Performance report (Search results): About the data

This article provides details on how data is counted, aggregated, and updated in the Performance report.

Data aggregation by property vs. page

Data in this report is aggregated in one of two ways: by propertyor by page. Understanding the difference is key to interpreting your totals, especially when comparing chart data (aggregated by property) to table data (aggregated by page, if grouping by page or Search appearance). Learn more about dimensions and data groupings .

Aggregated by property

All results for the same query that point to the same Search Console property are counted once in total.

• Impressions:If a property appears twice on a Search results page, it counts as a single impression.
• Clicks:If a user clicks on one link, backs up, then clicks a second link from the same property, it counts as a single click.
• Position:The topmost position of your property in Search results is reported.

Aggregated by page

Each unique URL in a Search result is counted separately, even if they point to the same site.

• Impressions:Each unique page is counted separately.
• Clicks:If a user clicks on one link, backs up, then clicks a second link from the same site (but a different URL), it counts as two clicks, as each unique URL is counted separately.
• Position:The topmost position of that specific page in Search results is reported.

Because of these different counting methods, the click-through rate (CTR) and average position are generally higher when aggregating by property, if multiple pages from the same site appear in the Search results.This is because when aggregating by property, only the topmost position is reported and all impressions are counted as a single impression for the property.

Example:

Imagine that search results for "fun pets for children" returns only the following three results, all from the same property:

www.petstore.example.com/monkeys
www.petstore.example.com/ponies
www.petstore.example.com/unicorns

If one user saw this set of results and clicked on each of the links, here are the metrics shown in Search Console:

Metric	Aggregated by property	Aggregated by page
CTR	100% All clicks for a site are combined	33% per URL 3 pages shown, 1/3 of clicks for each page
Average position	1 This is the highest position from the site in the results	2 for each URL (1 + 2 + 3) / 3 = 2
Impressions	1for the property	1for each URL

Data status and freshness

Preliminary data

The newest data in the Performance report is sometimes preliminary, meaning it’s still being collected and may change in the next few hours.

• Preliminary data is displayed on the chart with a dotted line.
• The report shows complete days by default; preliminary data will only show when you explicitly choose a day with preliminary data in the date-range selector (usually today's data and sometimes yesterday's).
• The last updateddate on the report shows the last date for which the report has any data.

Exporting report data

Many reports provide an export button to export the report data. Both chart and table data are exported. Values shown as either ~ or - in the report (not available/not a number) will be zeros in the downloaded data.