Queries

The Queries report lists every search term Search Console recorded for your property in the selected range: how often your site appeared (impressions), how often it was clicked, the click-through rate and the average position. With a comparison on, each row also shows the earlier period's ranking and the change in clicks and impressions. Use it to find the searches that drive traffic, the ones slipping away and the ones nearly in reach.

Reading the table

The header shows how many queries the range holds. Columns are Query, Clicks, Impressions, CTR (switched on from the column button), Avg Ranking and, when comparing, Prev Ranking. Sort by any column; the default is clicks, highest first. Winning and Losing keep the queries whose clicks rose or fell.

Next to the filters, a note such as "~N% data not shown" appears when the visible queries cover clearly fewer clicks than the property total. That gap is Google's privacy filtering: a query searched by too few people over a two-to-three month period is never shown as a row, although its clicks still count in the totals (Google's explanation). Long-tail sites lose more to it than brands with a few big terms.

Average position is Google's figure: for each query, the topmost position your site held when it was shown, averaged over the times it was shown (Google's definitions).

Query detail

Click a query to open Query detail: headline numbers with their change, a daily trend, the Pages ranking for this query, and the countries and devices it came from. Two or more of your pages sharing one query's clicks is a sign of cannibalisation; a page you did not expect at the top may be the one Google prefers. Each page links on to its own detail view.

Practical uses

• Striking distance. Sort by position and look at queries averaging between 4 and 20 with plenty of impressions. A modest improvement can lift them into the top few results, and Page Poaching builds a report around exactly this.
• Questions people ask. The Questions quick filter keeps queries that open with a question word. Each is a candidate for an answer page, and the content engine plans its topics from searches like these on its own.
• Branded and non-branded. Set your brand terms under Property Setup → Branded Keywords, then use the branded filter to see how much of your search traffic needs your name to find you.
• Low CTR. Queries with many impressions and few clicks at a good position point to titles and descriptions that do not earn the click; CTR Benchmark compares each one with the usual rate for its position.

Keeping queries for later

Save to keyword library stores the queries left after your search and filters, up to 500 at a time, in Research → Keyword Research → Keyword Library for research and tracking. For machine-made and conversational searches in the list, see Query Analysis.