyword searched (e.g. ‘recipes’, ‘allrecipes.com’). The default search option (when not using the ‘Search options’ menu) will continue to be ‘Partial’ match.

Improved Column Selector

New options are now available in the column selector. You’ll no longer have to deselect each column at a time for each section, by using the newly added option called Only. Once you’re ready with your selection, hit the new Apply button to see your preferred metrics in the table view. 

Keyword Groups Management

Multiple Keyword Groups Selection
Multiple keyword groups can be selected simultaneously in the Ranking-Keywords view using the newly added checkboxes in front of them. KPI aggregates will be automatically calculated based on your keyword groups selection.

Remove Keywords from Groups
Removing a keyword from a group just got easier! All you need to do is navigate to Settings-Project settings-Keywords, choose a keyword group, check the keywords you’d like to remove from that group, select Manage, and then the Remove from [group-name] group option. This comes in handy when you have keywords assigned to multiple groups and decide to remove some of them from a certain keyword group.

And that’s pretty much it for November!

Want to be up-to-date with all the new features and improvements that we add? Make sure to follow our changelog.

And of course, please reach out if you have any feedback on this. We’d love to hear your thoughts!

Branded or unbranded queries, 1 or more than 4-word keywords, you name it, there were no significant spikes in CTR when comparing Q3 to Q2 values.

However, there’s definitely more than meets the eye when drilling down to the industry level and when segmenting the data from the search intent perspective.

Google is constantly testing new ways of distributing featured snippets and organic results, which determine users to click on a different listing. This shift in users’ behavior when searching translates into inevitable changes in each listing’s clickthrough rate.

Btw, we’re covering the subject of how SERP features affect your CTR in Google organic search at SMX Next, online November 15-16. So, make sure you grab your free pass to deepen your knowledge about this topic.

And now let’s focus on the outcome, by looking at how the CTR values shaped in the third quarter of the year compared to the previous one.

Search intent

After the previous quarter’s drop in CTR, the clickthrough rate for commercial queries (containing words such as buy, price, etc.) got on the rising slope this time. Here, the websites ranked first experienced a 1.97 pp increase in CTR on desktop searches. 

As for informational queries (containing words such as what, when, where, how, etc.), the websites ranked first gained 1.38 pp in CTR on desktop queries.

Industries

Now let’s jump to the industries section, where, just like in the previous quarterly studies, we’ll correlate the changes in CTR to the ones in search demand to better estimate the potential traffic fluctuations.

This CTR report will contain two separate sections, based on the search demand’s evolution.

A. Industries that experienced an increase in search demand

For the second quarter in a row, the highest decrease in clickthrough rate for a single position was recorded in the Law, Government, & Politics market. Here, the websites ranked first on desktop recorded a 3.47 pp drop in CTR. 

On mobile, the loss affected the websites ranked first also, which witnessed a 2.37 pp decline in clickthrough rate. At the same time, the overall industry’s impressions increased by +2.96%.

With no real change for desktop queries, the websites ranked first in the News industry witnessed a 1.11 pp growth in clickthrough rates on mobile. Surprisingly, the fluctuations were higher at the bottom of the SERPs, with the websites ranked between the 17th and 20th positions losing a combined 6.74 pp in CTR. On the other hand, the search demand grew slightly for this industry, by +7.51%.

Here’s a graphical representation of the changes in the two industries mentioned above:

B. Industries where the search demand dropped

After two consecutive quarters with declining CTR values on mobile devices, the Careers industry got on the rising slope this time. Here, the websites ranked first on mobile devices experienced a 1.41 pp increase in CTR, while the total number of impressions decreased by -12.63% in Q3 compared to Q2.

The last time the Personal Finance industry made it into the quarterly CTR report, it was associated with the highest decrease in clickthrough rate of that period. Tables turn and the industry managed to record an increase of 1.07 pp in CTR for the websites ranked first on desktop. In reverse, the market’s search demand registered an overall -8.71% drop.

As for the Real Estate category, the search demand decreased on a small scale (-2.93%) and the CTR values fluctuated only on mobile devices. More precisely, websites ranked second in mobile SERPs registered a 0.93 pp drop in clickthrough rate.

Despite the drop in search demand (-17.84%), the websites ranked first in the Family & Parenting industry recorded a 2.08 pp increase in CTR on queries made from desktop devices. 

