What do the search key figures show?

Where to find them

Open Search & keywords → All your searches or Positions. The Key figures card sits above the table, for the market you picked (or every market). Choose the period to compare with in Compare with: the past 7, 30, 60 or 90 days, the previous month or all time. Press the ⓘ beside any figure for what it means.

The figures

• Average position: where your searches appear on average, counting only those found. Lower is better, so a fall shows in green.
• Search visibility: how much of the clicks your searches could bring you get now, from the share of clicks each position usually gets. 100% would be first place everywhere.
• In the top 10: the share of checked searches on page one.
• Position groups: one bar with the searches in the top 1, 3, 5, 10, 30 and 100. Each group includes the ones above it.

Each figure shows its change over the period and a small chart of each day with checks. The change compares only the searches checked at both ends of the period, so it compares like with like; the card says which dates were compared.

Traffic forecast and traffic cost

Both are estimates and are marked so.

• Traffic forecast: each search's monthly searches times the share of clicks its position usually gets, added up. Searches without a known search volume are left out, and the card says how many had one.
• Traffic cost: what those visits would cost as ads, at the cost per click the search data reports, in its currency.

The share of clicks per position is a setting staff can change. The recommended values are rounded from public studies of Google click-through rates (about 30% for first place, falling to about 2% at tenth and 1% on page two). Real clicks also depend on the search and your title: connect Search Console to see them.

Good to know

• The figures work the same for any website platform: they come from Google's results, not from your site.
• Positions keeps Coverage and Spread for the market below the key figures.
• Staff choose the period the screens open with, the top-N cut-off and the position groups.