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The Free Google Data Studio Rank Tracker

The Holy Grail Data Studio - Google Search Console Rank Tracker from Bike Shop SEO

Since jumping on board with Google Data Studio, we've always wanted to incorporate a ranktracker into our SEO team's monitoring toolkit.

We don't report on rankings to our bike shop marketing clients - because we think that revenue is the KPI that really matters, but use it internally to help us spot trends and movements in search results.

Take me to the Setup Instructions

An Overview of the Dashboard

The Data Studio Report Filters

Notice that we've highlighted with the big red rectangles the ways you can change the way you can view your data.

Query Filter

Click the dropdown and you can select individual queries or a number of queries to see how they've performed over the period of time that is selected in the date dropdown.

Landing Page Filter

Click the dropdown and you can select individual Landing Pages to see how they've performed. This can be really helpful because it allows you to see all of the search queries that the page is getting traffic for.

Date Filter

Change the time frame and you'll see your metrics change in the line graph and table of search result down below. Keep in Mind that Google does not let you see that past 2 days of data!

New! See Your Google Search Console Data in Template

Note that the data control is not visible in the above embed due to Google restricting data controls in embeds, you'll have to make a copy of the report in order to see it!

After talking with Lee Hurst, we've upgraded the template so that you can now use it with your own site's Google ranking data right in the report template! Just click the dropdown to pick the website view that you want see how you're ranking.

Setup Instructions

1. Grab the free data studio template here.
2. Once you arrive on the page, Click the make a copy button in the top right corner.
   
3. You'll see a popup where you'll add your own Google Search Console Data Sources.
   
   
   Here's a link to how to add / create data sources inside Google Data Studio
4. Click the top right Data Source labeled [Sample] Search Console Data (Site).
   
5. Either choose a preexisting Google Search Console - Site Impression Data Source or scroll down and click "Creata New Data Source".
   
6. On next Screen, find Google Search Console Connector, and click "SELECT".
   
7. On next screen, choose the website domain you want to track your Search Result Rankings for,in the Sites column, and then choose "Site Impression" in the Tables column.
   
8. Click "Connect" In top right corner.
9. On next screen click "Add To Report" in top right corner of screen.
10. Next you'll click the bottom right Data Source in the Popup labeled [Sample] Search Console Data (URL)
    
11. Either choose a preexisting Google Search Console - URL Impression Data Source or scroll down and click "Creata New Data Source".
    
12. On next screen, find Google Search Console Connector, and click "SELECT".
    
13. On next screen, choose the website domain you want to track your search result rankings for,in the Sites column, and then choose "URL Impression" in the Tables column.
    
14. Click "Connect" In top right corner.
15. On next screen click "Add To Report" in top right corner of screen.
16. You'll Be taken back to your Rank Tracker, in "Edit Mode" and it will look broken. Fear Not! This is normal.
17. Click the "My Search Results Sorted by Impressions" table. This will open a Data Tab on the right of your report.
18. Click the pencil icon up at the Data Source so that we can edit the data source. This will open up the blend for you to make a few quick changes. We need to do this because there is a bug with Google's sample data that when we copy reports that use their data, it breaks the blend and the data aggregation. It is an easy Fix though. Follow steps in Animated Gif.
    
19. Delete the Pink Invalid Dimension in the left hand column of the Blend Data Tab. This was added (strangely enough) by Google during the report copy process. Delete it.
20. Add the URL CTR Metric to the metrics list in the left hand data source.
21. Hit Save Changes in bottom right of screen to save your blend setup. Then Hit the "close" Button to close the Blend Data Tab.
22. Now we're back to the report, drag the URL CTR Field onto the pink metric labeled Invalid Metric.
    
23. Click the "My Search results sorted by Impressions" table again. After the tab opens on the right, follow steps in the animated Gif to fix the aggregation:
    
24. Click the "My Search results over time" time series chart. After the tab opens on the right, follow steps in the animated Gif to fix the aggregation for the Average Position by switching the aggregation type from Sum to Average :
    
25. Click the View Button in the top right and you should see your glorious report!

How to switch website properties.

Click the default data filter in the top right of your report. You will now see all of your available properties to choose from. Switch to a different site and check out your rankings.

Why does the report look broken during the set up?

The reason it looks broken is that the Google Store data breaks when you copy a report. The problems are that data aggregation in the sample data is automaticly set to "sum" for average position and for the average CTR (click through rate). Another issue that is created during the report copy process is a "ghost" invalid dimension that gets added to the left most data source in our data blend. When we switch to our own data we fix all of the issues.

Taking it to the Next Level

What if you want to track a few keywords or search terms? Then you would blend with the a Google sheet of Search Terms.

We'll cover that in an upcoming blog post. Subsribe to our newsletter (in footer of the site) and we'll let you know when the post has been released.