While the search demand dropped in the Hobbies & Interests market (-44.16%), websites ranked first on desktop devices registered almost an entire percentage point growth in CTR (0.90 pp to be more precise).

A similar trend occurred in the Food & Drink category, where the CTR values for the websites ranked first registered an increase of 0.93 pp on desktop and 0.88 pp on mobile devices. Nevertheless, the total number of impressions for this industry went in the opposite direction, recording a -5.52% drop.

With no major changes since Q4 2021, the websites ranked first in the Shopping industry recorded a growth of 0.96 pp in CTR on desktop queries. On the other hand, the search demand for this industry registered losses when compared to the previous quarter (-9.39% to be more precise).

And now let’s jump to the industry with the highest increase in clickthrough rate for a single position: the Business one. Here, the CTR for websites ranked first on queries made from desktop devices grew, on average, by 1.91 pp, while on mobile, the changes reached a remarkable 2.24 pp growth. However, the industry’s overall impressions dropped by -3.15% in Q3 compared to Q2.

The highest decrease in impressions (-50.36%) recorded by our search demand tool was for the Travel industry. As for the CTR values, after two dormant quarters, they experienced changes once again. Surprisingly, websites ranked first weren’t influenced by the changes, while those ranked in the second position in desktop SERPs registered a 2.90 pp drop in CTR.

The Science industry continued its CTR decline, which began in the previous quarter, for the websites ranked in the first two positions on mobile devices, and even more, the drop extended to desktop devices, as well, during Q3. Therefore, websites ranking in these first two positions on mobile got a combined decrease in clickthrough rate of 5.26 pp (2.26 pp for those ranked first, and 2.99 pp for those ranked in the second position), while on desktop, the combined drop equaled 5.00 pp (1.83 pp for those ranked first, and 3.17 pp for those ranked in the second position). The industry’s overall impressions decreased a bit, by -1.13%.

It’s been a year already since the Education market last recorded fluctuations in clickthrough rate and it was about time for it to make it into this quarter’s report. Here, the websites ranked first on desktop registered a 1.85 pp decrease in clickthrough rate, while the industry’s overall impressions dropped by -11.42%.

The first four positions in the Pets market experienced a combined 4.46 pp decrease in CTR on desktop and no less than a 9.88 pp drop on mobile devices. Coupled with a decline of -14.47% in search demand, it’s highly probable that the websites ranked in those four positions noticed some loss in organic traffic.

Sports is the last one to make it into this quarter’s group of industries where clickthrough rate variations were recorded, and the search demand declined. The number of impressions decreased by -12.30%, while the CTR for websites ranked first on desktop queries increased by 1.39 pp.

Here’s a visual recap of the changes mentioned above:

That’s it for…the third quarter

In what might have seemed a quiet quarter from the clickthrough rate perspective, we found out that there still were winning and losing industries, in the end. The websites ranked first on desktop for commercial and informational queries were also affected by the CTR changes, so make sure to reassess this metric regularly to discover if the traffic changes are tied to it.

See you with the analysis of the last quarter of the year compiled against this one. Until then, stay safe and healthy!

So let’s get right into it – use the sidebar on the right to jump to a particular update.

Keyword Difficulty Tool Updates

The Keyword Difficulty tool has just been enhanced with some new options:

– For all newly added projects, you will automatically get Difficulty data available with the first ranking update. 

– You can now schedule when the Difficulty scores are to be delivered, by choosing between the Weekly and Monthly frequency options.

– You’ll now be able to start ranking and difficulty updates at once by checking the ‘Also run a keyword difficulty update’ option for the on-demand ranking updates.

Keyword Difficulty Column

The keyword difficulty score is now available in the Ranking-Keywords and Comparison-Websites views. The newly added column shows an overall score of each selected keyword based on all three metrics: Domain, URL, and Content. 

You can now focus your SEO efforts on the most accessible keywords to optimize for, by filtering the results based on the keyword difficulty metric.

UI/UX Improvements

Two new data visualization options are available in the table sections:

– Toggle charts (which helps you focus on what’s important by showing/hiding chart sparklines in tables, where available).

– Reset table (which allows you to start your analysis fresh by resetting the table section to its default preferences with no filters applied, default sorting, and columns in table).

