Read your search results the way you read a river timetable
Google Search Console shows how often your site appears in Google Search, how often people click through, and roughly where your links sit on the page. One day’s figures say very little. Read across months, the way you read a timetable, and the pattern starts to show.
Despite the name, this is not an SEO agency. It is an independent, plain-language guide to measuring search. It offers no services, recommends no agency and has no connection to Google. Every definition and threshold here is taken from Google’s own documentation, with the source linked at the foot of each page. General information, not business advice.
Six guides, in the order you’d need them
Start at stop one if Search Console is new to you. If traffic has just fallen, go straight to stop six.
- 01Search Console for beginnersAdding and verifying your site, permissions, and the first reports to open.Guide5 min
- 02Impressions, clicks, CTR and positionGoogle’s exact definitions, how position is averaged, and the small print.Definitions4 min
- 03Reading a performance report, sixteen months at a timeA worked, invented sixteen-month example, read month by month.Worked example5 min
- 04The Core Web Vitals reportLCP, INP and CLS, their thresholds, and how the report groups pages.Thresholds4 min
- 05What an SEO report should show, and what to ask of itA monthly report line by line, its limits, and questions to ask of it.Questions4 min
- 06When search traffic drops: a calm checklistGoogle’s side first, then your site, then the wider web.Checklist4 min
A pattern only shows over time
Brisbane’s CityCat and ferry services run across 22 terminals on the Brisbane River, from UQ St Lucia to Northshore Hamilton, and off-peak services usually run every 15 to 30 minutes. Nobody judges the river timetable by one late boat. You look along the row and down the column.
Search data asks for the same habit. Google’s own advice on average position is to watch how it changes over time, particularly sudden changes, as well as the figure itself. And when traffic falls, its first step inside the Performance report is to widen the view to 16 months, to see whether the same dip happens every year.
So this guide reads search results as a timetable: rows of months, columns of measures, and a route that winds, like the river, from your first login to the day something goes wrong.
Four numbers run down every row
The Performance report shows four metrics. These are Google’s definitions; stop two goes through the small print.
- Clicks
- People who came to your siteHow often someone clicked a link from Google to your site.
- Impressions
- Times your link was seenHow often someone saw a link to your site on Google.
- CTR
- Clicks ÷ impressionsThe share of impressions that became clicks.
- Position
- Roughly where you satWhere 1 is the topmost position; shown as an average across searches.
The spans Google’s tools work in
Each tool keeps its own clock. Knowing which one you’re reading saves a lot of false alarms.
- 24 hours
The Performance report’s 24-hour view, plotted by the hour. It includes preliminary data, which can still change.
- 28 days
The window behind each group value in the Core Web Vitals report.
- 3 months
What the Performance report shows by default.
- 16 months
The longest date range in the Performance report; Google suggests it for seeing a drop in context.
- 5 years
How long issues and updates stay on the Search Status Dashboard’s history pages.
The official timetables
This guide is a reading of other people’s documentation. These are the originals, and they change, so check them before acting.
- Search Console HelpGoogle’s help pages for every report in Search Console.
- Google Search CentralGoogle’s documentation for site owners, including its guide to debugging traffic drops.
- Google Search Status DashboardCurrent incidents and ranking updates affecting Google Search.
- web.devDefinitions and thresholds for the Core Web Vitals.