Performance report (Search results)

The Performance report shows important metrics about how your site performs in Google Search results, for example:

  • See how your search traffic changes over time, where it’s coming from, and what search queries are most likely to show your site.
  • Learn which queries are made on mobile devices, and use this to improve your mobile targeting.
  • See which pages have the highest (and lowest) click-through rate from Google search results.
New user?
If you're new to website analysis, start here for a simple introduction to this report.

 

OPEN THE PERFORMANCE REPORT

 

Common tasks

What are your most popular queries?

View the QUERIES tab to see up to 1,000 top queries for your site (rare queries are not shown to protect user privacy).
Sort by clicks, CTR, or impressions by clicking the column at the top of the table.
Notice that queries are exact matches (non-case-sensitive), so many queries can be very similar. It's probably worth considering these similar queries as the same when analyzing your site or page performance. In Search Console, you can create filters to match several queries; we recommend matching similar queries, such as "world cup", "the world cup" and "2023 world cup".
You can track a query's performance over time by filtering by that query (click the query in the QUERIES tab) to see its performance over time. Search Console doesn't support a way to track the performance of multiple queries individually over time, but you can do a regular expression filter for multiple queries (or match Queries containing a common string)

Which are your most popular pages on Search?

View the PAGES tab and choose the clicks and CTR metrics. Sort your results by either clicks or CTR.

Which are your least effective pages on Search

CTR is a good determinant of "effectiveness" on Search. This is because a low CTR indicates that users see your page in Search but don't think it answers what they're looking for.
If you see a low CTR for a page, consider whether it's worth keeping. If it is, work on improving the title and snippet of the page to better represent the content, or possibly change the content to better align with users' queries that show the page.
To see your lowest CTR pages:
  1. Select CTR as your metric.
  2. Open the PAGES tab.
  3. Sort by CTR.

Which pages from your site has Google shown for a given query?

Click the QUERIES tab to see up to 1,000 top queries for your site (rare queries are not shown to protect user privacy).
Click a query to filter all report data to the selected query. Or you can add a query filter to specify query text yourself rather than choosing a query from the table. Query filtering is not case-sensitive.
Many queries are nearly identical, so we recommend either submitting multiple exact query terms using a regular expression (the world cup | world cup | 2022 world cup), or filtering on "items containing" and using a common term ("world cup" rather than "the world cup"). Users tend to search for lots of similar terms.
Remember that even if a query appears in your list, you might not see your site in results if you run the same query in Google Search. This is because Search results are very specific to the time, place, device, and recent search history of the searcher, among many other factors, and so users searching with the same string can get different results, according to what Google thinks they're looking for.

Why did your traffic drop or spike?

A drop in organic Search traffic can happen for several reasons, and most of them can be reversed. To learn more about the main causes for a traffic drop, read debugging drops in Google Search traffic.

Compare data for two pages, date ranges, queries, or anything else

See Comparing groups to learn how to compare your performance for two different date ranges or anything else.

How to measure if a change in your page helped or not

It can be harder than you think to determine if a specific change on a page is the cause of an improvement. This is because other events unrelated to your changes might have contributed to your changed performance in Search. For example, periodic changes in user sentiment, perhaps triggered by news events, might cause more or less interest in your page, or the appearance or improvement in a competing site. Confirm whether your improvement in Search maps closely in timing to your site changes, compared to similar time periods in the past.

What is your average position in Search results over time?

To see average position in Search results:
  1. If you want to see your position history for a specific page, or group of pages, add a URL filter to the report.
  2. Select the Average position metric and deselect all other metrics.
  3. Choose the time frame you're interested.
  4. Optionally compare this time frame to a similar time frame.

Remember that the value shown at each date is the average topmost position for pages from your site.

Also remember that it's very hard to determine exactly where on the page a specific position refers to. A safer bet is to aim for position 10 or lower, and to try not to drop in position over time. In general, you should focus more on impressions and clicks than on position.

Compare your performance in Google Search, News, and Discover

There are separate performance reports for Search, News, and Discover. You cannot combine data into a single report within Search Console in your browser, but you can export the data and compare them. (Note that you must have enough data in Google News and Discover for those reports to appear.)
Also note that News and Discover might have much less traffic than Search, and if so, when combined into a single report, the Search traffic would dwarf traffic from the other sources.

See data for branded vs unbranded queries

You might want to see how many queries show your site when the user does or doesn't include a specific word or phrase, such as a brand name.