Daily SERP Features Tool Update

The free SERP Features tool has also been updated recently, offering the option to switch to Daily updates (besides the existing Weekly ones). This helps you detect changes in SERP anatomy more rapidly (like the recent massive drop in PAA results) and act upon this information.

And that’s pretty much it for October!

Want to be up-to-date with all the new features and improvements that we add? Make sure to follow our changelog.

And of course, please reach out if you have any feedback on this. We’d love to hear your thoughts!

So let’s get right into it – use the sidebar on the right to jump to a particular update.

Google Analytics 4 Integration

As you might already know, starting from July 1, 2023, Google Universal Analytics will be discontinued and replaced with Google Analytics 4. So, we thought to do our homework in time and make GA4 integration available in Advanced Web Ranking already.

Although GA4 is still in beta version, metrics such as Visits (split by channel source – Direct, Organic, Social, etc.), Revenue, Page Views, Bounce Rate, Conversion Rate, or Goal conversion have just been made available in AWR.

Permalink Enhancements

Permalinks were turned into an enhanced reporting system, making it easier to share ranking data with your clients, colleagues, you name it. The nice thing about it is that you now have the option to give read-only access to the data you’re sharing, so let’s have a more detailed look at what’s new to the share link functionality. 

Viewer Interaction Options
You can now choose how your clients or other users interact with permalinks, between ‘View Only’ mode (where users can only change the dates in the report they are given access to) and ‘Interactive’ mode (where those accessing the permalink can change inputs, table preferences, export data, etc.).

Email Notifications
The permalinks can now be used as a friendly reporting system. The ‘Notify by email’ option will generate a performance summary email, reminding the recipient that a new update is available.

User Interface / User Experience Upgrades
You’ll also notice some UI/UX improvements right away, starting with the new modal packed with options and finishing with the entire adding/edit permalink flow.

UI/UX Improvements

A series of UI/UX enhancements were made, to make your AWR experience even more pleasant:

• tooltips on hover were added for each metric, in the table header for better report comprehension.
• KPI dismissal options were added to all reports where KPIs / charts are available so you can focus on what’s really important to your analysis.
• the values and changes for metrics were aligned vertically, as well as the expand arrow icons for each table row and their containers, making them easier to follow.

ATF to Pixel

The ‘ATF Display’ filter in the Comparison and Visibility UI reports has been renamed to ‘Pixel Position’ and it now offers more precise options. 

Besides the existing predefined filters (Above the fold, Below the fold & Out of display), you can now set a pixels threshold where to look for keyword opportunities, using the newly added ‘From’ and ‘To’ fields. 

This comes in handy when looking, for example, for keywords that rank just above the fold, but in the upper side of the ‘Below the fold’ area, and improving their rankings by just a bit translates into an important amount of new traffic.

And that’s pretty much it for September!

Want to be up-to-date with all the new features and improvements that we add? Make sure to follow our changelog.

And of course, please reach out if you have any feedback on this. We’d love to hear your thoughts!

In addition to a bunch of quality of life improvements, we added new metrics & KPIs to streamline your SEO process further more. 

The Market Share view also got upgraded, so let’s get right into it – use the sidebar on the right to jump to a particular update.

Keyword Difficulty Improvements

– A friendlier filtering option has been added, allowing you to focus your SEO efforts on the next set of keywords based on their difficulty: Easy, Pretty Easy, Doable, Tough One, Painful and Impossible.

– In the ‘Keywords’ view you can now see the CPC values for each of your keywords as a table column. In addition to this, two new KPIs are available in this view: ‘Click Share’ (which shows you the estimated percentage of clicks that your website may receive from organic search, based on its Top 20 keyword positions and displayed as a trend across the last 7 project updates completed) and ‘Keywords Distribution’ (which presents the number of keywords corresponding to each level of difficulty in the Easy-Impossible newly added scale).

– The ‘SERP Difficulty’ view was renamed ‘SERP Overview’ and upgraded with the Backlinks table column (displaying the total number of external links each URL has) and an extensive KPIs widget. This new widget will show you the ‘Cost per Click’, ‘Search Intent’, and ‘Estimated Visits’ metrics, as well as the SERP features ‘Click Share’ curve for each of your selected keywords.

