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.

OPEN THE PERFORMANCE REPORT

Common tasks

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.

• Choose which metrics to see by selecting tabs above the chart. Metrics are the numbers to show (clicks, impressions, position, CTR).
• Choose which dimension to show by selecting a data grouping tab in the table. The dimension defines how data is grouped: by Page URL, by country, by query string, and so on.
• Optionally Filter your data by adding or changing filters.
• Optionally change the date range, if you want something different from the default value of the last three months. To change the date range, click the Date filter at the top of the report. When you choose the 24-hour view, the graph’s data points represent hours and include preliminary 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.

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.

Time zones

When selecting the 24-hour view, the data is shown in your local time. Local time zone is based on your browser’s settings. In all other options, dates are shown in Pacific Time (PT).

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 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.

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).

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 Performance report is sometimes preliminary, which means it’s still being collected and will change in the next few hours.

The report shows complete days by default—preliminary data will only show when you explicitly choose a day with preliminary data in the date-range selector. Today’s data (and sometimes yesterday’s) is preliminary.

Unlike all other views, the 24-hour view where each data point represents an hour, shows preliminary data points by default.  

Preliminary data is displayed on the chart with a dotted line. When you hover the dotted line, a note appears to remind you that data is still being collected. When data points with preliminary data are selected, the tables will also display information from those days/hours.

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.
• Data from the last 2 days may be preliminary. 
• Time zones matter. In all views (except the 24-hour view), the Performance report tracks and labels daily data in Pacific Time (PT). If your other systems use different time zones, your daily views may not match exactly. For example, the site owner can set the reporting time zone in Google Analytics.
• 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:

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: