Google Analytics 4 for SEO

Search Console tells you how people find you in Google. Google Analytics 4 (GA4) tells you what they do after they arrive. You need both.

Organic search in GA4

Useful places:

• Reports, then Acquisition, then Traffic acquisition: sessions by channel. Filter or compare "Organic Search".
• Landing page report: which pages people arrive on, with engagement and key events. Add a filter for the Organic Search channel.
• Explorations: custom tables, for example landing pages from organic search on mobile.

Engagement metrics

GA4 counts a session as engaged if it lasts more than 10 seconds, has a key event, or has two or more page views. Engagement rate is the share of engaged sessions, and bounce rate is the share that were not engaged. Compare them between pages of the same type, not across the whole site.

Search Console in GA4

Link Search Console to GA4 (you need Editor access in GA4 and owner status in Search Console). GA4 then has two extra reports, Google Organic Search Queries and Google Organic Search Traffic (landing pages with both Search Console and GA4 metrics).

• The report collection is unpublished by default. Publish it from the Library in GA4.
• The data comes from Search Console: up to 16 months, available about 48 hours later.
• One web data stream links to one Search Console property.

Consent and EU data

Practical consequences:

• Do not expect GA4 sessions to match Search Console clicks.
• Use Search Console for search visibility, and GA4 for behaviour and conversions of consenting visitors.
• Do not compare periods across a change in your consent banner.

Settings worth checking

• Data retention: set it to 14 months. The setting affects explorations and funnel reports, not standard reports.
• Internal traffic: filter your own team's visits.
• Key events: mark the actions that matter, covered in the next lesson.
• Data thresholds: GA4 hides some rows when user counts are low, for example in demographic or query data. Widening the date range can help.