Know Exactly
What Caused Every Traffic Change
Whether it was a Google algorithm update or something your team did — with quantified before/after proof attached to each event. Stop guessing and start knowing.
Annotations Timeline
3 events in last 30 days
March 2026 Core Update
Rewrote SEO Guide with 2026 best practices
Fixed Core Web Vitals issues on product pages
Sound Familiar?
These are the problems every SEO team faces when trying to understand what's driving performance changes.
Was It Us or Google?
Traffic dropped last month — but you have no idea if it was a Google algorithm update or something your team changed.
Forgotten Changes
Changes made by your team are forgotten over time with no record of what was deployed when or what effect it had.
Late Discovery
Google algorithm updates are discovered after the fact with no easy way to correlate them to your own data.
Manual Cross-Referencing
Manually cross-referencing Google's status page with your analytics is tedious, error-prone, and time-consuming.
No Impact Measurement
No way to know whether a site change actually improved or hurt performance without manual data pulls and calculations.
Team Knowledge Silos
When team members leave or change roles, institutional knowledge about past changes and their impact disappears with them.
Powerful Tracking,
Automatic Insights
Log your changes, and the system handles the rest — automatic comparisons, visual charts, and clear impact metrics.
Add Custom Annotations
Log any site change with a title, description, and date. Content updates, redesigns, technical fixes — all documented.
Auto-Import Google Updates
Google Search Console incidents appear automatically. No manual entry needed — they sync directly from Google's status page.
Page-Level Targeting
Scope annotations to specific pages or all pages. The impact analysis filters to only the URLs that actually changed.
Before/After Comparison
Clicks, impressions, CTR, and position are automatically compared for the period before vs. after each annotation date.
Visual Analytics Chart
An area chart centered on the annotation date shows the full trend window with a reference line marking the event.
Adjustable Comparison Window
Choose how many days before/after to include in the comparison — 7, 14, 30 days or any custom period you need.
Real-World Use Cases
Here's how different teams use Custom Annotations to track impact and prove value.
Publishes a major blog rewrite
Adds an annotation, sees clicks increased 34% in the 7 days after vs. 7 days before — proof the update worked.
Pushes a Core Web Vitals fix
Logs it as an annotation, confirms impressions and position improved, validating the technical effort.
Google core update rolls out
It appears automatically on the timeline — team immediately sees which pages were affected and by how much.
Reporting to a client
Pulls up the annotation timeline to show exactly which changes drove which results — clear attribution.
Reviewing 6 months of changes
Scrolls through annotations to build a clear cause-and-effect narrative of ranking changes over time.
New team member joins
Reviews the annotation history to understand what was done and what worked — instant context.
Frequently Asked
Questions
Everything you need to know about Custom Annotations and how they work.
They are automatically imported from Google's official status page. No manual entry required — they appear on your timeline as soon as Google announces them, with a direct link to the official incident.
Metrics are totaled over the N days before the annotation date and the same N days after, then compared as a percentage change. For example, if you choose a 7-day window, we compare the 7 days before your change to the 7 days after.
Yes. When creating a note you can specify exact URLs or URL patterns. The comparison chart and metrics will filter to only those pages, making the analysis precise rather than noisy.
You choose the comparison window — 7, 14, 30 days, or any custom period. The chart and metrics adjust automatically based on your selection.
CTR uses a weighted average based on impressions to ensure accuracy. A day with 1 click and 10 impressions isn't treated the same as a day with 1,000 clicks and 10,000 impressions — this gives you statistically accurate comparisons.
Yes, user-created notes can be edited or deleted at any time. Google update annotations are read-only since they come from an external source and represent official events.
Either a user-created note (any site change you want to track — content updates, technical fixes, design changes) or an automatically imported Google Search Central incident.
Absolutely. The annotation timeline provides clear, visual proof of what changes were made and their impact. Many agencies use it to show clients exactly which efforts drove results.
The comparison will show 'no data available' if the window is too narrow or traffic is too low. In those cases, you'll be prompted to try a longer comparison period to gather enough data for meaningful analysis.
No — the UI surfaces plain percentage changes with up/down indicators and color coding, readable by anyone without SEO expertise. Content marketers, business owners, and executives can all understand the impact at a glance.
Stop Guessing.
Start Knowing.
Log your changes once and let the system prove their impact. Never wonder what caused a traffic change again.