Contribution

When your clicks go up or down, the next question is “which queries or pages caused it?” Contribution answers that: in the Queries and Pages tables, each row shows its share of the overall change in clicks.

How to read it

• +40% means this row gained clicks equal to 40% of the net change.
• −75% in a period where clicks fell means the row accounts for three quarters of the drop.
• A row that moves the opposite way to the total shows the opposite sign: it held the total back.
• The bar grows right in green for gains and left in red for losses; the biggest row on screen fills its half. Hover a row for its click change.
• Sort by the Contribution column: biggest gainers first, reverse for the biggest losers.

How it is worked out. Each row’s change in clicks (this period minus the comparison period) divided by the size of the net change across all the rows.

Example. tent stakes +400, ultralight tent +100, tent sale −150, camp stove −60, rain fly +10: the net change is +300, so tent stakes is +133.3% (more than the whole net gain, because other rows gave some back), tent sale −50.0%, and the column adds up to +100%.

When gains and losses nearly cancel the percentages get big. We do not cap them; read large numbers as “these rows are the story, and they mostly cancel out”, and look at the click change too.

Good to know

• The net change is added up over the rows in the table, not your site total, because Google leaves some clicks out of the query list for privacy (why).
• The Overview table loads 500 rows and the Queries / Pages tabs up to 5,000; when a table has more rows than were loaded, the share is over the loaded rows.
• It needs a comparison; with no comparison the column is hidden. If the net change is exactly zero every row shows 0.0%.
• Per-day scaling for comparison windows of different lengths is not in the app yet.

Plans. The same on Free and Pro.