Data Discrepancies Between UI and Destination

Question

How do I resolve data discrepancies between the Google Search Console UI and the destination?

Answer

Discrepancies often appear because of how reports are configured within the UI when compared with the connector synced pre-defined reports. Differences between the UI report dimensions (custom filters) and the connector report dimensions will cause discrepancies.

In the Google Search Console UI, adding a filter is the same as adding a dimension to the report. The aggregation of the report changes depending on the dimensions configured. This results in different metrics values and totals. According to the official Google's documentation:

When you add a Page or Search Appearance filter, you can sometimes see an increase (sometimes a very large increase) in the click and impression data shown in and above the chart. This is because these filters cause your data to be rather than by property. (Note that in rare cases the totals can drop rather than rise for technical reasons.) Conversely, removing all Page and Search Appearance filters from the report can show a decrease in click and impression totals, as all data is then aggregated (grouped by) property rather than URL.

For clicks, if a property appears twice in search results when grouped by property, and the user clicks on one link, backs up, then clicks the other link, it counts as a single click, since the final destination is the same site.

For more information on the potential consequences of these discrepancies, see our documentation.

How to match data between the Google Search Console UI and Destination

To correctly compare the metrics values between the UI and the destination, follow the below steps taking a similar action for your report:

1. When querying the destination, use a select statement that sets each dimension in the report to a specific value, e.g.:

       select sum(clicks) as clicks, sum(impressions) as impressions from <code>\<schema\>.keyword_site_report_by_page</code> 
       where
       country = 'usa'
       and date = '2022-02-27'
       and device = 'DESKTOP'
       and search_type = 'web'
       and site = 'fivetran.com'
   content_copy

2. View the report at the page level in the Google Search Console UI.

3. Create filters for each dimension, setting them equal to the values as the destination query.

This will show matching click and impression counts for the Source UI and Destination Output.