Google Adds Comparison Mode To Search Console’s 24-Hour View via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google has rolled out a new comparison feature in Search Console, letting you analyze hourly performance data against two baselines: the previous 24 hours and the same day one week earlier.

The feature expands on Search Console’s 24-hour performance view, which launched in December. With this new capability, you can compare short-term trends more easily within Search Console’s performance reports.

Building On Near Real-Time Data

The original 24-hour view introduced hourly granularity and reduced the lag in data availability.

Now, the comparison feature adds context to that data. Instead of viewing isolated metrics, you can measure shifts in clicks, impressions, average CTR, and position over time.

The feature appears across Search Console’s performance reports for Search, Discover, and Google News.

How It Works

The comparison mode lives within the same interface as the 24-hour view and operates based on your local timezone.

You can toggle between viewing data for the last 24 hours, the previous 24 hours, and the same day from the week before. Visual indicators show how each metric has changed hour by hour.

Why This Matters

Before this update, the 24-hour view was a valuable but somewhat isolated tool. While it gave fast access to recent performance, there was no way to tell whether a spike or dip was meaningful without exporting the data for external comparison.

Now, you can assess whether fluctuations are part of a broader trend or a one-off anomaly.

For marketers and SEOs, this could help:

• Validate the impact of content updates or site changes sooner.
• Spot issues or opportunities that occur at specific times of day.
• Establish baseline expectations for hourly performance.

News publishers and ecommerce sites with time-sensitive strategies may find this especially useful when timing is critical to outcomes.

Looking Ahead

Over the past year, Search Console has evolved from multi-day delays to near real-time feedback paired with reporting options.

As always, the rollout is gradual, so not all properties may see the new feature immediately. But once live, it fits directly into existing workflows, requiring no additional setup.

Featured Image: Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock

Google Updates Search Analytics API To Clarify Data Freshness via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google has added a new metadata field to the Search Analytics API, making it easier for developers and SEO professionals to identify when they’re working with incomplete or still-processing data.

The update introduces new transparency into the freshness of query results, an improvement for marketers who rely on up-to-date metrics to inform real-time decisions.

What’s New In The API

The metadata field appears when requests include the dataState parameter set to all or hourly_all, enabling access to data that may still be in the process of being collected.

Two metadata values are now available:

• first_incomplete_date: Indicates the earliest date for which data is still incomplete. Only appears when data is grouped by date.
• first_incomplete_hour: Indicates the first hour where data remains incomplete. Only appears when data is grouped by hour.

Both values help clarify whether recent metrics can be considered stable or if they may still change as Google finalizes its processing.

Why It Matters For SEO Reporting

This enhancement allows you to better distinguish between legitimate changes in search performance and temporary gaps caused by incomplete data.

To help reduce the risk of misinterpreting short-term fluctuations, Google’s documentation states:

“All values after the first_incomplete_date may still change noticeably.”

For those running automated reports, the new metadata enables smarter logic, such as flagging or excluding fresh but incomplete data to avoid misleading stakeholders.

Time Zone Consistency

All timestamps provided in the metadata field use the America/Los_Angeles time zone, regardless of the request origin or property location. Developers may need to account for this when integrating the data into local systems.

Backward-Compatible Implementation

The new metadata is returned as an optional object and doesn’t alter existing API responses unless requested. This means no breaking changes for current implementations, and developers can begin using the feature as needed.

Best Practices For Implementation

To take full advantage of this update:

• Include logic to check for the metadata object when requesting recent data.
• Consider displaying warnings or footnotes in reports when metadata indicates incomplete periods.
• Schedule data refreshes after the incomplete window has passed to ensure accuracy.

Google also reminds users that the Search Analytics API continues to return only top rows, not a complete dataset, due to system limitations.

Looking Ahead

This small but meaningful addition gives SEO teams more clarity around data freshness, a frequent pain point when working with hourly or near-real-time performance metrics.

It’s a welcome improvement for anyone building tools or dashboards on top of the Search Console API.

The metadata field is available now through standard API requests. Full implementation details are available in the Search Analytics API documentation.

Featured Image: Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock

Google Adds Forum Rich Results Reporting In Search Console via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google Search Console now includes a dedicated search appearance filter for discussion forum content, giving publishers new visibility into how user-generated discussions perform in search.

The update applies to pages that use either the DiscussionForumPosting or SocialMediaPostingstructured data types.

What’s New?

In a brief announcement, Google stated:

“Starting today, Search Console will show Discussion Forum rich results as a search appearance in the Performance reports.”

