Writing
I’ve been writing about search, analytics, and data for more than fifteen years — a book, official Google documentation, and over a hundred articles across the industry. Below is the work organised by period, most recent first.
Google Search — 2019 to present
My current writing, published on Search Central, the official developer documentation for Google Search. Much of it accompanies features I helped lead: the pieces marked Product lead point to capabilities I worked on with the engineering teams, while Documentation and Best practice explain how to get more out of what already exists.
Analyze your social and video platform content performance in Search Console · July 2026 · Documentation
A guide to analysing social and video content performance — what insight Search Console offers content creators, social media managers, and SEO professionals, and how to read it.
Adding context to your Search Console data with custom annotations · November 2025 · Product lead
Introduces custom annotations, letting users mark changes and events directly on their Search Console charts.
Introducing the Google Trends API (alpha) · July 2025 · Product lead
Announces the alpha launch of the Google Trends API, opening programmatic access to Search Trends data.
Using Search Console and Google Analytics data for SEO · February 2025 · Documentation
How to monitor Search Console and Google Analytics metrics together in Data Studio, and how to make sense of discrepancies between the two.
Get started with Google Trends · October 2024 · Documentation
How Trends data reveals the way people look for information on Google Search, and what that implies for content strategy.
BigQuery efficiency tips for Search Console bulk data exports · June 2023 · Best practice
Managing cost and query efficiency when working with Search Console data in BigQuery.
Blending Search Console and internal data inside Looker Studio · March 2023 · Best practice
Combining Search Console data with back-end business data to see search performance in commercial terms.
Bulk data export: a new and powerful way to access your Search Console data · February 2023 · Product lead
Introduces automatic, ongoing exports from Search Console into BigQuery.
Improving SEO with a Search Console bubble chart · April 2022 · Documentation
Using bubble charts to make long-tail query data legible.
Welcoming the new Search Console URL Inspection API · January 2022 · Product lead
Unveils the API giving programmatic access to URL-level index state data.
Debugging drops in Google Search traffic · July 2021 · Documentation
The different shapes a traffic drop can take — sudden, gradual, seasonal — and how to work out which one you’re looking at.
Google Analytics — 2013 to 2018
Written as an Analytics Advocate, mostly on data analysis and visualization: how to build dashboards people can act on, and how to communicate the stories the numbers are actually telling.
The book
Google Analytics Integrations (Wiley, 2015)
A hands-on guide to turning Google Analytics from a reporting tool into a central marketing analysis platform — integrating data from other Google products and from custom sources, so that a single view of a user, campaign, or product becomes possible.
The word integration comes from the Latin integrare, to make whole. That’s the argument of the book: data tends to sit in parallel silos, like the warp threads on a loom, and it only becomes useful when something is woven across them.
Paul Muret, then VP of Engineering at Google, wrote in the foreword that the book offers critical insight into how to increase both the fidelity and the actionability of your Analytics data.
Published in 2015. Google Analytics has changed substantially since — treat it as a record of how the problem was framed at the time rather than as current documentation.
Selected articles
Visualizing Brazil’s presidential debate with Data Studio · September 2018 · Google Analytics blog
Google partnered with BandTV to host the first presidential debate of Brazil’s 2018 elections. The Data Studio team built a public dashboard covering candidates, topics, and regional trends, pulling Google Trends data in real time. More than 150 journalists worked from it in the digital room; the event became the largest livestream ever on YouTube in Brazil.
How to partner with data to create insightful stories · March 2017 · TheNextWeb
On why so many people are uneasy with data, and what follows from that for anyone visualizing it. Distinguishes business reporting — which has to stand alone and answer “so what?” — from visualizations meant to change how the public understands the world.
The life of a help center article · March 2017 · Google Analytics blog
An interview with a Google technical writer on where help content comes from, how it gets made, and why documentation is a product decision rather than an afterthought.
Data analytics: a matrix for better decision making · September 2015 · Google Analytics · PDF
A framework for thinking about which kind of analysis suits which kind of decision.
Tell a meaningful story with data · March 2014 · Think with Google
On the craft of building data stories that hold up without a presenter standing next to them.
Full customer journey: three lenses of measurement · November 2013 · Google Analytics blog
Framing measurement through three questions: how to understand customers across devices and touchpoints, how to attribute credit to campaigns, and how to keep data accessible and accurate.
Online Behavior — 2010 to 2018
I founded and edited Online Behavior, a portal for marketing measurement and optimization, and wrote dozens of articles there on analysing and understanding online user behaviour. It reached over a million people before I sold it in 2022.
All my articles on Online Behavior →
Search Engine Land and earlier — 2009 to 2013
Before joining Google I wrote 18 articles for Search Engine Land, covering every Google Analytics launch and update of the period, alongside pieces on behavioral targeting, conversion optimization, and search marketing.