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French websites rarely sell only to France. Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, and the overseas territories contribute significantly to traffic, but the Google Search Console previously displayed them separately, one country at a time. Since October 6, 2026, the Country filter in the Performance report allows for multiple countries to be selected simultaneously, aggregating their traffic into a single view.
How do you use this filter, and what precautions should you take before drawing conclusions?
What Google has changed in the Country filter
Google Search Central announced this new feature on LinkedIn on October 6, 2026: the update to the Performance report filters is designed to make it easier to analyze traffic by country and device. Sites operating in multiple markets can now view their combined Google Search traffic.
Before this update, the Country filter only allowed for one country to be selected. To analyze multiple countries, you had to use the comparison feature, which was limited to two items, or export the data and aggregate it in a spreadsheet or Looker Studio. Google's help page now specifies that the Filter tab allows you to select multiple countries or devices to display their combined data.
The rollout is happening in waves, as is often the case with Search Console. If the checkboxes do not yet appear on a property, you will need to wait a few days.
How do you filter by country in Search Console?
The process takes less than a minute:
- Open the property in Search Console, then go to Performance and Search results.
- Click on Add filter (or on the Country filter if it is already active), then choose Country.
- Stay on the Filter tab and check the countries you want to group together.
- Click Apply.
Clicks, impressions, average CTR, and average position are then recalculated for all selected countries. The Queries, Pages, Devices, and Dates tabs follow the same filter: this allows you to isolate queries that generate traffic across the entire French-speaking world, or pages that are growing primarily outside of France.
The filter can be combined with others: search type (Web, Image, Video, News), device, page, or query, including regular expressions. To choose the right metrics to track, see our guide to essential SEO KPIs.
Filtering vs. comparing countries: what is the difference?
The Country panel offers two tabs that answer two different questions.
- Filter : this adds up the selected countries. It is the tool to use for tracking a market, such as all European French-speaking traffic.
- Compare : it places two countries side-by-side, with a Difference column for each row in the table. This is the tool to use if you want to know whether Belgium is performing better than Switzerland for the same queries.
The comparison has its constraints: a maximum of two items, and only one active comparison at a time. Adding a new one replaces the previous one. However, to compare two periods for a group of countries, you simply need to combine the multi-country filter with the date comparison.
Which country groupings should you track?
The first grouping to create is your company's actual market. Here are a few examples:
- European Francophonie : France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Luxembourg, for an offer sold across the entire French-speaking European market.
- Greater France : mainland France along with Réunion, Guadeloupe, Martinique, and other overseas territories. Search Console localizes the user, so these territories appear as separate countries.
- Shipping countries : for an e-commerce site, the list of countries covered by your delivery service allows you to read the traffic that can actually convert.
- Domestic vs. international : your main market on one side and all other countries on the other, to measure the actual weight of your international presence.
The best practice is to set three or four groupings and track them each month in the SEO reporting. There is currently no indication that a group of countries can be saved in the interface, so it is best to note your selections to re-select them identically.
This breakdown is also very useful for reading the impact of a Google core update market by market, since updates do not always affect all countries in the same way.
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Limitations to keep in mind before analyzing
The multi-country filter simplifies the view, but it does not change the data or its limits.
- The country is based on the user's location. A French person on vacation in Morocco counts as Morocco. The filter does not indicate the country targeted by a page or a language version.
- The average position is weighted. In a grouping, it is not the average of the positions for each country: a country with a high volume of impressions carries more weight. Comparing two groupings of very different sizes therefore requires caution.
- Tables are limited to 1,000 rows in the interface. Combining ten countries brings up more queries, and the long tail is cut off sooner.
- Anonymized queries do not reappear. The total number of clicks often remains higher than the sum of the rows in the Queries table.
- The history remains 16 months. To track a market over several years, you must export the data.
To link this traffic to conversions for each market, Search Console must be cross-referenced with Google Analytics 4 and a tracking reliable source.
What about the Search Console API or Looker Studio?
Google's announcement concerns the interface. In the Search Analytics API, the country dimension uses three-letter country codes from the ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 standard: fra for France, bel for Belgium, che for Switzerland, and can for Canada.
Filters within the same group are combined using a logical "AND" only: two "equals" filters cannot be used to express "France or Belgium." The includingRegex operator is the path to test, using an expression like fra|bel|che|lux, then verifying that the totals match those in the interface. This is also the solution for bypassing the 1,000-row limit on an international site.
Conclusion
The multi-select Country filter does not create new data, but it eliminates a tedious step: reading an entire market in Search Console without exports or spreadsheets. For a site present in several countries, it is an opportunity to redefine tracking scopes and identify pages that deserve a more localized version. Our teams SEO and GEO team at datashake incorporate this market-by-market analysis into international site audits.
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FAQ
How can I view traffic by country in Search Console?
In the Performance report, the Countries tab above the table lists clicks and impressions for each country. To aggregate multiple countries, you must add a Country filter, check the desired countries in the Filter tab, and then click Apply.
Can I filter multiple devices at the same time?
Yes. Google's help documentation indicates that the Filter tab allows you to select multiple countries or multiple devices to display their combined data. As the rollout is gradual, the option may not yet be visible on all properties.
Why doesn't the total number of clicks match the sum of the queries?
Google removes anonymized queries from the details to protect user privacy, and the interface only displays 1,000 rows. Their clicks remain counted in the chart's total, but not in the Queries table.
What is the difference between Google Analytics and Google Search Console?
Search Console measures what happens in Google before the click: impressions, clicks, positions, and CTR. Google Analytics measures what visitors do once they are on the site, regardless of their source: page views, engagement, and conversions. The two tools complement each other.
How can I change the Google Search country to see other results?
In Google's search settings, the Region Settings section allows you to choose a different country. To determine a site's actual ranking in that country, the Search Console Country filter is more reliable because it is based on impressions from real users.
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