What impressions, clicks and position mean

Search Console's Performance report uses four numbers. An impression is a time Google showed a link to your site. A click is a time someone followed it. Click-through rate (CTR) is clicks divided by impressions. Average position is roughly where your link appeared, averaged. Each has a catch, covered below. The definitions come from Google's own help page.

What counts as an impression?

Google counts an impression when a user "has seen (or potentially seen)" a link to your site. On an ordinary results page, being on the page is enough, even if the searcher never scrolls down to you. In a carousel or a section that has to be expanded, the link must be scrolled into view or opened.

So impressions measure how often Google offered you, not how often a person read your result. A page at position 9 collects impressions from many searches where nobody scrolled that far.

What counts as a click?

Any click that takes the searcher to your site. Clicks that keep them inside Google, such as tapping a suggested related search, do not count.

How is click-through rate worked out?

Clicks divided by impressions. 30 clicks from 1,000 impressions is a 3% CTR.

CTR depends heavily on position:

A low CTR on a page that ranks 15th is expected; the same CTR at position 2 is a problem worth looking into.

What does average position really mean?

For each search, Google takes the topmost position any link to your site held, then averages it across every search you appeared in. Two things follow:

• It is not a live ranking. A position of 8.4 over three months could be a page that sat at 8 throughout, or one that swung between 3 and 20.
• It blends searches unless you filter. A page's average position mixes every search it was shown for. Open the Queries tab, or filter to one search, before reading anything into it.

Position is only recorded when there is an impression. If you were never shown, there is no position, and Search Console shows a dash.

Why don't the totals add up?

The chart at the top of the report and the table below it can disagree. Google explains that data grouped by search, country, device or date is counted per site, and data grouped by page is counted per page, so a search that showed two of your pages counts once in one view and twice in the other (Google's help). Some rare searches are also left out of the table to protect privacy.

Which number should you watch?

For a new site, impressions first: they show Google has started offering your pages at all. Once they grow, watch average position for individual searches, because that is where you spot the searches you almost rank for.