Market Share Upgrade

The Market Share view has just been enhanced with a new option to enjoy a more granular view of the data at URL level. You’ll now see a number next to each domain representing the total count of URLs. When expanding the domains, you’ll get details about each URL such as Market Share, Keywords, and Total Search volume.

And that’s pretty much it for August!

Want to be up-to-date with all the new features and improvements that we add? Make sure to follow our changelog.

And of course, please reach out if you have any feedback on this. We’d love to hear your thoughts!

Not to mention the way searchers are interacting with these new search engine result pages. For example, recent studies show that about 40% of young people (Gen Z) use TikTok or Instagram as search engines, instead of Google for some discovery purposes. It should come as no surprise that zoomers (that’s how Generation Z is colloquially known) might behave differently when searching on Google.

So let’s best focus on effects, on how user behavior shaped the CTR values in the second quarter of the year when compared to the previous one.

All searches

At a global level, the changes affected only the mobile queries, where the websites ranked first registered a 1.45 pp decrease in CTR.

Branded vs. Unbranded

The declining trend in CTR for the websites ranked first on mobile queries was reflected in both the branded and unbranded queries.

More precisely, for those searches containing specific brand or business names, websites ranked in the first position experienced a 1.27 pp decline in CTR.

As for the unbranded queries, the drop in CTR equaled 1.56 pp for the websites ranked first for the searches made from mobile devices.

Search intent

Websites ranked in the first two positions for informational queries recorded a combined 2.57 pp loss in CTR on mobile (1.53 pp for those ranked first and 1.04 for those ranked second). On desktop, nevertheless, the changes went in the opposite direction, affecting the websites ranked first only, which witnessed almost 1.26 pp growth in clickthrough rate.

Drops in clickthrough rate values were recorded for commercial queries (those containing words such as price, pay, buy, etc.) as well, with websites ranked first, losing 1.27 pp on desktop queries.

As for location queries (containing words such as near, from, nearby, directions, maps, etc.), the websites ranked first lost on average 1.65 pp in CTR on desktop searches.

Keyword length

Regardless of the number of words a keyword has, our CTR tool recorded drops on almost all fronts on mobile queries as follows:

• for 1-word queries, the change wasn’t quite visible for those websites ranked first, while for those in the second position, the loss equaled 1.09 pp
• for queries containing more than 2 words, the most significant changes occurred for the websites ranked first. More precisely, for 2-word searches, the loss equaled 1.37 pp, for 3-word queries, the registered loss accounted for 1.42 pp, and for searches containing four or more keywords, the decline was 1.67 pp.

Industries

Now let’s jump to the industries section, where, just like in the previous quarterly studies, we’ll correlate the changes in CTR to the ones in search demand to better estimate the potential traffic fluctuations.

This CTR report will contain two separate sections, based on the search demand’s evolution.

A. Industries where the search demand increased

With no major changes since Q4 2021, the websites ranked first in the Technology & Computing industry recorded a drop of 1.07 pp in CTR on mobile queries. On the other hand, the search demand for this industry recorded growth when compared to the previous quarter (+20.66% to be more precise).

Being the industry to record the highest increase in CTR in the previous quarter, Family & Parenting got on the falling slope this time. 

On desktop, the websites affected were the ones ranked first, which witnessed a 1.34 pp loss. The decline was even steeper on mobile, with the websites ranked in the first five positions experiencing a combined 9.94 pp decrease in CTR (3.28 pp for those ranked in the first position, 2.26 pp for those ranked second, 1.56 pp for those ranked third, 1.66 pp for those ranked fourth, and 1.18 pp for the ones in the fifth spot).

At the same time, the industry’s overall search demand went in the opposite direction, increasing by +11.75%.

And now let’s jump to the industry with the highest decrease in clickthrough rate for a single position: the Law, Government, & Politics one. Here, the CTR for websites ranked first on queries made from desktop devices dropped, on average, by 3.33 pp. 

On the other hand, on mobile, the decline affected the first 4 positions, which recorded a combined 6.66 pp drop. However, the industry’s overall impressions increased by +5.39% in Q2 compared to Q1.

With no major changes since Q3 2021, the websites ranked first on queries made from desktop devices in the Business industry, grew, on average, by 1.04 pp. Combined with a +4.76% increase in search demand, it’s highly probable that these websites recorded an increased amount of organic traffic.

