Change dates and comparisons

The toolbar at the top of every report sets which dates you look at, what they're compared with and how detailed the charts are. The report reloads as soon as you change any of them.

Pick a period

1. Open the Period menu. It starts on Last 28 days.
2. Choose a preset. The report reloads with the new dates straight away.

The presets are:

• Last 7 days, Last 28 days, Last 30 days and Last 90 days: rolling periods that end yesterday.
• This month: from the 1st of this month to yesterday.
• Last month: the whole of last month, the usual choice for a monthly report.
• Last 3 full months, Last 6 full months and Last 12 full months: whole calendar months, ending with last month.
• Year to date: from 1 January to yesterday.
• Custom range: any dates you pick.

Set your own dates

1. Change From or To. Pick a start date in From and an end date in To. The Period menu switches to Custom range by itself.
2. Wait for the reload. The report updates after each date change. If you choose Custom range in the Period menu first, the report waits until you change a date.

End dates after today are cut back to today. Search Console data can lag by 2 to 3 days, so the last few days of a period may look low.

Choose what to compare with

The Compare to menu has three options:

• Previous period: the same number of days just before your period. Whole calendar months compare with the same number of whole months before them, so Last month compares with the month before it.
• Same period last year: the same dates one year earlier, which helps with seasonal businesses.
• No comparison: shows this period only.

With a comparison, the cover shows both periods, KPI tiles show change pills and the previous value, tables get change columns and charts get a dashed comparison line. With No comparison, all of that is left out, and so is the Keyword movement section.

Change the chart detail

The Detail menu sets how the date charts group the data: Daily, Weekly or Monthly. Auto picks for you: daily for periods up to 45 days, weekly up to 200 days and monthly beyond that. Detail only changes the charts; totals and tables stay the same.

Get fresh data with Refresh

To keep reports fast, data from Google is kept for a few hours: up to 12 hours for older dates and 2 hours for the most recent days. Click Refresh in the toolbar to fetch fresh data from Google right away, for example after a client has just given you access.

What else follows the dates

• Notes and work completed are saved for each date range, so new dates show the notes for those dates. See Add notes, chart notes and work completed.
• An edited executive summary goes back to the automatic one when the dates change.
• The page address updates with your choices, so reloading the page keeps them.
• Share report freezes exactly the dates and comparison on screen. See Share a report.