Google has announced two new features in Search Console Performance reports, making it easier for users to slice and dice their data. Site owners can now filter by regular expressions, and also benefit from a revamped comparison mode.
Regular expressions
Alongside existing filters in Performance reports, Google has now introduced regular expressions (also known as regex). This will help users create more complex query and page based filters.
Here’s the example Google gives of how it works:
"let's say your company is called 'cats and dogs' but is sometimes also abbreviated as 'cats & dogs' or even 'c&d'. You can use a regex filter to capture all of your branded queries by defining the regex filter: cats and dogs|cats & dogs|c&d"
To use the regex filter, create a query or page filter, select the dropdown menu and then Custom.
For more on regular expressions and how to use them, see Google Search Console help, including regex live testing tool and common regular expressions.
Comparison mode
In the revamped compare mode data filtering has been improved and now fully supports cases where more than a single metric is selected. Previously, if more than one metric was selected, the table wouldn’t contain a comparison column with the relative difference in percentage.
Google has also improved the interface, increasing the area available for the data table making easier to view results side-by-side. The comparison mode also supports the new regex filter for queries and pages.
The new features are now available to site owners in Search Console.