A similar trend occurred in the Hobbies & Interests industry, where just like in the Business market, after two dormant quarters, the clickthrough rate values experienced changes once again. Here, the websites ranked in the first two positions recorded drops in CTR on both desktop (3.24 pp combined) and mobile queries (3.72 pp combined). On a more positive note, this market registered the highest growth in search demand of the quarter: no less than +21.26%.

With no real change for desktop queries, the first two websites ranked in the Shopping industry witnessed a combined 2.40 pp loss in clickthrough rates on mobile (1.35 pp for those ranked first and 1.05 for those ranked second). However, the total number of impressions slightly increased, by +9.93%.

The websites ranked in the first two positions in the Science industry recorded a combined 3.48 pp loss in CTR on mobile (1.88 pp for those ranked first, and 1.60 pp for those ranked in the second position). On desktop, the changes affected the websites ranked third only, which witnessed a 1.14 pp growth in clickthrough rate. The industry’s overall impressions increased a bit, by +2.10%.

As for the Society industry, the clickthrough rates for the websites ranked first on desktop registered a 1.75 pp decline, while on mobile, only the websites ranked in the second position were influenced by the changes, recording a 1.26 drop. Nevertheless, the industry’s overall search demand went in the opposite direction, increasing by +17.91%.

Last but not least, let’s have a look at the Sports market, which recorded a drop in CTR on mobile devices only. For these queries, the websites ranked first witnessed a 1.07 pp drop, while this industry’s overall search demand increased by +7.61%.

Here’s a visual round-up of the CTR evolution for the industries mentioned above:

B. Industries that experienced a drop in search demand

The first five positions in the Real Estate industry experienced a combined 9.77 pp decrease in CTR on mobile (3.21 pp for those ranked in the first position, 2.22 pp for those ranked second, 1.67 pp for those ranked third, 1.55 pp for and 1.11 pp for the ones in the fifth spot). Coupled with a decrease of -12.66% in search demand, it’s highly probable that the websites ranked in those five positions noticed some loss in organic traffic.

The decline that started during the previous quarter deepened in the Careers industry, affecting not only the websites ranked first on mobile queries but also those ranked between second and fourth positions. Strictly speaking, the websites ranked in the first four positions on mobile lost a combined 5.54 pp in CTR as follows: 1.66 pp for those ranked in the first position, 1.24 pp for those ranked second, 1.54 pp for those ranked third, and 1.10 pp for the ones in the fourth spot.

On the other hand, but on desktop this time, only the websites ranked first were affected, experiencing a 1.19 pp drop in CTR, while the industry’s global number of impressions decreased by -10.14%.

The Health & Fitness market recorded losses, especially on mobile devices: 1.94 pp for websites ranked first and 5.73 pp for the top four websites combined. On desktop, the change could be observed, especially for the websites ranked first as they lost, on average, 1.93 pp in CTR. As for the search demand, the industry’s overall number of impressions decreased by -4.92%.

The Food & Drink market was also affected at the top of the SERP, where the websites ranked first registered a 1.55 pp drop in CTR on desktop and 1.83 pp decline on mobile. Here, the search demand decreased by -20.45%.

It’s time to turn our attention to the highest growth for a single position in CTR: the Arts & Entertainment market. Websites ranked in the first position experienced a 1.96 pp boost in CTR on desktop devices. 

On the other hand, still on desktop queries, those ranked second experienced a 1.03 pp drop, while those in the third spot registered a 1.24 pp decline. In contrast to the growth record achieved this quarter, this industry’s search demand decreased by -30.11%.

Desktop and mobile CTR values went in opposite directions this time around in the Education market, for the websites ranked first as follows: on desktop, the growth in clickthrough rate was 1.67 pp, while on mobile, the drop equaled 1.10 pp. Concurrently, the number of impressions for this industry declined steeply, by -24.51%.

The highest decrease in impressions (-36.18%) recorded by our search demand tool was for the Pets industry. As for the CTR values, interestingly, the websites’ positions influenced by the changes were quite atypical. Those ranked second in SERPs registered a 1.70 pp drop in CTR on desktop, while on mobile, the changes in CTR affected the websites ranked fourth, which witnessed a 1.13 pp drop.

