Search Analytics Updated

Category Breakdown

See how each group of pages on your site performs, which categories are growing, and which pages are ready for a quick win.

8 min read Updated October 16, 2026

Where to find it in Prism:Advanced AnalyticsCategory Breakdown

What is it?

Category Breakdown is the first tab in Advanced Analytics. It shows your Search Console and GA4 numbers for each category — a group of pages, such as Blog or Products, that you define in the Category Builder.

Why use it?

To see which parts of your site bring the most traffic and conversions.
To spot growing and declining categories.
To find pages close to page one, or pages with a weak click-through rate.

Before you start

Connect GA4, Search Console or both. Cards and columns for a source you have not connected are hidden.
Add rules in the Category Builder. Until you do, Prism shows No Category Builder rules yet — every URL below is grouped as Uncategorized until you add rules to split them into categories. with an Open Category Builder button.

How to use it

Open Advanced Analytics
On the Analytics (GA4 + GSC) screen, click Advanced Analytics. The Category Breakdown tab opens.
Pick your dates
Click 7 days, 28 days or 90 days, or use the date picker. Keep Compare on to see movers. See Advanced Analytics basics.
Filter, if you want
Next to Filter:, use Category: and Sub-category:. Search, tick items, or click Select all or Clear. Click Clear filters to reset.
Read from top to bottom
Start with Executive Summary, then work down to Category Detail.

Understanding the screen

The Category Breakdown tab.

Executive Summary

Every comparison below shows the number and the % change together. When a filter is on, Prism adds Scoped to the category filter above.

Card	What it shows
Sessions	GA4 sessions from Google organic search, with a small trend line
Clicks	Search Console clicks, with a small trend line
Impressions	How often your pages were shown in Google
Avg. CTR	Clicks ÷ impressions
Avg. Position	Average rank, weighted by impressions. A fall in this number is good.
Categorized	The share of your URLs that belong to a category. It counts URLs, not traffic.

With Compare on, each card shows the % change and vs N prior period or vs N last year. The small trend lines are hidden while a filter is on.

Visibility Funnel

Where the audience drops off, from search result to conversion.

Impressions → CTR → Clicks → GA4 sessions (separate tracking) → Sessions → engagement rate → Engaged sessions → conversion rate → Conversions.

Under the funnel Prism explains that Search Console clicks and GA4 sessions come from separate tracking systems and won't match exactly. See Reading charts.

Sessions vs Clicks Trend

Site-wide, organic — not filtered to the categories above. Hover over the chart to see the day's Sessions and Clicks.

Category Intelligence

How traffic, engagement and conversion split across your taxonomy.

Share of voice — Each category's share of Google-organic sessions — adds up to 100%. Uncategorized is included. When you have more than eight categories, the top 7 are listed and the rest are grouped as All other categories (N).
Business impact by category — Conversions and share of total, by category. Top 8.
Engagement rate by category — Highest-engaging content, min. 20 sessions. Top 8.
Conversion rate by category — Conversions ÷ sessions, min. 20 sessions. Top 8.

Category Momentum & Impact

The Category momentum matrix puts each category in one of four boxes. Volume is sessions + clicks. A category is "high volume" when its volume is at or above the middle (median) category. It is "growing" when its volume is up, or flat, against the comparison period.

Quadrant	Hint on screen
Stars	High volume, growing
Cash cows	High volume, slowing
Rising	Lower volume, growing fast
Watch list	Lower volume, declining

Hover over a category chip to see its sessions + clicks and its change. Uncategorized is left out of the matrix.

Also in this section:

Category health scorecard — Category, Sessions, Clicks, CTR, Position for your 8 biggest categories. With Compare on, each cell shows its change. Position change is in places, and a plus means the rank got better.
Ranking position distribution — how many URLs sit at Position 1-3, Position 4-10, Position 11-20, Position 21-50 and Position 50+.
Content efficiency by category — average sessions per URL, shown as /URL.
New users by category — First-time visitors acquired this period.
URL coverage growth by category — Active URLs with traffic. With Compare on, the change in URL count is in brackets.

Page-Level Opportunities

Individual URLs, min. 20 impressions/sessions to filter out noise. Each table shows up to 50 pages, 10 at a time. Use ‹ Prev and Next › to page through.