Until now, this type of content was lumped into broader appearance categories like “Rich results” or “Web,” making it difficult to isolate the impact of forum-style markup.

The new filter allows you to track impressions, clicks, and search position metrics specifically tied to discussion content.

This update isn’t about new search capabilities, it’s about measurement. Structured data for forums has been supported for some time, but publishers now have a way to monitor how well that content performs.

Structured Data Types That Qualify

The eligible schema types, DiscussionForumPosting and SocialMediaPosting, are designed for pages where people share perspectives, typically in the form of original posts and replies.

Google considers these formats appropriate for traditional forums and community platforms where conversations evolve over time. Pages built around user-generated content with visible discussion threads are the intended use case.

Both schema types share the same structured data requirements, including:

• Author name
• Date published (in ISO 8601 format)
• At least one content element (text, image, or video)

Additional details such as like counts, view stats, or reply structures can also be included. For forums with threaded replies, Google recommends nesting comments under the original post to preserve conversational context.

Implementation & Eligibility Requirements

To qualify for the new search appearance, forum content must follow Google’s structured data guidelines closely.

Google explicitly warns against using this markup for content written by the site owner or their agents. That includes blog posts, product reviews, and Q&A-style content.

If the site’s structure is centered around questions and answers, publishers are expected to use the QAPage schema instead.

Another nuance in the documentation is the recommendation to use Microdata or RDFa rather than JSON-LD. While JSON-LD is still supported, Microdata formats help reduce duplication when large blocks of text are involved.

Why This Matters

This update provides a clearer understanding of how forums contribute to search visibility. With the new search appearance filter in place, it’s now possible to:

• Measure the performance of user discussions independently from other content types
• Identify which categories or threads attract search traffic
• Optimize forum structure based on real user engagement data

Looking Ahead

Google’s decision to break out discussion forum results in Search Console highlights the growing role of user conversations in search. It’s a signal that this type of content deserves focused attention and ongoing optimization.

For publishers running forums or discussion platforms, now’s the time to ensure structured data is implemented correctly and monitor how your community content performs.

Google Integrates Search Console Insights Into Main Platform via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google has rolled out a new version of Search Console Insights, now integrated directly into the main Search Console interface. This update ends the standalone beta experience.

The new report aims to make it easier to understand your site’s search performance without requiring advanced analytics skills.

What’s New?

Previously accessible through a separate interface, Search Console Insights now lives within the primary Search Console dashboard.

Google describes this as a more “cohesive experience,” bringing insights closer to the tools you already rely on.

The update is designed with non-technical users in mind, including bloggers, small business owners, and content creators seeking to understand how their content performs on Google Search.

Here’s an example of what the integrated experience looks like:

Screenshot from: developers.google.com/search/blog/2025/06/search-console-insights, June 2025.

Highlights From the Updated Report

1. Performance Overview

You can view total clicks and impressions from Google Search, along with comparisons to previous periods.

2. Page Performance

The report identifies which pages are getting the most clicks, along with “trending up” and “trending down” pages, offering insight into what’s working and what may need updating.

3. Achievements Feature Retained

Google is continuing the “Achievements” feature, which celebrates milestones like reaching new click thresholds.

While you can still access past achievements via email links, Google says direct sidebar access will be available in the next few weeks.

4. Search Query Trends

You can see top-performing queries and spot rising trends, which Google suggests can serve as inspiration for new content. Queries with declining performance are also highlighted.

Here’s an example of what this report looks like:

Screenshot from: developers.google.com/search/blog/2025/06/search-console-insights, June 2025.

Gradual Rollout In Progress

The new Insights experience is being rolled out gradually. If you don’t see it immediately, it will likely appear over the coming weeks.

This phased approach allows Google to monitor system performance and incorporate early feedback before releasing the feature to everyone.

How This Helps

By integrating simplified reporting into the main dashboard, Google is bridging the gap between entry-level insights and more advanced analytics.

If you found the existing Performance report overwhelming, this update could offer a more approachable alternative.

For agencies and consultants, the simplified view may also serve as a communication tool for clients less familiar with technical metrics.

Featured Image: Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock

Google Adds AI Mode Traffic To Search Console Reports via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google has updated its Search Console documentation, confirming it includes AI Mode data in Performance reports.

This is a change to note when reviewing your metrics, as it may impact traffic reporting patterns.

Understanding AI Mode and What’s Changed

AI Mode is Google’s interactive AI-powered search experience, which builds on AI Overviews to provide more detailed responses.