One last market where the search demand dropped (by -6.42%) is Automotive. At the same time, the CTR values went in the same direction, at least for the websites ranked first, which registered a 1.32 pp drop on desktop and a 2.71 pp decrease on mobile queries.

Here’s a graphical representation of the changes in all eight industries mentioned above:

That’s it for…the second quarter

As you might have noticed, most of the changes occurred on mobile devices, and in most cases, they translated into drops in clickthrough rate. Quite contrary to the popular opinion that Google’s continuous scrolling on mobile searches would automatically bring more traffic to the websites, we noticed that in reality, it’s quite the opposite, which stresses the importance of assessing the CTR values regularly.

Only this way you can try and understand scenarios such as drops in traffic, although the rankings remained unchanged, and going further, you can even make some forecasts on how much traffic you can expect, based on the most recent CTR values evolution.

I’ll see you with the analysis of the third quarter of the year compiled against this one. Until then, stay safe and healthy!

So let’s get right into it – use the sidebar on the right to jump to a particular update.

Permalink Improvements

New options have been added to permalinks*

• multiple permalinks per project: you can now generate unlimited permalinks for each of your projects, each one of them customized based on your preferences.
• multiple projects in one permalink: a very popular request, the ability to report your SEO progress across multiple projects can now be performed by including multiple projects in a single permalink.

*these updates are available starting with our Pro monthly plans and all our yearly subscriptions

More details on how the share link functionality works can be found in our online documentation here.

Market Share Upgrade

The total search volume formula from the Market Share view has been improved, with the values under the ‘Total searches’ column computing data for all your competitors in ‘Top 20’ (as opposed to the competitors added to your project, as up until recently).

Organic Results Filter Available for Printable Reports

You can use the newly added ‘Organic’ option from the ‘SERP Features’ filter for the table widgets of the following report types: Keywords Ranking, My Sites Ranking, and Websites Comparison.

And that’s pretty much it for July!

Want to be up-to-date with all the new features and improvements that we add? Make sure to follow our changelog.

And of course, please reach out if you have any feedback on this. We’d love to hear your thoughts!

PropertyGuru and its group companies empower property seekers with more than 3.3 million real estate listings, in-depth insights, and solutions that enable them to make confident property decisions across Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Our strong organic growth is contributed by the efforts of the SEO team, leveraging solutions such as the Advanced Web Ranking (AWR) platform. 

The Challenge

As Southeast Asia’s leading property technology company, we are hyper-focused on serving our audience with actionable insights and content that helps them on their home ownership journey.

To ensure we are continuously creating value for our audience, we track a vast volume of keywords – around 20,000 per country, that are in line with what our consumers’ search/need to find their dream home. By tracking these keywords, we understand how they are served on the Google SERP and how consumers interact with the information. 

Our challenge was to track our performance, compare it to a range of other players in the sector and identify opportunities to grow our services and offerings, in line with our business objectives. 

How AWR helped us address the challenge

With AWR, we focused on these four features for insights:

1. Visibility – Keyword Groups & Metrics
2. Dashboards
3. SERP Features
4. Unlimited competitors

1. Visibility – Keyword Groups & Metrics

The visibility metrics displayed on all our keyword groups are a good tool to analyze the ranking positions on a weekly or monthly basis. This greatly benefits us as we have over 30+ keyword baskets, such as locations, and project names, amongst others. This monitoring helps us identify our site’s strongest or weakest pages (as most keywords are tied to our core product offerings or site pages).  

 Core metrics we focus on are: 

• Market share
• Top ranking keyword positions
• Keyword movements from the top 3 positions. 

Apart from helping us identify the set of pages or offerings which require our immediate attention, it also helps us quickly review if our keyword baskets were impacted by Google algorithm updates. 

When we notice keyword changes are happening across a keyword basket, we view the total search volume of the basket of keywords and determine the next steps accordingly. 

Based on the short-term (3 months) and long-term (6-8 months) performance, we plan the SEO experiments for each quarter.  

2. Dashboards

Besides reviewing the metrics, AWR allows us to build custom automated reports for deeper and better performance analysis without the need to filter settings each time. 

Our team can set up these custom reports to be shared weekly with our stakeholders to keep everyone updated on the health status of our keyword baskets, and benchmark it against our competitors. 