This isn't as simple as filtering for queries with and without a value, because adding a filter triggers Search Console to ignore anonymized queries, which might contain the desired phrase. Therefore, the true number will be lost once you start filtering data. However, you can estimate the maximum margin of error by adding a query filter and seeing how much the total impression or click count decreases from the unfiltered total. So:

  1. Add a filter for queries that match some value ("Exact query," "Queries containing," or "Custom (regex)". Record the total clicks, impressions, and CTR from the chart.
  2. Modify the filter to find queries not containing that value ("Queries not containing" or "Custom (regex)"). Record the total values from the chart.
  3. Modify the filter to match all queries: "Custom (regex)" for queries that match the term .* and record the total values from the chart.
  4. Remove all query and page filters and record the total values from the chart. Note that the increase in totals from step 3 is the anonymized data and other very long tail data that was dropped.
  5. Your approximate branded or unbranded query numbers are:
(Queries containing "some value")
(Queries not containing "some value") + (Queries containing "some value")

Approximate maximum margin of error:

(Total with a filter that matches everything / Total without filter)

Configuring the report

The default view of the report shows the click and impression data for your site in Google Search results for the past three months.

 

Exporting report data

Many reports provide an export button to export the report data. Both chart and table data are exported. Values shown as either ~ or - in the report (not available/not a number) will be zeros in the downloaded data.

 

Reading the chart

Depending on which tabs you select, the chart shows total clicks, total impressions, average CTR (click through rate), and average position for your property. Data on the chart is aggregated by property. See Metrics for explanations of these metric types and how they are calculated. The newest data can be preliminary; preliminary data is indicated when you hover or select it on the graph.

The chart data is always aggregated by property unless you filter by page or search appearance.

The totals for each metric are shown on the chart. The chart totals can differ from the table totals.

See dimensions, metrics, and about the data to understand the numbers.

Reading the table

The table shows data grouped by the selected dimension (for example, by query, page, or country).

The table data is aggregated by property unless you filter or view results by page or search appearance.

The chart totals can differ from the table totals for various reasons.

See dimensions, metrics, and about the data to understand the numbers.

Why did the report table disappear?

In certain cases where the table does not add any additional information to the chart, the table is omitted from the report. For example, if you show click counts in a table grouped by country, and compare USA to UK, you would get a table like this:

Country USA clicks UK clicks
USA 1,000 0
UK 0 1,000

This table provides no information that the graph doesn't already show, so it is omitted.

Dimensions and filters

You can group and filter your data by the following dimensions. To group, select the dimension tab above the table. To filter, read here.

Queries

These are the query strings that users searched for on Google. Only non-anonymized query strings that returned your site are shown.

Anonymized queries

Some queries (called anonymized queries) are not shown in these results to protect the privacy of the user making the query. Anonymized queries are always omitted from the table. Anonymized queries are included in chart totals unless you filter by query (either queries containing or queries not containing a given string).

If your site has a significant number of anonymized queries, you may see a significant discrepancy between the total versus (count of queries containing some_string + count of queries not containing some_string). This is because the anonymized queries are omitted whenever a filter is applied. Learn more how anonymized queries can cause data discrepancies.

Data is aggregated by property when grouping or filtering by query.

When filtering by query, you can lose long-tail data in the table or the chart. When grouping by query, you can lose long-tail data only in the table. This is most noticeable in very large sites.

If you can no longer see a search query that you saw recently, check that you haven't added a filter that hides the results.

Other limits on queries

Due to internal limitations, Search Console stores top data rows and not all data rows. As a result, not all queries beyond anonymized queries will be shown. Instead, the focus is on showing you the most important ones for your entire property.

Common uses

  • Look for expected and unexpected queries. If words that you expect to see don't appear, your site might not have enough useful content relevant to those words. If unexpected words (like "Viagra" or "casino") appear, it's likely that your site has been hacked.
  • Find queries with high impressions and low CTR. These queries can help identify where you can improve your titles and snippets to match your users’ interests.
  • Find branded or not-branded query totals. You might want to see how many queries show your site when the user does or doesn't include a specific string, such as a brand name. Because anonymized queries can't be counted, and long-tail data is dropped when filtering by query, you can only approximate this value, but very roughly, the branded query percentage is:
    (Queries containing "some value")
    (Queries not containing "some value") + (Queries containing "some value")
Pages

The final URL linked by a Search result after any skip redirects (see below).

