Annotations

Annotations are notes attached to dates in your property’s timeline. They help the AI understand why metrics changed and provide context for better analysis.

Why Annotations Matter

When you ask “Why did traffic drop last week?”, the AI has two options:

Without annotations: Speculate based on patterns (“Perhaps there was a technical issue…”)

With annotations: Provide context (“According to your annotation, the site was down for maintenance on March 15, which explains the 4-hour traffic gap…”)

Annotations turn guesswork into informed analysis.

Types of Annotations

Manual Annotations

Annotations you create for your property:

Marketing events: Campaign launches, email sends, promotions
Site changes: Redesigns, new features, page updates
Technical events: Deployments, outages, migrations
Business events: Product launches, pricing changes
External factors: Holidays, industry events, PR coverage

Global Annotations

Annotations from feeds that affect all properties:

Algorithm updates: Google Core Updates, Spam Updates, etc.
Platform outages: Google Search incidents, GA4 issues
Industry events: Major announcements affecting many sites

Global annotations are provided by AI Data Stream and automatically available to all properties.

Creating Annotations

Adding a Manual Annotation

Go to your property’s Annotations tab
Click Add Annotation
Select the date (or date range for multi-day events)
Choose a category
Enter your note
Optional: Select affected pages (or leave blank for site-wide)
Click Save

Annotation Fields

Field	Description
Date	Single date or date range
Category	Type of annotation (for filtering)
Note	What happened (keep concise)
Pages	Specific URLs affected (optional)
Visibility	Private (you only) or shared (team)

Writing Good Notes

Too vague:

Site update

Better:

Launched new checkout flow - simplified from 4 steps to 2

Best:

Checkout redesign launched: 4 steps → 2, removed account requirement, added guest checkout

Include what changed and why it matters for analysis.

Annotation Categories

Categories help you organize and filter annotations. Each category has a name, color, and optional icon.

Built-in Categories

Algorithm Update - Google Core Updates, Spam updates, ranking changes
System Outage - Platform downtime, API issues, hosting problems

Custom Categories

Create categories for your team’s needs:

Go to Annotations → Manage Categories
Click Create Category
Enter a name
Choose a color and icon
Save

Common custom categories:

Marketing Campaign
Site Change
Product Launch
Content Update
Bug Fix

Global Annotation Feeds

AI Data Stream maintains global feeds that automatically add annotations to your properties.

Available Feeds

Google Algorithm Updates

Source: Search Engine Land, official Google announcements
Includes: Core Updates, Spam Updates, Product Reviews, etc.
Updates: Automatically when new updates are confirmed

Google Search Status

Source: Google Search Status Dashboard
Includes: Crawling issues, indexing problems, ranking issues
Updates: Real-time when incidents occur

Managing Global Feeds

Each property can enable or disable global feeds:

Go to your property’s Settings page
Find the Global Annotations section
Toggle the main switch to show/hide global annotations
Enable or disable individual feeds as needed
Save

You might disable algorithm update feeds for a property that doesn’t depend on organic search.

Historical Algorithm Updates

The algorithm feed includes updates dating back to 2018:

August 2025 Spam Update
June 2025 Core Update
March 2025 Core Update
December 2024 Core Update
And 50+ more historical updates

This means you can analyze historical data with algorithm context already in place.

Using Annotations in Analysis

Automatic Checking

All prompt presets instruct the AI to check annotations before analyzing time-based data. You don’t need to mention annotations—the AI does this automatically.

You ask:

Why did organic traffic drop in March?

AI checks:

Annotations for March
Global algorithm updates in March
Search Console data
GA4 data

AI responds:

Organic traffic dropped 23% in March. Looking at your annotations, I see the March 2025 Core Update rolled out March 5-12. Your traffic decline aligns with this update period…

Referencing Annotations in Questions

You can also explicitly reference annotations:

“What annotations do I have for last quarter?”
“Check if any algorithm updates affected my traffic in December”
“Factor in the site migration when analyzing Q1 performance”

Syncing Annotations to GA4

If you have Google Analytics 4 connected, you can sync individual annotations to GA4.

How It Works

When creating or editing an annotation, you’ll see a “Sync to GA4” option if GA4 is connected. Enable it to push that annotation to GA4’s annotation feature. This keeps your GA4 property in sync if your team also works directly in Google Analytics.

Limitations

GA4 annotations have a 150-character limit
Requires GA4 connection with write access
Deletions don’t sync: If you delete an annotation in AI Data Stream that was synced to GA4, you’ll need to delete it manually in Google Analytics (the API doesn’t support deletion)

You can also pull annotations from GA4 into AI Data Stream.

Annotation Best Practices

Annotate Consistently

Create a habit:

Log marketing campaigns as you launch them
Note site changes during deployments
Record known issues when they occur

Don’t rely on memory—annotate in real-time.

Be Specific About Dates

Use exact dates when known
Use date ranges for rollouts (“Launched March 5, completed March 7”)
Note time zones if relevant

Include Affected Pages

For page-specific changes, note which pages:

“/blog/*” for all blog changes
“/products/widget” for specific product changes
Leave blank for site-wide changes

Keep Notes Scannable

The AI and your team will read these notes. Write clearly:

Lead with what changed
Add brief context if needed
Skip obvious details

Review Regularly

Periodically review annotations:

Archive old annotations that are no longer relevant
Update ongoing campaigns
Add any missed events

Managing Annotations

Viewing Annotations

Go to Annotations in your property to see:

Timeline view of all annotations
Filter by category
Filter by date range
Search notes

Editing Annotations

Find the annotation in the list
Click the edit icon
Make changes in the modal
Save

Archiving Annotations

Archiving removes annotations from AI context while preserving the record:

Find the annotation in the list
Click the delete/archive icon
Confirm

Archived annotations are excluded from AI analysis but can be restored later.

Restoring Archived Annotations

Go to Annotations
Click View Archived to see archived annotations
Find the annotation to restore
Click Restore

The annotation returns to active status and will be included in AI analysis again.