Google Search Console shows how your site performs in Google's own results: the searches you appear for, how many people saw you, how many clicked, and which of your pages Google left out of its index. It won't show competitors or rankings you don't have yet. Read it once a month on a three-month window, filter by page before drawing conclusions, and fix pages with high impressions and few clicks before you write anything new.
What Search Console measures
The Performance report counts four things. An impression means your link appeared in a result someone saw, or could have seen. A click means someone left Google for your page. Click-through rate (CTR) is clicks divided by impressions. Average position is the topmost position your site held for each query, averaged across all of them. Those definitions come from Google's own help pages, and each number answers a different question.
Plenty of owners log in, glance at the graph and close the tab. The useful part sits one filter deeper.
Recent data is preliminary
The report now offers a 24-hour view with hourly data points, and Google marks those figures as preliminary. Treat the last day or two as provisional, and judge changes on weekly or monthly views. New pages can take days or weeks to show up at all, so an empty row for a page you published yesterday usually comes down to timing.
Pick the date range on purpose
The report opens on the past three months, which suits a monthly review. For trends, widen it to 12 or 16 months. A page that averages position 8 this quarter can look stable while the longer view shows it held position 3 in January and has slipped since March, and that calls for a different fix. In December 2025 Google also added weekly and monthly views to the chart, which smooth out day-to-day noise.
Reading the Queries tab
Most of the useful information lives here. Filter by page first, whether that's your homepage, your main service page or one article, then look at the queries that page appears for, sorted by impressions.
You're answering two questions: what is Google sending to this page, and does the page answer what those searchers want? You'll find queries you never targeted. Some carry buying intent, and some show the page ranking for something next to your offer. Both are worth knowing.
Split branded from non-branded
Since November 2025, Search Console has had a branded queries filter. Branded queries contain your brand name, its misspellings or your own products, and they tell you about reputation. Non-branded queries show whether search is reaching people who didn't know you yet, so that's the view to watch for growth.
Read position, impressions and CTR together
No single number tells you much on its own. A query in positions 1 to 3 with a weak CTR points at the title and description. A query in positions 4 to 10 with plenty of impressions sits close to the top, and a better section or a few internal links can move it. Positions 11 to 20 with real impressions deserve work before you create anything new.
Published CTR studies disagree widely, and AI Overviews have pushed click rates down on many queries. Compare your own pages at similar positions against each other instead of against an industry table.
Pages with impressions and almost no clicks
These pages are indexed and showing up, and people see them and choose something else. That usually comes down to the title and description. Rewrite them to match what the searcher typed rather than the topic you think the page covers, then check again in 30 days.
Work With John
If your site isn't bringing in enquiries, that's fixable.
I work with US service businesses and B2B brands on SEO, websites and lead follow-up. On a free strategy call, I'll tell you what's holding your site back, without a sales pitch.
Book a free strategy callThe Pages tab
Switch to Pages and sort by impressions. Your top rows are your most visible pages in Google, so check their CTR first. A homepage with 15,000 impressions and a 1.8% CTR earned 270 clicks, and a sharper title and description is the cheapest way to raise that.
Change one thing at a time.
The indexing report
Under Indexing, open Pages and read the reason given for each page that isn't indexed. "Crawled, currently not indexed" means Google fetched the page and chose not to index it, often because it's thin, duplicated or not useful enough yet. "Discovered, currently not indexed" means Google knows the URL exists but hasn't fetched it, which on a small site usually means low priority, so stronger internal links help. The fixes differ. For a single URL, the URL Inspection tool at the top of Search Console gives the current answer.
AI Overviews and AI Mode
In June 2026, Google added reports for impressions in its generative AI features: AI Overviews and AI Mode in Search, plus Discover. They show impressions only, with no clicks, and the same data stays inside the main Performance report. Use them to see which of your pages Google draws on in AI answers, then compare those pages with the ones that win clicks.
A monthly review that moves things
Once a month, open the Performance report on a three-month window, filter to non-branded queries and sort pages by impressions. Make two lists.
List one: pages in positions 4 to 15 with real impressions. Improve the content, the internal links and the title on these before creating anything new.
List two: pages in positions 1 to 3 with a weak CTR. Rewrite the title and description only, and leave the content alone for now.
Work list one first, then list two, and repeat the next month. Fixing what already ranks usually pays off faster than chasing new keywords, because Google has already shown it will put those pages in front of people.
Once you can read the report, the next question is whether that traffic turns into clients. Connecting Search Console data to your CRM shows which queries bring in revenue as well as clicks.