Most performance data in this report is assigned to the page's canonical URL, not to a duplicate URL. This means that when a user clicks a duplicate URL in Search results, the click counts for the canonical URL, not the URL that the user visits. Therefore, the Performance report can show zero clicks for a duplicate URL even though your site logs show that users reached that page from Google Search. You can learn the canonical URL for a page using the URL Inspection tool.

A small amount of clicks and impressions might be assigned to the actual URL rather than the canonical URL. Examples include some knowledge panel links in mobile search results, as well as some hreflang results.

You can try to determine actual traffic for duplicates if you have separate versions for desktop and mobile visitors. In this case, you can see traffic for the actual clicked URL by filtering data by device (for desktop or mobile).

 

Choosing the pages dimension aggregates data by page rather than by property in the table; the graph aggregates data by property whatever the dimension.

When grouping by page, you can lose long-tail data in the table. This is most noticeable in very large sites.

Skip redirects: The URL that Google displays for a search result might be different from the actual URL of the link. For example, consider a site with two versions of a page: example.com/mypage for desktop users, and m.example.com/mypage for mobile users. Google might show the desktop URL for both desktop and mobile searches, but the <a> link target will be different, depending on whether the search is from a desktop or mobile device. On a desktop, the underlying link points to the desktop page; on a mobile device, the underlying link points to the mobile page, which is called a skip redirect.
Countries

The country where the search came from; for example, Canada or Mexico.

Devices

The type of device on which the user is searching: desktop, tablet, or mobile. If you have separate properties for your different device types (for example m.example.com for mobile and example.com for desktop), you might not be able to compare metrics unless you use a Domain property.

Search Type [Filter only]

Which search tab contained the link seen by the user:

  • Web: Results that appear in the All tab or Web tab. This includes any image or video results shown in the All results tab.
  • Image: Results that appear in the Images search results tab.
  • Video: Results that appear in the Videos search results tab.
  • News: Results that show in the News search results tab.

Grouping is not supported for search type because the results page layout is very different for different search types. For example, position 30 in image search results might be on the first result page, but position 30 in web search would be on page three.

Data is stored separately by search type

For a given URL, all click, impression, and position data is stored separately for each search type. So, for instance, an image can appear in both web results and image results, but the click, impression, and position data for that image are recorded separately for web searches and image searches.

As an example, given an image hosted on the page example.com/aboutme.html, you might have this data:

Search type Impressions Clicks Position
Image 20 10 23
Web 30 30 7
Search Appearance

Groups data by the specific search result type or feature. The Search Console API value is for the accepted values for the searchAppearance dimension.

Supported search appearance types:

UI name

Description

Search Console API value

Bulk data export field

AMP articles

A visually enhanced search result for an AMP page. The result can be free-standing or part of a carousel of similar result types. AMP article rich results are also counted as rich results.

AMP_TOP_STORIES

is_amp_top_stories

AMP non-rich results

A plain text and link search result for an AMP page.

AMP_BLUE_LINK

is_amp_blue_link

AMP on image result

An image hosted on an AMP page that appears in a search result.

AMP_IMAGE_RESULT

is_amp_image_result

Android app

An Android app page result in a mobile search.

SEARCH_

APPEARANCE_

ANDROID_APP

is_search_

appearance_

android_app

Education Q&As

A Q&A page related to STEM education that focuses on providing answers to user-submitted questions.

EDU_Q_AND_A

is_edu_q_and_a

FAQ rich results

Answers to FAQs that appear directly in search.

TPF_FAQ

is_tpf_faq

Job details

An expanded description of a job posting that appears in a search result. Read about measuring clicks and impressions for jobs.

JOB_DETAILS

is_job_details

Job listings

A job posting that shows a summary of a job in search. Read about measuring clicks and impressions for jobs.

JOB_LISTING

is_job_listing

Learning videos

Educational videos that display as a rich result.

LEARNING_VIDEOS

is_learning_videos

Math solvers

An expanded description of a math problem that appears in a rich result, indicates the type of math problem, and links to step-by-step walkthroughs.

MATH_SOLVERS

is_math_solvers

Media Actions

Audio or video content that can play directly in a rich result. Read more about Media Actions.