3. SERP Features

AWR helps us identify SERP features for a group of keywords, that in turn enables us to identify opportunities to create new products and serve relevant content in different formats. Our websites produce a variety of content such as search results, listing pages, and blog articles. AWR’s SERP feature allows us to identify the common SERP feature appearing for each keyword basket.

This insight enables us to understand how Google displays the results on the SERP and as a result, we can prioritize and optimize our content strategy to improve our CTR and brand awareness. 

4. Unlimited competitors

As Southeast Asia’s real estate leader we closely track  our organic share of voice. AWR enables us to track our competitors across countries, based on our business offerings, such as home mortgages, data tools, etc.  This ensures that during our regular competitive reviews, we select the right ones for performance comparison. 

Summary

Overall, the PropertyGuru SEO team believes in the insights and value AWR provides to help us improve our brand’s share of voice across the region. Additionally, the AWR customer support team (Bogdan) has been very prompt in resolving any queries or issues we faced. 

We can confidently say that having AWR as part of our SEO toolkit allows us to be ahead in the market.

So let’s get right into it – use the sidebar on the right to jump to a particular update.

Forecasting

The newly added Forecasting module will help you to:
– predict traffic, conversions & revenue in the scenario where you’d achieve the desired rankings for your targeted keywords. This way, you’ll make an informed decision on which keywords to focus your SEO strategy, by comparing the required efforts against the potential results.
– set realistic objectives for your campaigns, ones that can actually be met since they’re backed by data.
– track the monthly progress of your objectives and compare it against the real achievements. This will allow you to immediately spot and adjust campaigns, so the SEO objectives are met.
– analyze year-over-year search trends.
– visualize inertial traffic, which refers to estimating how your clients will perform if no SEO efforts are invested. More details on how Forecasting works and how it can be used to achieve the SEO objectives set, can be found in our online documentation here.

Market Share Improvements

Here’s what this Market Share update brings new to the table:
– you’ll now be able to visualize dropped vs newly entered competitors in Top 20, by market share, when comparing 2 updates.
– the Total Searches column has been added, making it easier to spot competitors that are ranking for highly searched terms vs the ones that are ranking in top positions in SERPs.- the table got split by metrics into two different views: ‘Top Domains’ and ‘Target Keywords’.

SERP Features Filtering by Organic Results

After adding a new icon representing organic rankings in the ‘SERP Features’ column a few months ago, you can now filter by this result type. Just head over to any of the Ranking-Keywords, Ranking-My Sites, Ranking-Top Sites, Visibility-Websites, Visibility-Search Engines, or the Comparison views, apply a ‘SERP Features’ filter and select the ‘Organic’ option from the list.

Additional Video Monitoring Options

You can track your videos’ performance easier without needing to add an alias entry for each Youtube video URL. With the newly added option, all you need to do is add a single alias (‘Channel name’ or ‘Channel URL’) as follows:
– Channel name as an alias when using Google Universal search engines.
– Channel URL as an alias when tracking Youtube search engines in your AWR project.

On the other hand, the current system remains unchanged, as the video URLs are reported as they were and you can still add a specific video URL for monitoring if you wish to.

Notes Upgrade

Notes are now available in the Trends-Summary report, too, with their tooltip showing the current date and previous reference date.

PDF Reports Layout Redesign

The PDF reports’ layout has just been revamped, with the new header having the same UI color theme and displaying the logo.

Snippet API Export Column

The names of the Organic SERP Features (such as Indented Results, Reviews, Image Thumbnails, etc.) are now included in the dedicated Snippet column in the export files generated using the export ranking or the export top sites API calls.

A Free Chrome Extension

We’ve released a chrome extension that allows you to search in Google from any location in the world. It’s called AWR Search Anywhere.

New Result Types in the Free SERP Tool

The free SERP features tool got upgraded with new result types for a broader understanding of the SERPs’ anatomy. Reviews, FAQs, How-Tos, Indented URLs, and Image Thumbnails result types are now available for both desktop and mobile analysis, while on mobile there are two more listings available: AMPs and Q&As.

And that’s pretty much it for June!

Want to be up-to-date with all the new features and improvements that we add? Make sure to follow our changelog.

And of course, please reach out if you have any feedback on this. We’d love to hear your thoughts!