Understanding LinkMap Analytics and Reporting
The analytics page puts what you changed on the same timeline as what Google did about it. Ten metrics from Google Analytics, Search Console and the crawl feed three charts, and every SEO action logged on the project is pinned to the day it happened. The same data answers questions through your private MCP server.
For the decision rather than the data, what do I do next reads all of it and answers with one action.
Metrics And Controls
One set of controls drives all three charts. Pick a metric, a month or a year, and either all pages or one page, and the calendar and trend line redraw on that selection. The quadrant always plots every page. The page remembers your metric between visits, and your month and view for the rest of the browser session.
Six metrics come from Google Analytics: Pageviews, Active Users, Scrolled Users, Engagement Rate, Bounce Rate and Session Duration. Four come from Search Console: Impressions, Clicks, Avg Position and Best Position. Bounce Rate and both position metrics are marked better-when-lower, and the charts invert their color scales so the warm end always means good.
Both Google connections are optional and are made on the project's settings page. Data syncs about once a day after connecting, so a new connection shows its first rows the following day.
Calendar Heat Map
The calendar answers which days or months moved. Month view lays the selected metric over a seven-column calendar, and year view shows twelve month tiles, each colored by its monthly total or average.
Color is relative to the period on screen, so the darkest tile is the best day or month in that range rather than an absolute score. Click any day or month for a modal with all ten metrics for that date, and use the previous and next arrows or the year and month pickers to step through time.
Page Quadrant
The quadrant answers which pages to fix first. Every page with data is plotted on two metrics you choose, each averaged over the selected month or year, and the plot is split at the midpoint of each axis into four regions.
| Quadrant | Position | Interpretation | Action Priority |
|---|---|---|---|
| High Performance | Top Right | Strong in both metrics | Maintain and replicate |
| Under-Utilized | Top Left | Strong Y-axis, weak X-axis | Improve X-axis metric |
| Needs Attention | Bottom Right | Strong X-axis, weak Y-axis | Improve Y-axis metric |
| Low Priority | Bottom Left | Weak in both metrics | Address after others |
Hover a dot for the page URL, both values, its region, and how many reported days the average covers. Swap flips the two metrics without re-picking them.
Common Metric Pairs
Some pairs surface a specific problem on their own.
| X-Axis Metric | Y-Axis Metric | Insights Revealed |
|---|---|---|
| Avg Position | Best Position | Ranking consistency and volatility |
| Engagement Rate | Bounce Rate | Content quality and relevance |
| Impressions | Clicks | Click-through rate optimization needs |
| Pageviews | Session Duration | Content depth and user satisfaction |
Impressions against Clicks is the one to start with. A page in the bottom right is being shown and not chosen, which is a title and description problem, not a ranking problem.
Trend Line With Action Markers
The trend line answers whether a change worked. Select any number of metrics and they overlay on one timeline, each normalized to its own range so a position in the single digits and impressions in the thousands share an axis.
Above the chart, a pin marks each day or span with logged SEO actions and shows the count. Hover it for the action types, and click it to open the metrics for those days. Actions come from two sources: the crawler logs the on-page edits it detects between crawls, and people or agents log what the crawler cannot see, such as a link won or a redirect, through Add SEO Action in the LinkMap editor or the MCP change log tools.
Read the weeks before a movement, not the day of it. Google often reacts to a change over days to weeks, so the pins that explain a rise or drop usually sit to the left of it.
When A Chart Is Empty
An empty chart means one of three things, and the chart says which. No data in this range means the Google connection is missing or has not synced yet. Not enough points to draw means the metric has rows but too few in the period to plot. No pages reported in this range means Google recorded no impressions for them in that period.
Next Steps
Share the findings with your team in the project's chat room, and plan the fixes on the site structure visualization. For clients, the Report Builder turns any of these views into a shareable report behind a link with an expiration date you set and can revoke at any time. The analysis tools guide covers the rest of the toolset, and team management covers who can see which project.
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