Web analytics

What is web analytics in Serpel?

Serpel doesn’t add a tracking script to your website and doesn’t replace your analytics tool. It reads the numbers that your tool already collects and puts them beside rank tracking and search data. That answers a question neither tool answers alone: which of the visitors you win from search actually do something on your site? Reading web analytics costs no credits.

How do you connect PostHog, Plausible or Google Analytics 4?

Connect once for your whole account under Settings → Integrations, or for one project with Connect on the Web analytics page. The account route matches the projects that you own to their own sites. The project route is for a single project, and it is the only route for one where you are an editor. Owners and editors can connect, viewers can’t. A project can have all three providers at the same time, and a switch at the top of the page (PostHog, Plausible, Analytics 4) chooses which one you look at.

On the account cards, PostHog needs only the region and a personal key with “Query: Read” and “Project: Read” (plus “Organization: Read” for several organisations), and Serpel matches projects by domain or name. Plausible needs the Stats API key and checks each project domain as a site ID. Google uses the same sign-in as search data. A self-hosted address must start with https:// and have no path, for example https://analytics.example.com.

1. 1

   Open Web analytics in a project.

   Pick the provider in the switch at the top and press Connect.

2. 2

   Enter the details.

   Fill in the fields from the table above and press Connect again. Serpel checks access before it saves.

3. 3

   Check the badge.

   A Connected badge appears. Click it to open Manage, where you can change the property, set conversions or disconnect.

Only the person who created a Google Analytics connection can change its property. If the page says “Does the property match?”, the chosen property measures another domain than the project.

What does the web analytics page show?

The toolbar has the provider switch, the period (Last 7 days, Last 28 days as the default and Last 3 months, which is 90 days), All traffic or Organic only, and Export. Six figures lead the page: Visitors, Pageviews, Sessions, Bounce rate, Avg. duration and Pages per session, each compared with the previous period. Below them, cards hold the details:

• Locations: Countries, Regions and Cities, next to a globe card with the live view.
• Sources: Channels, Referrers, UTM values and Search engines. Google doesn’t pass the search query, so Serpel takes it from Search Console.
• Pages: Top pages, Entry pages, Exit pages, Folders and Gainers and losers. Click a page to see its visitors, Search Console queries, tracked keywords, audit issues and AI citations in one panel.
• Devices: Devices, Browsers, OS and Screen size.
• Conversions: Conversion rate and Conversions per entry page, plus By campaign, By source and By channel. It appears after you chose conversion events.

Serpel sorts visits into the channels Organic search, Direct, Social, Referral, Email, Paid and AI assistants. Visits from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Claude land in the last one, so you can see how much traffic AI answers send you (see AI visibility). Click a row that isn’t a page, such as a country, channel or device, to filter the whole page, with up to 10 filters at once. Organic only keeps only visits from search engines.

How does the live view work?

On the globe card next to Locations, the toggle Visitor view switches between Live and Period. Live shows the visitors of the last 30 minutes on the globe and refreshes about every 20 seconds while the browser tab is visible. PostHog also reports exact positions and the 20 latest visits. Plausible and Google Analytics 4 report the number of visitors and their cities, without coordinates and without single visits.

How do you set up conversions?

1. 1

   Open Manage.

   Click the Connected badge on the Web analytics page. For Google Analytics, choose the property first.

2. 2

   Choose the events.

   The Conversions section lists the events from the last 30 days. Tick up to 10 that count as a success, or type a name under Add an event name manually. Generated events such as page views aren’t offered.

3. 3

   Press Save.

   Serpel answers “Conversions saved, the first sync is running”. The numbers appear after a few minutes.

The Conversion rate list shows only entry pages with at least 10 sessions. The By campaign, By source and By channel tabs show the share of visitors who triggered an event, for groups with at least 10 visitors. Changing the property or the chosen events rebuilds the stored history.

How often does Serpel sync web analytics and how long is it kept?

Visitors, pageviews and sources are read from your provider when you open the page, and Serpel reuses a result for 30 minutes. The live view is cached for seconds only. Only conversion data is stored over time, and the numbers below apply to that history.

Every sync shows up as Web analytics sync under History (see history and exports). Without chosen events there is nothing to sync, and the entry says so.

How does web analytics feed opportunities?

Two of the rules in opportunities use your conversion data, and both need chosen events. Visitors who don’t convert flags a page with at least 30 sessions, more sessions than the median page and a conversion rate below half the project median. If Search Console is connected, the page also needs search clicks. Strong page with low reach flags a page with at least 20 sessions and 2 conversions that converts at more than twice the median rate but gets fewer search impressions than the median page, so it needs Search Console data as well. Analytics also names itself as a data source on the opportunities it supports.

How do you export web analytics data?

Export at the top right offers Daily history, Countries, Channels, Top pages, Devices and, when conversions exist, Conversions by campaign. Each file is a semicolon-separated CSV with a UTF-8 byte order mark, named like web-analytics-daily-2026-11-05.csv.

How do you use web analytics from the CLI, API or MCP?

The CLI and the REST API cover connecting, reading and conversions. Reading needs the scope projects:read, connecting and choosing conversions needs projects:write. --days takes 7, 28 or 90, and --filter takes values such as channel:Direct. Rows go up to 100 per call, and serpel analytics movers lists pages that gained or lost at least 3 visitors by default.

serpel analytics status --project "$PROJECT_ID"
serpel analytics connect-posthog --project "$PROJECT_ID" --posthog-project 12345 --api-key-file posthog.key --region eu
serpel analytics connect-plausible --project "$PROJECT_ID" --site-id example.com --api-key-file plausible.key
serpel analytics connect-google --project "$PROJECT_ID"
serpel analytics events --project "$PROJECT_ID" --provider posthog
serpel analytics set-conversions --project "$PROJECT_ID" --provider posthog --event signup_completed --event purchase
serpel analytics report --project "$PROJECT_ID" --days 28
serpel analytics breakdown --project "$PROJECT_ID" --dimension channel --organic-only
serpel analytics movers --project "$PROJECT_ID" --dimension pagePath
serpel analytics live --project "$PROJECT_ID"
serpel analytics conversions --project "$PROJECT_ID"

curl "https://serpel.app/api/v1/projects/$PROJECT_ID/analytics-report?provider=posthog&days=28" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SERPEL_TOKEN"

curl "https://serpel.app/api/v1/projects/$PROJECT_ID/analytics/posthog/breakdown?dimension=channel&days=28&organicOnly=true" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SERPEL_TOKEN"

curl -X PUT https://serpel.app/api/v1/projects/$PROJECT_ID/analytics/posthog/conversion-events \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SERPEL_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"events": ["signup_completed", "purchase"]}'

The MCP tool get_conversion_performance returns sessions, conversions and conversion rate per landing page for the events you chose, plus the median rate, at most 25 pages per call. Without a connection or chosen events, it explains what to set up. See the MCP setup for Claude Code.

Where to go next