The feature breaks questions into smaller topics and searches for each one at the same time. This “query fan out” technique, as Google calls it, lets people explore topics more deeply.

The key change in Google’s documents is that AI Mode data counts toward the totals in Search Console.

Per the updated changelog:

“Data from AI Mode is now counting towards the totals in the Search Console Performance report.”

How AI Mode Metrics Work

The documentation explains how AI Mode measures different actions:

• Click: When someone clicks a link to an external page in AI Mode, it counts as a click in Search Console.
• Impression: Standard impression rules apply. This means users must see or potentially see a link to your site.
• Position: Position calculations in AI Mode work the same way as regular Google Search results pages. Carousel and image blocks within AI Mode use standard position rules for those elements.

When users ask follow-up questions within AI Mode, they start new queries. The documentation notes:

“All impression, position, and click data in the new response are counted as coming from this new user query.”

Google Says Best Practices Remain Unchanged

Google’s documentation says:

“The best practices for SEO remain relevant for AI features in Google Search.”

There are no extra technical requirements beyond standard Google Search rules.

Google’s documentation clarifies:

“You don’t need to create new machine-readable files, AI text files, or markup to appear in these features. There’s also no special schema.org structured data that you need to add.”

Website owners can control the appearance of their content’s AI features using existing tools, such as nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet, or noindex controls.

Looking Ahead

With AI Mode data now included in Search Console reports, you may notice changes in traffic patterns and metrics. The data appears within the “Web” search type in the Performance report, mixed with other search traffic.

The documentation notes that clicks from search results pages with AI features tend to be “higher quality.” Users are “more likely to spend more time on the site.”

However, without dedicated tabs for traffic from Google’s AI features, it’s impossible to verify those claims.

Featured Image: Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock

Google Lighthouse To Undergo Major Audit Overhaul: What To Know via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google announced plans to revamp Lighthouse’s performance audits.

The new version will match the recently launched insights in Chrome DevTools’ Performance panel.

This shift will alter how performance data is organized and presented, impacting SEO professionals who utilize Lighthouse for website optimization.

Background: Combining Google’s Performance Tools

This update is part of Google’s effort to consolidate its various performance tools.

Barry Pollard from Google’s Chrome team explains:

“We’re updating the audits in Lighthouse to be based on the same Insights we recently launched in the Performance panel of Chrome DevTools. This will help align the two tools but will be a breaking change.”

What’s Changing: Renamed, Combined, and Removed Audits

The upcoming changes fall into three main categories:

1. Audit Merging and Renaming

Many existing Lighthouse audits will get new names and be merged. For example:

• Three separate audits (“layout shifts,” “non-composited animations,” and “unsized images”) will be combined into a single “cls culprits insight” audit.
• Several image optimization audits will combine into a single “image-delivery-insight” audit.

This merging means you can no longer turn off individual parts of these combined audits. You’ll need to turn the entire insight audit on or off.

Note, this is not a comprehensive list. For the complete list of renamed and consolidated audits, please refer to Google’s announcement.

2. Audit Removals

Several audits will be removed entirely, including:

• First Meaningful Paint (replaced by Largest Contentful Paint)
• No Document Write (rarely an issue in modern scripts)
• Offscreen Images (browsers already handle these well)
• Uses Passive Event Listeners (rarely an issue today)
• Uses Rel Preload (too often recommended when not needed)
• Third-Party Facades (limited usefulness and potential concerns)

3. New Organization

The new insight audits will appear under an “Insights” heading in reports. Unchanged audits will stay under the “Diagnostics” heading.

Timeline for Changes

Google will roll out these changes in stages:

• Now: The new insights are already available in the Lighthouse JSON output for early adopters
• May/June 2025 (Chrome 137): Lighthouse 12.6 will include a toggle to switch between old and new views
• June: Lighthouse 12.7 will use newer insights audits by default
• October: Lighthouse 13 will remove the old audit data completely

Pollard confirms:

“This has now been released to PageSpeed Insights too and will be included in Chrome 137 in about a month.”

How To Prepare

Here’s what to do to get ready:

1. Use Lighthouse 12.6.0’s toggle feature to see how future reports will look
2. If you use specific audit names in reports or analysis, start updating them
3. Update any systems that use Lighthouse data
4. Explain why performance reports will look different later this year

Pollard advises:

“Other Lighthouse tooling (for example if you’re using this in your CI) can also start migrating to these insights-based audits — the audits are available in the JSON outputs now.”

