Measuring search: Search Console and Analytics

How to set up Google Search Console, Google Analytics and your Business Profile performance reports, and read them as one picture of how search turns into inquiries. You will learn the four core search metrics, the patterns that tell you what to fix, and a 30-minute monthly measurement routine.

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Measuring search: Search Console and Analytics.

Search work without measurement is decoration.

You rewrite a title, add a page, collect a dozen reviews, and then you need to know whether anything changed.

Four tools, four views.

The first three describe attention.

Only the fourth describes money.

Setting up properly once.

A domain property, verified through your domain's DNS settings, covers every version of your site. Your web host or domain registrar's help pages show where to add the record.

Most website platforms, including WordPress with an SEO plugin, Squarespace and Wix, generate one automatically. Add its address in the Sitemaps report.

Reading the Performance report.

Search Console's Performance report shows four metrics.

Google defines them precisely:

Worked example: Lantern and Lane's October numbers.

Marco keeps one row per month in a spreadsheet.

October, with illustrative numbers:

A 30-minute monthly routine.

Record clicks, impressions, CTR and average position for the whole site.

List the five pages with the most impressions and note their CTR. Flag any below your site average.

That is the lesson. The worksheet and the quiz are just below this video.

What you will be able to do

• Set up Search Console, Analytics key events and inquiry-source tracking for an event business website
• Interpret clicks, impressions, click-through rate and average position to diagnose a page
• Build a monthly search dashboard that connects search activity to inquiries and bookings

Search work without measurement is decoration. You rewrite a title, add a page, collect a dozen reviews, and then you need to know whether anything changed. The good news is that the tools that answer this are free, and for a small event business they take about thirty minutes a month to read. The trick is to read them together, because each one sees only part of the journey.

Four tools, four views

The first three describe attention. Only the fourth describes money. Never judge search work on traffic alone: a page that brings 40 visits and 4 inquiries is worth more than one that brings 400 visits and none.

Business Profile performance deserves a closer look than most owners give it. Open it from your profile in Google Search or Maps. Besides views and actions, it lists the search terms that led people to your profile. If clients find you through “photo booth Oakville” but never through “wedding photo booth”, that tells you which relevance signals are working and which services your profile, categories and photos are failing to convey. Copy those terms into your keyword map each month.

Setting up properly once

1. Verify Search Console. A domain property, verified through your domain’s DNS settings, covers every version of your site. Your web host or domain registrar’s help pages show where to add the record.
2. Submit a sitemap. Most website platforms, including WordPress with an SEO plugin, Squarespace and Wix, generate one automatically. Add its address in the Sitemaps report.
3. Install Google Analytics and set the reporting time zone and currency correctly.
4. Create key events. Google Analytics now calls the actions you care about key events, which it previously called conversions. For an event business they are: inquiry form submitted, phone number tapped, email address tapped and booking calendar opened. Mark each as a key event.
5. Link Search Console to Analytics so search queries appear beside on-site behaviour.
6. Ask every inquiry how they found you, and record the answer in your CRM in a fixed list: Google search, Google Maps, Instagram, referral, venue, wedding platform, repeat client, other.

Reading the Performance report

Search Console’s Performance report shows four metrics. Google defines them precisely:

• Clicks: “the number of times a user clicked your site from Google Search results.”
• Impressions: “how many times your site appeared in Search results.”
• CTR (click-through rate): “the click count divided by the impression count.”
• Average position: in the chart, the average position of the topmost result from your site.

You can group the data by queries, pages, countries, devices, search appearance and dates. The default view shows the past three months, and the newest data is preliminary for a few hours. In 2026 Google also added dedicated reports showing how often your pages appear in its generative AI features, such as AI Overviews and AI Mode. Treat them as another view of visibility, not as a separate strategy.

The value of the report is in the patterns. Four come up again and again:

Worked example: Lantern & Lane’s October numbers

Marco keeps one row per month in a spreadsheet. October, with illustrative numbers:

• Search Console: 9,800 impressions, 290 clicks. CTR = 290 / 9,800 = about 3.0 percent.
• Business Profile: 310 website clicks and 21 calls.
• Analytics: 28 inquiry form submissions from organic search and the profile combined.
• CRM: 24 inquiries where the client said Google search or Google Maps. Four were spam or out of area, leaving 20 qualified.
• Bookings from those inquiries so far: 4, at an average fee of $5,200, so $20,800 in booked work.

