Huge Difference Between Search Console Clicks and Natural Traffic

[Frog]

Hi - this is a strange one but on one site I am working on I am seeing 1001 users on a day in analytics but 250 in search console, this is a massive difference and I know that sessions are every 30 min plus natural traffic in analytics would include other search engines but you would think google made up the majority of natrual traffic and numbers are'so far out it makes me wonder whats going on.

Does anyone have any insight here? This is a sample for a single day but its common in terms of the difference I am seeing on a day to day

 

[Sutra]

You didn't mention this so just checking, are you comparing organic to organic? Or are you looking at ALL traffic in Analytics vs only organic in Console?

 

[Frog]

hi - good point but yes its all looking at natural search in analyrics

 

[SEOguy]

Slight differences are completely normal as the tools report data differently. Specifically, Google Analytics shows data for all individual URL's while Search Console reports only on the canonical URL so the other related URLS are lumped into the primary (canonical) URL. If you are working with large data sets, Search Console doesn't display all of the data and you need to use something like Data Studio to export more data.

Source: Google employee -

 

[artsci]

I've always noticed slight discrepancies, but in the last month or so it feels like the difference is even wider than usual. The percent difference for my sites over the last 30 days, for example, has moved from somewhere around 4 - 5% to about 15%.

Like everybody, we're seeing delays in Google Search Console and wonky things in the SERPs. It seems like Google is really having a time of it lately.