Search Console Performance report
What is Search Console Performance report?
The Search Console Performance report is the part of Google Search Console that shows how your site performs in Google Search. It reports four metrics, clicks, impressions, CTR and average position, and lets you break them down by query, page, country, device, search appearance and date, for up to 16 months.
There are separate Performance reports for Search results, Discover and Google News, where the site is eligible. In the Search results report you can pick a search type (web, image, video or news), filter with exact text or regular expressions, compare two date ranges, and add annotations to the chart. Query groups and a branded queries filter were added in late 2025 for eligible properties.
Some data is held back. Queries made by very few people are anonymised for privacy and do not appear in the Queries table, though they still count in the chart totals, so the table usually adds up to less than the total. The interface shows up to 1,000 rows; the API and bulk export give more.
Why Search Console Performance report matters for SEO
It is the only first-party view of which queries bring people to your site from Google. Nearly every SEO question, from “which pages lost traffic?” to “what should we write next?”, starts here.
The comparisons are its strength. Comparing the last 28 days with the previous period, or year on year, by query or page shows exactly where gains and losses came from.
How to use the Search Console Performance report
- Open Performance > Search results and turn on all four metrics.
- Set the date range to the last 3 months, or use Compare for period-on-period changes.
- Use the Queries tab to see what people searched, and the Pages tab to see which URLs earned clicks. Click a row to filter everything else by it.
- Filter out branded queries to see the effect of SEO work more clearly.
- Look for queries with high impressions and positions 5 to 20, and pages with a low CTR for their position.
- Export the data, or connect a tool that stores it, before it ages out after 16 months.
Search Console Performance report example
^(who|what|when|where|why|how|can|does|is|are)\bSearch Console Performance report FAQ
Why don’t the query rows add up to the total clicks?
Rare queries are anonymised to protect privacy. They are counted in the totals but not shown as rows, so the table usually adds up to less.
Can I see more than 1,000 rows?
Not in the interface. Use the Search Console API, which returns more rows per request, or the bulk data export to BigQuery for everything.
Related SEO terms
Google Search Console is Google’s free tool that shows how your site performs in Google Search and flags indexing, security and spam problems.
Clicks count how many times someone clicked a search result that took them to your site. Search Console reports them by query, page, device and country.
Impressions count how often a link to your site appeared in search results that someone viewed, whether or not they clicked it.
Click-through rate (CTR) is the share of impressions that become clicks: clicks divided by impressions. It shows how often searchers choose your result.
Average position is the mean of your topmost ranking each time your site appeared in Google results, as reported in Search Console.
Striking distance keywords are queries a page ranks for just off the top spots, roughly positions 5-20, where small improvements can bring big gains.
Google Discover is a personalised feed of articles and videos in the Google app and on mobile, shown by interest without a search query.