See which Google searches bring people to your site

Google Search Console is a free tool that shows you which searches bring visitors to your website. It tells you what people typed into Google, how often your site appeared in results, how many people clicked through, and where your site ranked. If you want to know whether your marketing efforts are working or where to focus next, this is where you look.

Key facts

• Search Console displays click and impression data from the past three months by default, but you can change the date range.
• You can view data grouped by search query, by page on your site, by country, or by other dimensions.
• The report shows four main metrics: total clicks, total impressions, average click-through rate, and average position in search results.
• You can download the data as a file to use in spreadsheets or share the report with team members or contractors.
• You can adjust the time view to hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly to spot patterns and trends.

How do I set up Search Console for my business?

Start by going to Google Search Console and signing in with the same Google account you use for your business. Add your website, then verify that you own it. Google will walk you through the verification process. Once that's done, you'll see the Performance report, which is the main dashboard showing your search data. If you've never used it before, Google provides a beginner guide right in the tool.

What should I look at first?

Open the Performance report and look at the default view, which shows the past three months. You'll see a chart with four lines or bars representing clicks, impressions, click-through rate, and position. The table below groups this data by search query. Start by reading through the queries listed. These are the searches that actually bring people to you. If you see searches you don't recognize or that don't match your business, you'll at least know what terms are driving traffic to your site.

How do I find out which pages on my site get the most traffic?

In the Performance report, look for tabs or buttons above the table. One of them will let you change the dimension from queries to pages. Click that tab. Now the table will show you which pages on your website get clicks from Google Search, ranked by traffic. This tells you which content is actually working. If your homepage gets almost all the clicks but your service pages get none, you know you need to improve how those pages appear in search results.

How do I spot trends over time?

Above the chart, you'll see a dropdown menu for time granularity. The default is usually daily or weekly. If you want to see patterns across months, switch to monthly view. If you're trying to debug a sudden drop in traffic, switch to hourly or daily view to pinpoint when it happened. You can also change the date range at the top of the report to compare this month to last month or this quarter to last quarter.

What if I need to share this data with someone else?

Click the Share button on the report. This creates a link that you can send to a team member, a marketing consultant, or an SEO specialist. They'll see exactly the view you're looking at—the same date range, metrics, and dimension. They won't be able to change your website or account settings, only view this report. If you want to keep a copy for your records or analyze the data in a spreadsheet, look for an Export button. Download it and you'll get both the chart and table data in a format you can open in Excel or Google Sheets.

What do the numbers actually mean?

Clicks are the number of times someone clicked your link in Google Search results. Impressions are the number of times your site appeared in results, whether the person clicked or not. Click-through rate is the percentage of impressions that turned into clicks—a higher rate means your title and description in search results are more compelling. Position is your average ranking. If your position is 5, you're appearing around the fifth result on average for that search. Higher positions in the rankings tend to get more clicks than lower ones.

Sources

• Performance report (Search results) - Google Search Console Help

They did the reporting. The writing and the opinions here are ours.