ACTION

is_action

Merchant listings

Results that include specific data about a product, such as price, availability, and shipping and return information. Includes all different shopping features (except product snippets), such as Popular products and the Shopping knowledge panel. Applies to listings that appear in general search results (type Web) and Google Images.

MERCHANT_LISTINGS

is_merchant_listings

Practice problems

Educational material that appears as a quiz question in search.

PRACTICE_PROBLEMS

is_practice_problems

Product snippets

A visually enhanced search result for products that can include reviews, ratings, price, and availability.

PRODUCT_SNIPPETS

is_product_snippets

Q&A rich results

Answers to questions people commonly ask on Google that appear directly in search.

TPF_QA

is_tpf_qa

Recipe galleries

A collection of Recipe rich result.

RECIPE_FEATURE

is_recipe_feature

Recipe rich results

A visually enhanced search result for recipes that can include images, ratings, and cook times.

RECIPE_RICH_

SNIPPET

is_recipe_rich_

snippet

Review snippet

Excerpts of reviews that can include average ratings, stars, and a review summary. Read about review snippets.

REVIEW_SNIPPET

is_review_snippet

Special announcements

A special announcement structured data element with information about COVID-19.

SPECIAL_

ANNOUNCEMENT

is_special_

announcement

Subscribed content

A page that appeared in a "From your subscription" rich result. This is a rich result that shows users content that they are subscribed to via Subscribe with Google.

SUBSCRIBED_

CONTENT

is_subscribed_

content

Translated results

Search results in a language different from the query language, from selected sources.

TRANSLATED_RESULT

is_translated_result

Videos

Videos that appear in either general search results (type Web) or Discover. Includes videos that appear in carousels within search.

VIDEO

is_video

Web Story

A visual storytelling format built on AMP that enables a user to tap through full screen images and videos.

AMP_STORY

is_amp_story

Deprecated fields

For users of bulk data export, these fields appear in the BigQuery schema, but their values in recent dates is NULL:

UI name

Description

Search Console API value

Bulk data export field

Event details

An expanded description of an event that appears in a search result. Read about measuring clicks and impressions for Events.

EVENTS_DETAILS

is_events_details

Event listing

A visually enhanced search result for events. Read about measuring clicks and impressions for Events.

EVENTS_LISTING

is_events_listing

Good page experience

URLs that have good page experience.

PAGE_EXPERIENCE

is_page_experience

How-to rich results

A how-to rich result.

TPF_HOWTO

is_tpf_howto

Product results

A visually enhanced search result for products that can include reviews, ratings, price, and availability.

ORGANIC_SHOPPING

is_organic_shopping

Web Light results

A lightweight, transcoded version of a webpage, optimized for viewing over slow data connections. Read more about Web Light.

WEBLITE

is_weblite

Dimensioning or filtering by search appearance will aggregate data by page rather than by property in the table only; data in the graph will still be grouped by property.

The filter feature list shows filter options only for types for which you have impressions; for example, if you have no Job listing results, you will not see Job listings in the filter list.

The same page can have multiple search appearance features in a single session, but only one impression is counted for each feature type. For example, a page can have both a rich result and a search result link in one query.

Filtered click counts

If you filter by search appearance, it is not guaranteed that all clicks for a given URL were on the link with the filtered feature type. This is because clicks are assigned to a URL, not to a (URL + feature). However it is guaranteed that the user saw a link with this URL and feature in the same set of results where she clicked a link with that URL.

Dates
Groups your data by day. This data can include preliminary data. All dates are in Pacific Time Zone (PT)
By default, only complete days are included (days where we have data from midnight to midnight); if you want to include partial days (for example, today), you must change the date filter to specify the exact starting date.

Metrics

Choose which metrics to display by toggling the appropriate tab on the report.

The following metrics are available:

  • Clicks - Count of clicks from a Google search result that landed the user on your property. Learn more.
  • Impressions - How many links to your site a user saw on Google search results. Impressions are counted when the user visits that page of results, even if the result was not scrolled into view. However, if a user views only page 1 but the result is on page 2, the impression is not counted. The count is aggregated by property or page. Note that infinitely scrolling result pages (image search) the impression might require the item to be scrolled into view. Learn more.
  • CTR - Click-through rate: the click count divided by the impression count. If a row of data has no impressions, the CTR will be shown as a dash (-) because CTR would be division by zero.
  • Average position [Chart only]- The average position of the topmost result from your site. So, for example, if your site has three results at positions 2, 4, and 6, the position is reported as 2. If a second query returned results at positions 3, 5, and 9, your average position would be (2 + 3)/2 = 2.5. If a row of data has no impressions, the position will be shown as a dash (-), because the position doesn't exist. Learn more.
  • Position [Table only] - The position value in the table represents the average position in search results for the URL. For example, when grouping by query, the position is the average position for the given query in search results. See the average position above to learn how the value is calculated.

