At a glance
| Metric | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Clicks | How many times people clicked through to your site from Google. |
| Impressions | How many times your site was shown in Google results. |
| CTR | The share of impressions that became clicks. |
| Avg. position / Pos.Avg | Where your site ranks on average. 1 is the best. |
| Pos.now | The position on the latest day that has data. |
| Position change | How much a position moved compared with the dates you compare with. |
| ATH | The best position a query reached on a single day. |
| Top ranking page | The page of your site that Google showed most for a query. |
| AI searches | Searches of five words or more. |
Clicks and impressions
A click is counted when someone clicks a link to your site in Google results. An impression is counted when a link to your site is shown in the results, even if the person never scrolls down to it.
Both numbers come straight from Google Search Console. They are counted for the dates you picked.
CTR
CTR is the click-through rate: clicks divided by impressions. A page with 50 clicks and 1,000 impressions has a CTR of 5%.
For a whole report, CTR is the total clicks divided by the total impressions. It is not the average of the CTR of each row, so a query with few impressions does not distort it.
Low-CTR recommendations compare a query with other non-brand queries on the same site in a similar position group. The rule’s sample thresholds, evidence and conditional click estimate are explained in that guide.
Near-top-three recommendations assess queries in positions 8–20 against this site’s non-brand queries with actual average positions 1–3. Their impact estimate assumes reaching the top three and matching those peers’ CTR.
Page click-drop recommendations compare a page’s clicks over the latest 28 completed days with the 28 days before. They split the click change into an impression part and a CTR part that add up exactly to it, and they describe what changed without claiming a cause.
Average position
The position is where your site appears in the results. 1 is the best: the first result.
An average position of 5.8 means that your site was shown, on average, somewhere between fifth and sixth. It is an average, not a fixed rank. The same search can show a different order to different people, depending on their location, their device and their search history, so a single query can have positions all over the place on the same day.
The average over a period gives more weight to the days when your site was seen more, which is how Search Console works it out too.
Because a lower number is better, a position that goes down is good news. Arrows and colors follow that: a falling position is green, a rising one is red.
When you filter by position, the number is rounded to a whole rank, the way people say it: 5.82 counts as 6th.
Pos.now and Pos.Avg
The queries table shows two positions side by side:
- Pos.Avg is the average over the dates you picked.
- Pos.now is the position on the latest day that has data. It is not an average. Search Console runs a few days behind, so “now” means the newest day Google has numbers for. If a query had no impressions that day, the most recent day within the last 14 days that did is used. Point at it to see which day it is.
Together they show direction. A query whose Pos.now is clearly lower than its Pos.Avg has just slipped and may need a look.
The Recommendations report looks for this for you. Position-drop recommendations compare a query’s last 3 completed days with the 25 days before them and ignore a fall that is within the query’s ordinary variation. They use completed days only, so they can differ from Pos.now, which may include the newest preliminary day.
Position change
Next to a position is an arrow and a number: how much the position moved compared with the dates you chose to compare with.
- For Pos.Avg, the change compares the average of both periods.
- For Pos.now, the change compares it with the position on the last day of the compared dates.
ATH
ATH stands for all-time high. It is the best position the query had on any single day within the dates you picked. Since 1 is the best there is, an ATH can never be below 1.
If the daily numbers are not available for a query, the table shows a dash instead of guessing.
Top ranking page
For each query, the page of your site that Google showed most for it in the dates you picked (on a tie, the one clicked most).
Changes and comparison
Every widget and table can compare the dates you picked with another period. The change of clicks, impressions and CTR is shown as a percentage. A query that had no impressions in the compared dates is marked New.
Trend lines
The small lines next to the numbers show how each one moved day by day. They are smoothed with a rolling average, so one odd day does not dominate the picture. On a long period the line averages more days than on a short one.
Metric history
Separate history charts can show daily clicks, impressions, CTR and average position together on your report. The average position chart is shown by default. Open Settings → Styling → Sections to enable the clicks, impressions and CTR history charts, move them, or hide them again.
Each chart has its own metric selector in the header, display settings and zoom interval. Your chart choices and display settings are saved for that report. CTR uses each day’s clicks divided by impressions; average position is weighted by impressions.
Use the navigator below a chart to zoom into an interval. Its two handles adjust the beginning and end; moving the selected area keeps its length. Zooming one chart leaves the other charts and report dates unchanged. When the intervals differ, Use these dates in report updates the whole report to that chart’s selected dates.
Drag the highlighted window directly to move it, or drag an edge grip to resize it. For a short interval, the start grip sits at the top and the end grip at the bottom, leaving the middle available for moving the window. You can also use arrow keys for one day, Shift and an arrow for one week, and Home or End to reach a limit.
Missing or unfinished days appear as gaps, and days without impressions have no CTR or position value. Clicks and impressions can be zero on a completed day. The chart does not fill gaps with estimated values.
AI searches
An AI search is a search of five words or more. The AI searches report counts the impressions of these searches and how many different ones there are. See Dashboards & reports.
Note: the words are counted the way they were typed, separated by spaces. A search of four words is not an AI search, however conversational it sounds.