TL;DR
Most businesses want to be found in more places, and most of them cannot clearly see how they are doing. Selling in several countries means showing up in search results in several markets at once. Google Search Console (GSC) and Google Analytics 4 (GA4) are the two free tools almost everyone reaches for.
If you have ever asked yourself, “Search Console Says One Thing. GA4 Says Another. Who Do You Believe?”, you have felt this problem first-hand.
They are useful, but each one tells only half the story, and each has limits. Neither was built to answer a simple question like: which countries find us, and what do they do when they arrive?
The fix is not another tool to log into. It is one SEO reporting dashboard that pulls both sources together automatically, keeps your history, and shows search visibility and website behaviour side by side. Once you can see how visitors arrive and how they move through your site, you can start turning that journey into form submissions and enquiries.
This post explains what that solution is, how it works, and what you get from it: numbers you can trust, far less manual work, and a running cost that is lower than most people expect.
Search Console shows how people find you. GA4 shows what they do next. You need both on the same page.
Why Worldwide Visibility Is So Hard to Measure
Say you want customers in the US, the UK, Europe and Asia. Each market searches differently. The competitors are different, the words people use for the same product are different, and a page that ranks well in one country can be almost invisible in another.
Then someone senior asks a fair question: where are we growing, and where are we wasting effort? To answer it you need to see search data and website data together, split by country, page and search term, over enough months to spot a trend.
What Search Console and GA4 Do Well, and Where They Fall Short
Both tools are worth using. Search Console is the closest thing you have to a direct line from Google. It shows which searches bring your pages up, how often people click, and where you rank. GA4 picks up from there. It shows who visited, where they came from and what they did on your site.
| Google Search Console | Google Analytics 4 (GA4) | |
| What it tells you | What happens in Google Search before the click: impressions, clicks, click rate and ranking position. | What happens on your website after the click: visits, traffic sources, engagement and conversions. |
| How far back you can look | About 16 months. | Detailed, event-level data is kept for 2 months by default, and up to 14 months if you change the setting. |
| Getting data out | The screen exports a maximum of 1,000 rows at a time. | Detailed reports can be sampled or limited, which makes some analysis less exact. |
| Search terms | Shows what people searched, but hides some rare queries for privacy. | Does not show the search terms people typed. |
| Business results | Stops at the click. No view of what visitors did next. | Starts at the visit. No view of impressions or rankings. |
| Working together | Separate tool with its own definitions. | Can be linked to Search Console, but you only get a couple of basic reports. |
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What the Solution Is: A Power BI SEO Dashboard for Search Console and GA4
In plain words, it is one report that fills itself. Behind it sits a small, automated data pipeline, often called an ETL pipeline (extract, transform, load). Think of the pipeline as the pipes and the report as the window. The pipes bring the data in. The window lets your team see it.
| 1 | Extract | Every day, the pipeline pulls fresh data from the Google Search Console API and from the Google Analytics API (that is where the GA4 data comes from). |
| 2 | Clean and enrich | It tidies the data and adds labels that matter to your business, such as search intent, industry, page category and country. |
| 3 | Store | It saves the result in your own cloud storage on Google Cloud Platform, so your history stays with you, even after Google drops it. |
| 4 | Show | Power BI reads the stored data and turns it into report pages that anyone on your team can filter and explore. |
What the report looks like
Here is an example. Each page has filters on the left, so anyone can narrow things down by period, country, industry, search intent, page or page category without asking an analyst.
Figure 1: Search performance at a glance, with filters for country, industry, intent and page category.
Figure 2: Page and keyword tracking, showing where each page and search term stands.
Why Combining Search Console and GA4 Changes Everything
This is where the solution becomes powerful. On their own, each tool answers half a question. Search Console tells you how people find your website. GA4 tells you how those people behave once they arrive. Put the two together and you can follow the whole journey: the search, the click, the landing page, the pages people visit next, and whether they end up filling in your contact form.
Figure 3: Website behaviour from GA4, with new and returning users, traffic sources, bounce rate and pages per session.
With that joined-up view, you can answer the questions that actually move the business:
- Which searches bring visitors who stay and engage, and which bring visitors who leave straight away?
- Which pages get seen a lot in Google but fail to hold people once they land?
- Which traffic sources, such as organic search, referrals, paid ads or even AI assistants, send the visitors who look around and take action?
- Where do people drop off between the first page they see and your contact or enquiry form?
Each answer points to a decision. Rewrite the title of a page that gets impressions but few clicks. Fix or simplify a page where visitors bounce. Add a clear call-to-action where people are already reading. Move effort toward the sources and countries that bring real enquiries. That is how you turn a user journey into form submissions, instead of just counting visits.