Filtering your data

You can filter data by multiple dimensions. For example, if you are currently grouping data by query, you can add the filters "country='USA' AND device='Mobile'".

Add a filter

  • Click the + NEW label in the filters section at the top of the report. (Look for the search type and date filters which are always present.)
    OR
  • Click any row in a table to automatically filter data by that row. For example, to filter by a URL listed in the Pages tab, click the URL shown. You can later click and modify the filter as you like (for example, to show all results except the selected item, or to filter similar items).

Remove a filter:

  1. Click Cancel next to an existing filter. You cannot remove the search type or date filters.

Modify a filter:

  1. Click the filter and reset the values.

Filtering your data by query or URL can affect the totals.

Filter by multiple items

You can filter your results by multiple queries or URLs. You can filter to show data that match your choices, or all data that doesn't match your choices.

If you want to see data for multiple devices, search types, countries, or search appearance types, you can do a comparison, which is limited to two items.

There are two ways to filter by multiple queries or URLs:

Items containing / Items not containing

The query and URL filters allow you to enter a substring to match in the query or URL. You can then filter the data to include only queries or URLs containing or not containing this substring. This is useful when all items you want to find contain the identical substring.

  1. Click the + NEW label in the filters row in the report.
  2. Choose either Queries or Pages.
  3. Choose Queries containing or URLs containing to match your provided string. Choose Queries not containing or URLs not containing to exclude your provided string.
  4. Enter a string to match. The match is not case-sensitive, but is otherwise exact, including any spaces. For example, "3 4" will match "123 456" but not "3456".
  5. Click Apply.

Regular expression search

Regular expression search enables you to match several substrings with significant differences. You can use this to filter for, or exclude, multiple queries or URLs that might contain differences, or contain variable sections.

  1. Click the + NEW label in the filters row in the report.
  2. Choose either Queries or Pages.
  3. Choose Custom (regex)
  4. Use the following regular expression, adding as many values as you like, separated by a vertical bar | and surrounding the whole expression with parentheses:
    • (<value 1> | <value 2> | <value 3> | ...)
    For example, to search for queries related to a recent World Cup, you might search for this, in order to combine very similar queries:
    • (the world cup|world cup|world cup 2023)
    • When filtering URLs, you might need to include only the end of the URL.
    • When filtering queries, don't use quotation marks, and consider filtering by all variations of a query that you see in your results.
  5. If you want to see all values except the specified values, choose Doesn't match regex. Otherwise, use the default Matches regex.
  6. Click Apply.

Case-sensitivity

All query and page URL filters are case-insensitive except for Exact URL, which is case-sensitive. This means URLs or queries containing/not containing/exact/Custom (regex) filters, but not Exact URL filters.

You can make regular expressions case-sensitive as described below.

Regular expression filter

If you choose the Custom (regex) filter, you can filter by a regular expression (a wildcard match) for the selected item. You can use regular expression filters for page URLs and user queries. The RE2 syntax is used.

  • You can choose whether to show strings that do match your regular expression or that don't match your regular expression. Default is to show strings that do match your regular expression.
  • The default matching is "partial match", which means that your regular expression can match anywhere in the target string unless you use ^ or $ to require matching from the start or end of the string, respectively.
  • Default regex matching is not case-sensitive. You can prepend "(?-i)" to the beginning of your regular expression string for case-sensitive matches. Example: (?-i)AAA will match https://example.com/AAA but not https://example.com/aaa
  • Invalid regular expression syntax will return no matches.
  • Regular expression matching is tricky; try out your expression on a live testing tool, or read the full RE2 syntax guide
Common regular expressions

Here are a few basic regular expressions:

Wildcard Description
.

Matches any single character.

  • "m.n" matches "men" and "man" but not "meen"
[characters]

Matches any single item inside [ ].

