The reports provided by Google and how to use them

Of the many reports you will see in GSC is the "Performance" report.

The number of Clicks and Impressions can be seen for your site in general, the queries used to find the pages and the pages themselves - these are all very important things to know.

Popular Queries

These are important to gauge whether your pages are attracting the visitors that you intended. Indeed, there are those that you many want to discourage!

Also, due to the way that Google reports queries, both in Search Console and Analytics, the queries are more than likely NOT to appear in the GSC report. You will still see the pages getting Impressions but you will be unable to see what the visitor searched for to create that Impression.

When I was just using Google Analytics to monitor the activity of my websites I got increasingly frustrated by the fact that Queries (or Keywords) are not often reported for wenmasters to interpret.

Impressions

The fact that Impressions are recorded and no clicks result in these Impressions is an indication of the usefulness of Google Search Console. In addition Clicks are recorded where there are no Queries is another reason for the usefulness.

Taking this website as an example the analysis of Impressions and Clicks is somewhat "skewed". Pages getting Impreessions tend to be from those actually making searches for topics that I feature on this site. Those that gather Impressions for local pages are probably from those making searches for keywords that just happen to feature on my local pages.

For example, an Impression on my page Dundonald may have come from a search related to St. Mary's Church or the history of Tar Macadam. The Earl of Dundonald was an interesting side-story from the general history of Belchamp Walter.

Snap-shot September 2021

These are not neccesarily by number of occurances, rather more by relevance

Pages getting impressions:

These are more oriented to my local pages and seeing that Google does not often report search queries it is not easy to determine who is looking or how they are searching.

• richard_mann_3.html - richard_mann_3.html removed as I don't want it screwing with my stats
• downton_abbey_3.html
• belchamp_walter_wall_paintings_3.html
• cbb_3.html

Queries getting Impressions:

These are more related to general website/webmaster related topics. As I say, some need to be discouraged.

• indexed, not submitted in sitemap - finds page indexed_not_submitted_in_sitemap_3.html (actually its predecessor)
• village hall website designer

Earlier Page

I started this analysis on an earlier page, this is more a general analysis of "How to use the Google Search Console "Performance" reports".

This page needs to be converted and exanded using my new design layout. However, since the page was first written I have more experience using Google Search Console (GSC).

GSC is proving to be an invaluable tool for SEO. Seeing as this website has a dual target audience, Webmaster and website administration coupled with local pages relating to the history of the village, the new layout is proving to be an advantage in how I present my pages.