Search Console in plain words

The report most people open first is the Performance report. Below is a drawing of its layout, with six numbered labels. The notes under it say what each part counts, in Google’s terms.

1. The four totals. Clicks counts the visits that came from someone selecting your result in Google Search. Impressions counts the times your site showed up in results. CTR, the click-through rate, is clicks divided by impressions. Average position is where your highest-placed result sat, on average. You turn each one on or off by selecting its heading above the chart.
2. The date range. By default the report shows the past three months. You can change the range, and choose hourly, daily, weekly or monthly points; Google suggests weekly or monthly for longer trends, because they smooth out dips such as weekends and holidays.
3. The dotted end of the line. The newest data can be preliminary: still being collected, and able to change over the next few hours. The chart draws it as a dotted line.
4. The tabs. Each tab groups the table a different way: queries (the words people searched), pages, countries, devices, search appearance and dates.
5. The search type. The filter switches between web, image, video and news searches. Web is split into text searches typed into Google and multimodal searches made with an image, such as through Google Lens.
6. The note on the chart. An annotation: a note you or Google can pin to a date. Search Console adds its own when there are data processing or reporting issues; you add yours to mark events like a launch or a fix.

Reading it without fooling yourself

Your search is not the searcher’s

A query can sit in your list and your site may still not appear when you try that search, since every set of results depends on when, where and on what device someone searches, and on what they searched recently.

The chart and the table can disagree

Chart totals can differ from table totals, usually because the chart counts by property while the table, on the Pages tab, counts by page. If two results from your site appear for one query, the chart counts that as a single impression.

Clicks down, impressions steady

Google’s guide to traffic drops says that if impressions stay the same but clicks fall, your page title and snippet may not be as good as they could be, or other sites may have a more appealing rich result.

Small moves are normal

Small changes in position can happen at any time, including moving back up without you doing anything, and Google recommends avoiding radical changes if a page is already performing well.

Low clicks on a search that matters

Where an important query gets few clicks, Google’s tip is to try a similar search yourself and look at which results may be taking them.

Exports turn gaps into zeros

When you export report data, values the report shows as ~ or - become zeros in the file.

The other reports, one line each

Page indexing

Which pages Google has indexed or tried to, and the reasons for those it hasn’t. Packet 05 sorts the reasons.

URL Inspection

One page at a time: its current index status, a live test, a way to request crawling, and the resources it loaded.

Sitemaps

Where you submit a sitemap and see whether Google could fetch and read it. Packet 03 builds one.

Manual actions

Shows any manual action against the site; with one, some or all of the site may not be shown in Google Search results.

Security issues

Warnings when Google finds that a site might have been hacked, or used in ways that could harm a visitor or their device.

Core Web Vitals

How pages perform based on real-world usage data.

Removals

A fast, temporary way to keep pages of your site out of Google’s results; each successful request holds for only about six months.

Insights

A simpler summary of the main numbers and of how traffic is moving. Google is rolling it out gradually, so not every account has it yet.

Sharing a view

The Share button on the Performance report creates a link to the current view only. It doesn’t give access to other pages of your property, or let the person with the link take any action. For lasting access, an owner adds the person as a user, at the level they need. Packet 01 covers the levels.