One practical point: to see form submissions in the report, the form needs to be tracked as a key event in GA4. It is a small setup step, and it is what connects your SEO work to leads.
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What You Can See in One Place
- Visibility by country. Which countries see you in search, which ones click, and which ones stay on your site.
- Your strongest and weakest search terms. Including the long tail that the Search Console screen cuts off.
- Easy wins. Pages that get plenty of impressions but few clicks. Often a better title or description is all they need.
- Pages close to breaking through. Pages that already rank near the top 20 and could be pushed higher.
- From search to site. Which traffic sources and page categories bring visitors who actually engage.
- Trends over time. Month-by-month movement in impressions, clicks and ranking, going back further than Google keeps it.
The Benefits
- One set of numbers. Marketing, content and leadership all look at the same report, so meetings are about decisions, not about whose spreadsheet is right.
- Accurate, because it comes from the source. The data comes straight from Google’s own APIs, so it matches what Google reports. Measures like click rate are worked out from totals, not averaged from rows, so the headline figures hold up.
- No more manual reporting. The hours spent exporting, copying and pasting each month go back to improving content.
- Your history stays with you. Because the data is stored in your own cloud account, you are not limited to Google’s 16-month window.
- Smarter market decisions. You can see which countries deserve more effort and which pages are underperforming, using data instead of hunches.
- A clearer path to form submissions. You can see which searches, pages and sources lead to enquiries, and put your effort there.
- Room to grow. Once the pipeline exists, adding another source, such as leads from your CRM, follows the same pattern.
How We Use It at Addend: Our Own Use Case
We did not just write about this problem. We lived it. Like many marketing teams, we were jumping between Search Console and GA4 and stitching the numbers together by hand. So we built the solution for ourselves first.
Our ETL pipeline on Google Cloud Platform loads Search Console data every day, and GA4 data comes from the Google Analytics API. Power BI brings both into one report, with pages for search performance, keyword and page tracking, Google Analytics, session sources and session categories, plus an information page that explains every metric.
What the report showed us
- Strong brand visibility. Searches for our company name rank in positions 1 and 2, with click rates of around 13%.
- Niche content that earns rankings. Our Microsoft Planner Gantt chart content ranks between positions 6 and 9 for several searches.
- A hidden opportunity. One Power BI embedded consulting page earned about 2,700 impressions at a 0.2% click rate, at an average position of 33. That is demand we were already visible for, waiting for a better title and stronger content.
- Where visitors come from. In the GA4 view, organic search, referrals and paid ads each bring meaningful traffic, and AI assistants show up as a small but trackable source of visits.
How it benefited us
In the US commercial-intent view for Q3 2026, clicks grew from 26 in July to 35 in September, and average position improved from 32 to 26. We would not credit the report alone for that, but it showed us which pages and searches to work on first.
- One view, not two tools. Search and website data now sit side by side.
- No manual exports. The report refreshes by itself, so our time goes into content instead of spreadsheets.
- Clear priorities. We can see which pages have impressions but few clicks, and fix those first.
- Faster conversations. Marketing and leadership look at the same live numbers.
Put the Report Where Your Sales and Marketing Teams Work
A report is only useful if people open it. That is why we recommend embedding the Power BI report in Microsoft Teams, as a tab in your Sales and Marketing channel. The numbers then sit right next to the conversations your team is already having.
- Everyone sees the same live numbers. Sales and marketing leaders look at one report instead of passing screenshots and spreadsheets around.
- Faster action. If a key page drops in rankings or a traffic source dries up, the right people notice straight away and can respond that week, not at the next monthly review.
- Better conversations. Questions and decisions happen in the channel, with the data one click away.
As with any Power BI report, the people who view it will need the right access and licences, which is worth planning for early.
So, “Search Console Says One Thing. GA4 Says Another. Who Do You Believe?” With one joined-up report, you stop choosing between the two tools and start using both to make better decisions.
Want to see all your search and website data in one place?
Book a 30-minute working session with our analytics team. We will look at how you report today, show you what a joined-up report looks like, and talk through what it would take for your site.
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Author By
Gaurav Lakhotia
Gaurav holds an MBA in Business Analytics. As a data geek and avid learner, he has earned accolades including Microsoft Certified Data Analyst, Microsoft Certified Azure Administrator, and active Power BI Community contributor. He is also a Microsoft Certified Trainer. With critical thinking and project delivery skills, he strives to achieve customer delight in Data Analytics projects. Gaurav loves travelling with friends when he is not busy working on data.