  • "c[aie]t" matches "cat", "cit", and "cet"
  • "i[o0-9]n" matches "ion" and "i7n" but not "ian"
*

Matches the preceding letter or pattern zero or more times:

  • "fo*d" matches "fd", "fod", "food", and "foooooooood"
  • "https*://example" matches http://example" and "https://example"
+

Matches the preceding letter or pattern 1 or more times

  • "fo+d" matches "fod", "food", "foooooooood" but not "fd"
|

OR operator, matches either the expression before or after the | operator.

  • "New York|San Francisco" matches both "I love New York" and "I love San Francisco"
\d

One digit 0-9

  • "\d\d\d abc" matches "123 abc"
\D

Any non-digit (for example, any letter, or characters such as + or , or ?)

  • "\D\D\D 123" matches "aaa 123" but not "123 123"
\s

Any whitespace (tab, space)

  • "1\s2\s3" matches "1 2 3"
\S

Any non-whitespace.

  • (\S)+ matches "fire" "and" "ice" in the string "fire and ice", but none of the spaces, and not the whole string.
(?-i)

Specifies case-sensitive matches for all following characters.

  • "(?-i)AAA will match https://example.com/AAA but not https://example.com/aaa
^

At the start of your expression, limits matches to the start of the target string.

  • "^example" matches "example" but not "an example"
  • "example" matches both "example" and "an example"

Comparing groups

You can compare data between two values in any one grouping dimension, whether or not it is the currently selected grouping. For example, when grouped by Query you can compare clicks between two dates (this week vs last week), or two countries (USA vs France). Comparing by page or search appearance can change the metric calculation for CTR, impressions, and clicks. When comparing values for a single metric, the results table will display a Difference column to compare values in each row.

To compare group data:

  1. Comparison is managed by filters (for example, Date or Search type). Either edit an existing filter or click New to add a new filter.
  2. In the filter properties dialog box, choose Compare.
  3. Add the dimensions or times to compare, and click Apply.
  4. You can have only one comparison at a time. Adding a new comparison filter will replace an existing comparison. For example, if you are comparing dates and then add a comparison between countries, the country comparison will replace the date comparison.

Some useful comparisons:

  • Sort by difference to see queries with significant change from the previous week.
  • Compare total searches on your mobile site to mobile searches on your desktop site. If you aren't using a Domain property, you'll need to open a separate Performance report for each site and compare searches from mobile devices on your desktop site (example.com) to all searches on your mobile site (m.example.com).
You can compare data in only one dimension at a time (Dates, Queries, and so on). Adding a new comparison in another grouping dimension will remove the existing comparison. For example, if you are comparing clicks for this week versus last week (Date), then add a comparison between US and Japan (Country), the date range will reset to the default.

If you compare two groups, and a value is very rare in one group but not rare in the other group, the rare group will show ~ for that row to indicate that the number is not available. For example, if you compare query impressions between Germany and Thailand, the result row for "Deutsche Bundesbank" will probably show an impression number for Germany, and a ~ (not available) for Thailand. This is because the impression count for Thailand is at the end of a very long tail of results. It does not necessarily mean zero, but it is far down the list for that group. However, if you filter by the rare value (in this example "Deutsche Bundesbank"), you should see data values for both dimensions.

More about the data

The Performance report counts data independently for each unique property. That is, data are counted separately for each of the following:

  • https://example.com/
  • http://example.com/
  • http://m.example.com/

However, if you use a Domain property, all data from the same domain is combined, for both http and https.

The data does not include impressions or clicks from ads in Google Search that lead to your website.

Last updated date

The Last updated date on the report shows the last date for which the report has any data.

How are clicks, impressions, and position calculated?

Read details about how clicks, impressions, and position are counted and calculated.

Preliminary data

The newest data in the Search Performance report is sometimes preliminary – this means that the data might change slightly before it is confirmed. Preliminary data is usually less than three days old; at some point, all preliminary data is confirmed. Preliminary data is indicated when you hover over it in the chart.

Preliminary data is included in both the chart and the tables for Search performance, as well as the Performance chart in the Search Console Overview page.