What This Means

Google continues to emphasize page experience and Core Web Vitals in its ranking algorithm. The underlying metrics remain unchanged, but the reorganization will impact how you identify and address performance issues.

The merged audits may provide a more comprehensive overview of related performance issues. This could make it easier to spot patterns and prioritize fixes. However, teams that have built custom tools around specific Lighthouse audits will need to adapt.

Looking Ahead

Google will publish documentation about the new insights on developer.chrome.com before the October change. They’ll keep the older documentation available for users of previous Lighthouse versions.

If you have concerns about these changes, Google has opened a GitHub discussion to gather feedback and answer questions.

Featured Image: brucephotography103/Shutterstock

Google Analytics Adds New Features For Privacy-Era Tracking via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google Analytics adds new data quality features to help track campaigns and overcome privacy limitations.

• Google Analytics adds features to improve data accuracy as privacy rules limit tracking.
• New attribution tools track campaigns even when users decline cookies.
• Clearer data labels and problem-spotting tools help you understand reporting limitations.

Google Search Console Gets New Merchant Opportunities Report via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google Search Console’s new Merchant Opportunities Report lets retailers manage payment methods, ratings, and shipping policies.

• Google is renaming and enhancing the Search Console Shopping tab report.
• It’s now called the “Merchant Opportunities Report”
• It has new features for payment methods, store ratings, and shipping/return policies.

Google Chrome Adds New Tools For Better Mobile Testing via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Chrome has added new DevTools features that help developers test website performance based on real-world data.

Available in Chrome 134, these tools include CPU throttling calibration and other improvements that help bridge the gap between development environments and actual experiences.

How This Helps

Developers build websites on powerful desktop computers. However, many users visit these sites on much slower mobile devices.

This creates a problem: performance issues may not show up during testing.

Chrome DevTools has offered CPU throttling for years, letting developers simulate slower devices. But choosing the right throttling level has been mostly guesswork.

This update is designed to eliminate the guesswork.

CPU Throttling Calibration

The main new feature in Chrome 134 is CPU throttling calibration. It creates testing presets specifically for your development machine.

After a quick test, DevTools creates two options:

• “Low-tier mobile” – Mimics very basic devices
• “Mid-tier mobile” – Matches average mobile device speed

Screenshot from: developer.chrome.com/blog/devtools-grounded-real-world, April 2025.

Brendan Kenny states in the Chrome Developers Blog:

“We generally recommend the ‘mid-tier’ preset for most testing. If many of your users have even slower devices, the ‘low-tier’ option can help catch issues affecting those users.”

Setting up calibration is easy:

• Open the Performance panel’s Environment settings
• Select “Calibrate…” from the CPU throttling dropdown
• Let DevTools run a quick test
• Start using your new calibrated presets

Screenshot from: developer.chrome.com/blog/devtools-grounded-real-world, April 2025.

What Throttling Can & Can’t Do

The new calibration makes testing more accurate, but it has limits.

Throttling works by pausing the browser tab to make tasks take longer. This method is useful for simulating JavaScript and layout calculations.

Tests show that calibrated throttling closely matches how these processes run on real mobile devices.

However, CPU throttling doesn’t accurately simulate:

• Graphics-heavy operations
• Slower storage speeds
• Limited memory
• Device heating issues

Chrome’s testing showed that visually complex pages could take twice as long on real mobile devices compared to simulated tests.

This means you should still test on real devices, especially for visually rich websites.

Real-World Data Integration

Besides CPU calibration, Chrome 134 adds several features that use real-world performance data:

• Throttling suggestions based on your actual site visitors
• Alerts when your test results don’t match real-user experiences
• Performance insights that flag mismatches between tests and reality
• Smarter organization of performance tips based on your users’ actual needs
• Better tracking of what settings were used for each test

These features help ensure your testing matches what users experience rather than artificial lab conditions.

Why It Matters For SEO & Marketing

These new tools solve a disconnect between websites that work well in development but struggle on real devices.

Chrome 134 helps ensure your performance improvements benefit users by providing more realistic testing conditions.

As mobile continues to dominate web traffic, these tools provide a better foundation for improving user experience, conversion rates, and search rankings.

Bing Webmaster Tools Adds Data Comparison & UX Improvements via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Bing Webmaster Tools launches new comparison features and improved interface for enhanced search performance analysis.

• Bing Webmaster Tools now offers data comparison across time periods.
• Microsoft improved the time filter interface for easier navigation.
• The updates enable better campaign analysis and trend identification.