Table	Columns	Rule
Striking distance (position 11–20)	URL, Pos, Impr., Clicks	Position 11–20 and 20+ impressions. Most impressions first.
Quick-win CTR (title/meta candidates)	URL, Pos, CTR, Typical	See the quick-win rule below. Most missed clicks first.
Rising pages / Declining pages	URL, Prev, Now, Change	Sessions + clicks, at least 20 in one of the two periods. Needs Compare.

In the quick-win table, Click a row to see its trend. A chart called Position & CTR over time opens. It has a line marked Position (higher on chart = better rank) and a CTR line. Click Close ✕ to hide it. Click the same row again to close it too.

Each table has an orange download icon, Export to Excel. It exports every row, not just the 10 you see.

Audience Quality

How the traffic behaves once it lands, not just how much of it there is. Three GA4 cards: New users % of sessions, Engagement rate and Conversion rate.

Category Detail

Cards: Categories, GA4 Sessions (categorized) and GSC Clicks (categorized). With Compare on, the cards show the change and vs N prior period or vs N same period last year. With no filter, the clicks card adds of N total in Search Console — the rest is the (not set) row below.

The table has Category, Sub-category, Sessions, New users, Engagement, Avg. duration, Conversions, Clicks, Impressions, CTR, Position and URLs. Sessions and Clicks show their % change when Compare is on. With no filter, a (not set) row comes last. See (not set) explained.

Understanding the data

CTR = clicks ÷ impressions. See CTR.
Position = average weighted by impressions.
With no category filter, the Clicks, Impressions, CTR and Position cards use Search Console's own site totals. With a filter, they add up only the categories you picked.
Striking distance = position 11–20. See striking distance.

Typical CTR

Typical CTR is the CTR this site normally gets at a position. Prism uses your own CTR at that position when it has at least 200 impressions there. If it does not, it borrows from the nearest position up to 3 places away. Hover text: From this site's own data.

Otherwise it uses a fixed estimate and marks it with an asterisk (*). Hover text: Estimated — not enough of this site's own data at this position yet.

Position	Estimate
1–3	15%
4–6	7%
7–10	3%
11–20	1.5%
Beyond 20	0.7%

Quick-win rule

A page is a quick-win when all three are true:

Its position is 20 or better.
It has at least 20 impressions.
Its typical CTR minus its actual CTR is more than 1 percentage point.

Pages are sorted by missed clicks: the CTR gap × impressions.

Example

For example, your Blog page is at position 5 with a 3% CTR. Your site's typical CTR at position 5 is 7%. The gap is 4 points, so the page appears in Quick-win CTR. Rewrite its title and meta description to earn more clicks.

Tips

Start with Stars and Watch list in the momentum matrix.
Check Striking distance pages first. A small push can move them onto page one.
If Categorized is low, add more rules in the Category Builder.

Common issues

Message	What to do
Turn on Compare to see period-over-period movers.	Turn on Compare in the date picker.
No page-2 rankings with meaningful impressions right now.	No pages at positions 11–20 with enough impressions.
No obvious CTR gaps found at ranking positions 1–20.	Your CTRs are close to typical.
No pages with a clear upward move this period. / No pages with a clear downward move this period.	Nothing moved enough.
No categories match this filter.	Click Clear filters.
Not enough data yet. / No category data yet. / No trend data for this range.	Pick a longer range or wait for syncs.
Not enough days in range to plot a trend.	Pick a range of two days or more.
Not enough daily data points for a URL in this range.	Pick a longer range.
Failed to load categorized data	Reload the page. If it continues, contact support.
Connect GA4 or Search Console	Click Go to Integrations and connect a property.

Frequently asked questions

Why is every URL Uncategorized?

You have no Category Builder rules yet. Click Open Category Builder and add regex rules or upload an Excel mapping.

What does the asterisk next to Typical CTR mean?

This site does not yet have enough of its own impressions at that position, so Prism uses a fixed industry-standard estimate.

Does the Sessions vs Clicks Trend follow my category filter?

No. It is site-wide organic data and is not filtered to the categories you picked.

What does the Categorized card measure?

The share of your URLs that belong to a category. It counts URLs, not traffic.

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