Near-top-three recommendations identify non-brand queries with an average position from 8 to 20 and enough impressions to merit attention. Their potential extra clicks are assessed against the CTR of this site’s non-brand queries already ranking in the top three.
To see these queries together under Strengthen the page’s content and relevant internal links, open the site’s Recommendations report: press the lightbulb with a number in the top bar, or add the report to the site with Add report, From a template, Recommendations (see Dashboards & reports). Low-CTR recommendations have their own action group. A query can appear in both groups, with separate evidence and estimates for each action. Pages whose clicks have fallen are covered separately by page click-drop recommendations.
What to do with a finding
Review the ranking page’s content against the query’s intent. Strengthen useful explanations, fill relevant gaps, and review internal links from related pages so the page’s purpose is clear. Track its position and CTR after your changes.
The data identifies an opportunity to investigate. It does not establish the cause of the current ranking, and content or internal-link changes do not guarantee a top-three ranking.
The evidence interval
The rule uses 28 consecutive completed days of Google Search Console web search data. Both site totals and query data must have been fetched and marked final for every day. The evidence dates are stored with the finding and stay fixed when you change the report’s date picker.
Preliminary days are excluded. If newer final data leaves a gap in the required coverage, the calculation waits for complete coverage. A completed interval ending more than seven days before the calculation date is also treated as stale.
Existing findings can remain visible while coverage is stale. A short warning appears when a listed finding belongs to a rule that needs newer data. Findings update automatically after syncing brings in complete data. Opening a query from the list applies the finding’s saved evidence dates to the query table.
The site’s top-three benchmark
Candidates must have an actual impression-weighted average position from 8 to 20, inclusive. Peers must have an actual average position from 1 to 3, inclusive. A peer averaging 3.1 is excluded even if its rounded position is 3.
Brand queries are excluded from candidates and peers. The rule uses configured brand terms, or terms inferred from the site’s domain when no terms have been configured. The query being assessed does not contribute to its own benchmark.
The target CTR is total clicks divided by total impressions across the eligible top-three peers. This gives more weight to queries with more impressions. It is not an average of each peer’s CTR and is not a generic industry CTR curve.
When a query qualifies
Every condition below must be met before a finding is saved.
| Condition | Current rule |
|---|---|
| Candidate position | Actual average position 8–20. |
| Candidate sample | At least 100 impressions, or 0.1% of the site’s total impressions in the interval, whichever is larger. The proportional threshold is rounded up. |
| Target sample | At least three non-brand peers with actual average positions 1–3. Each peer must meet the same impression threshold. |
| CTR difference | The candidate’s CTR is at least 30% below the top-three peer CTR, measured relative to that peer CTR. |
| Potential impact | Matching the top-three peer CTR would produce at least five extra clicks in the evidence interval. |
| Sampling uncertainty | The upper end of the candidate’s 95% Wilson CTR interval is below the lower end of the peers’ interval. |
If the site has too few eligible top-three peers, this rule produces no findings. A site can have usable low-CTR findings while lacking enough top-three peers for this rule.
Reading the estimate and evidence
Potential extra clicks are calculated as:
Candidate impressions × (top-three peer CTR − candidate CTR)
For example, 2,000 impressions at a 2% CTR produce 40 clicks. A top-three peer CTR of 5% implies a conditional difference of 60 clicks for the same impressions and interval. The candidate still needs the required sample, peers and statistical separation to qualify.
This estimate assumes the candidate reaches the top three and matches those peers’ CTR, while impressions stay the same. It is not a forecast of ranking gains or future traffic and does not estimate the likelihood of reaching the top three.
Each query entry shows its average position, top-three CTR comparison and the conditional click estimate for that group’s action. Why this recommendation? reveals the query and peer sample sizes, each conditional estimate and its assumptions. Estimates from different actions are separate scenarios and are not added together.
Open View query to inspect that query in the table over the matching evidence dates. When findings for the same query have different saved intervals, separate links keep those dates distinct.
Each finding’s priority is estimated extra clicks × evidence strength. Action groups and the queries within them are ordered by their highest individual priority, without adding priorities together. Each group shows ten entries at first. Show more adds the next ten, and the button says how many it adds, at most ten (for example “Show 7 more queries”). The number on the lightbulb counts each affected query and page once, however many groups it is in, and a fall of the whole site once. Evidence strength is a conservative score from 0.5 to 1 based on the sample, peer diversity and separation between CTR intervals. It is not a probability of ranking improvement or gaining clicks.
Which findings appear
All active findings appear in the list. The report has no dismissal or snooze controls, and an old dismissed or snoozed account state does not hide a finding. If the query no longer qualifies in a later completed calculation, the finding becomes resolved and leaves the list.
Saved results and limitations
Calculations run after sync. The findings, rule version, threshold values and numerical evidence are saved. Opening the report reads the saved results and does not run the rules again or change Search Console data.
The baseline uses the query rows Google makes available. Google omits anonymized queries from the API, so available query totals can be smaller than site totals. Missing queries cannot be assessed. See Google’s explanation of Search Console data filtering and Data & limits.