Now the useful ratios. Qualified inquiries per 100 clicks from search and the profile: 20 / (290 + 310) x 100 = about 3.3. Booking rate on qualified search inquiries: 4 / 20 = 20 percent. Marco then filters the Performance report by page and sees that the small-weddings page has 1,900 impressions but only 19 clicks, a CTR of 1 percent, at an average position of 6. That single line becomes November’s job: a new title and description for that page, then a comparison of the same four weeks before and after.

A 30-minute monthly routine

1. Record clicks, impressions, CTR and average position for the whole site.
2. List the five pages with the most impressions and note their CTR. Flag any below your site average.
3. Scan the queries for new phrases and add good ones to the keyword map.
4. Record profile views, calls, website clicks and direction requests.
5. Record key events in Analytics from organic search.
6. Record qualified inquiries and bookings from search in your CRM.
7. Choose one change for next month, and write down the date you made it.

Compare each month with the same month last year, not with the month before. In an event business, October and February are different universes. One change at a time, with a date beside it, is the only way to learn what worked.

In Canada and the GTA

Analytics data is personal information. PIPEDA applies to private-sector organizations that collect, use or disclose personal information in the course of commercial activity, and it generally applies to businesses in Ontario. Personal information is information about an identifiable individual, in any form. Analytics tools collect identifiers such as cookies and device information, and your inquiry form and CRM hold names, emails, event dates and sometimes budgets. Under PIPEDA’s openness principle, your privacy practices must be clear, easy to understand and readily available, which in practice means a privacy policy on your website that explains what you collect, which tools receive it, why, and who to contact with questions. The OPC’s PIPEDA summary sets out the ten fair information principles. Module 6 covers the legal pages in detail.

Keep what you measure proportionate. You need to know that a Google search produced an inquiry; you do not need session recordings of every visitor or a log of every IP address. Under CASL, cookies, HTML and JavaScript can be deemed consented to by a user’s conduct under certain conditions, but that does not remove your privacy obligations under PIPEDA. If you use a cookie banner supplied by your website platform, make sure it reflects what your site actually does.

Settings that matter for a Canadian business. Set Google Analytics to the Toronto time zone and Canadian dollars, so that an inquiry at 11:30 p.m. on a Saturday is counted on the right day and any values you assign are in the right currency. In Search Console, filter by country to Canada when you review queries: a page that ranks in India or the United States for a generic phrase can inflate impressions without bringing a single GTA client. Google’s help page on the Performance report explains the filters.

Call tracking and your phone number. Some businesses use separate tracking phone numbers for each marketing channel. Be careful: your Business Profile, Apple, Bing and directory listings should all show the same main number, as Lesson 6 explained. If you want to know how many calls came from your website, use a call-tracking service that swaps the number only on your own website, and keep the main number everywhere else. The simplest option for most small businesses is the calls figure in Business Profile performance plus the “how did you hear about us?” question.

The GTA calendar distorts monthly numbers. Search interest for wedding services in the GTA tends to build after the December holidays, when many couples get engaged. Corporate holiday party searches build from late summer into October, and spring brings searches for graduations, proms and summer festivals. A florist whose impressions fall 30 percent from October to December may be doing nothing wrong. Compare year over year where you have the data, and mark major changes on your spreadsheet, such as a new website, a Business Profile suspension or a wedding show weekend, so you can explain spikes later.

Attribution in a referral-driven industry. Many GTA clients hear your name from a venue or a friend, then search for you by name before calling. Analytics will record that as organic search, and the client may tell you “Google”. Brand searches in Search Console, such as “Lantern and Lane”, are a rough measure of this word of mouth. When your brand impressions rise, your referral and reputation work is probably working, even if the client’s first touch was not a search at all. Ask a second question when you can: “Did someone recommend us before you searched?”

This is general information, not legal advice. Check the OPC’s guidance or a lawyer for your situation.

Worksheet

Download the worksheet and complete it for your own business, using Lantern & Lane as the model where it helps. Keep it with your marketing plan. It takes about 10 minutes.

Download the worksheet (PDF)