Data discrepancies

You might see a few kinds of data discrepancies in Search Console

Discrepancies between chart totals and table totals

You can see differences between the chart totals and the table totals for several reasons:

General:

  • When you add a Page or Search Appearance filter, you can sometimes see an increase (sometimes a very large increase) in the click and impression data shown in and above the chart. This is because these filters cause your data to be aggregated (grouped) by page rather than by property. (Note that in rare cases the totals can drop rather than rise for technical reasons.) Conversely, removing all Page and Search Appearance filters from the report can show a decrease in click and impression totals, as all data is then aggregated (grouped by) property rather than URL.
  • When filtering by page or query, the "matches" and "does not match" totals might not add up to the unfiltered total. For example, adding the totals for "Queries containing:mouse" and "Queries not containing:mouse" might not equal the total value when no query filters are applied. This is because anonymized queries are omitted, and data is truncated due to serving limitations.
  • In some unusual cases, when you filter on a page or query, you might see a discrepancy between chart and table data. This is because the data is truncated differently, depending on the grouping and filtering combinations used. In these cases, when the totals differ, the actual total will be at least the larger value shown (and possibly more).
  • Adding an ineffective filter (such as filtering results to your site's root URL - "example.com/") can cause discrepancies for various reasons.

Chart totals higher:

  • The table can show a maximum of 1,000 rows, so some rows might be omitted.
  • When viewing by query, anonymized (rare) results are omitted from the table.
  • Individual daily totals can omit rare queries.

Table totals higher:

  • When the table is grouped by page or search appearance, the table totals are grouped by URL but the chart totals are still grouped by property. Therefore, if a single property appears multiple times in a single search, it count as 1 result in the chart but multiple results in the table.
  • Some search appearances are subcategories of others. For example, Job listing is a subcategory of Rich result, so the same result will be listed in both rows.

Discrepancies between Search Console and other tools

Search Console data can differ slightly from the data displayed in other tools. Possible reasons for this include the following:

  • To protect user privacy, the Performance report doesn't show all data. For example, we might not track some queries that are made a very small number of times or those that contain personal or sensitive information.
  • Some processing of our source data might cause these stats to differ from stats listed in other sources (for example, to eliminate duplicates). However, these changes should not be significant.
  • There can be a lag between when the numbers are calculated and when they are visible to site owners. Although data gets published in intervals, we continually collect it. Normally, however, collected data should be available in 2-3 days.
  • Time zones matter. The Performance report tracks daily data according to local time in California, where data for each day is labeled according to the local time in California. If your other systems use different time zones, your daily views may not match exactly. For example, Google Analytics shows time in the site owner's local time zone.
  • Some tools, such as Google Analytics, track traffic only from users who have enabled JavaScript in their browser.
  • Downloaded data unavailable/not a number values. If you download the data in the report, any values shown as ~ or - (not available/not a number) on the report will be zeros in the downloaded data.

Aggregating data by property (site) vs by page

Sometimes data in this report is aggregated by property, and sometime it is aggregated by page.

Aggregated by property means that all results for the same query that point to the same Search Console property are counted once in total. So if a query contains two URLs from the same site (example.com/petstore/giraffe and example.com/recipes/pumpkin_pie), this is counted as one impression when results are aggregated by property.

Aggregated by page means that each unique URL in a search result is counted once, even if they point to the same page. In this case, if a query contains two URLs from the same site (example.com/petstore/giraffe and example.com/recipes/pumpkin_pie), this is counted as two impressions.

Chart data is aggregated by property.

Table data is aggregated by property except when grouped by page or search appearance, when it is grouped by page.

When aggregating data by property, the site credited with the data is the site containing the canonical URL of the target of the search result link.

More details

  • For impressions, if a property appears twice on a search results page when aggregating by property, it counts as a single impression; if grouping by page or search appearance, each unique page is counted separately.
  • For clicks, if a property appears twice in search results when grouped by property, and the user clicks on one link, backs up, then clicks the other link, it counts as a single click, since the final destination is the same site.
  • For position, when aggregating by property, the topmost position of your property in search results is reported; when grouped by page or search appearance, the topmost position of the page in search results is reported.
  • For click through rate, because of the different accounting methods, the click-through rate and average position are higher when aggregating by property if multiple pages from the same site appear in the search results.

Example:

Imagine that search results for "fun pets for children" returns only the following three results, all from the same property:
petstore.example.com/monkeys
petstore.example.com/ponies
petstore.example.com/unicorns

If one user saw this set of results and clicked on each of the links, here are the metrics shown in Search Console:

Metric Aggregated by property Aggregated by page
CTR

100%

All clicks for a site are combined

33% per URL

3 pages shown, 1/3 of clicks for each page

Average position

1

This is the highest position from the site in the results

2 for each URL

(1 + 2 + 3) / 3 = 2

Impressions 1 for the property 1 for each URL

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