Your First Steps in Prism

You have an account, a project and a Google connection. Now it is time to look at your data. This page suggests what to open first and in which order.

1. Open the Analytics screen

In the left sidebar, under Overview, click Analytics (GA4 + GSC). This screen shows your Google Analytics 4 and Search Console data together.

1. Pick a date range

   Click 7 days, 28 days or 90 days at the top. 28 days is the default. Click Custom to pick your own dates. Only days that have synced can be picked.

2. Read the KPI cards

   Look at Organic Sessions, Total Clicks (GSC), Avg CTR and Conversions. Each card shows the change against the preceding period, which is the same number of days just before your range.

3. Check the chart

   The Sessions vs Clicks chart shows GA4 organic sessions over GSC clicks, day by day.

4. Scroll to the tables

   Lower down you find Top landing pages, Traffic acquisition by source / medium, GSC · Query performance and more.

Rates such as CTR and engagement rate change in percentage points (pp). For example, CTR going from 2% to 3% is +1pp.

You may also see a (not set) row in the query table. This is the part of your clicks that Google hides for privacy. See (not set) explained.

Full guide: Analytics (GA4 + GSC).

2. Set up Category Builder

Many Advanced Analytics reports group your pages into categories, such as Blog or Products. Until you add rules, every URL is grouped as Uncategorized.

1. On the Analytics screen, click Advanced Analytics.
2. Click Settings. This opens Category Builder.
3. Add Regex Rules or use Excel Upload to map your URLs to categories.
4. Open the Branded Keywords tab and save a pattern for your brand name, for example yourbrand|your brand.

A branded keyword is a search that includes your brand name. With a pattern saved, SEO Root Cause Analysis can split branded and non-branded searches.

Full guide: Category Builder.

3. Explore Advanced Analytics

Go back to Advanced Analytics and try the tabs. Good ones to start with:

• Category Breakdown — how each group of pages performs.
• Keywords Breakdown — which searches bring you clicks.
• SEO Root Cause Analysis — why traffic went up or down.

Learn more in the Search Analytics guides.

4. Look at the Unified Dashboard

Under Overview, click Unified Dashboard. It shows headline numbers from each connected module on one screen. See Unified Dashboard.

5. Check rankings and AI visibility

If your admin has set up tracking projects, open Google SERP, Bing Rankings or the LLM Tool pages from the sidebar. If a page says no projects are linked, a tracking project needs to be created first. See Set up a project.

Tips

• Keep the same date range when you compare screens.
• If a date preset is greyed out with No synced data in this range, wait for the sync to finish. See Date ranges and compare.