Greek Web Masters

Search Queries

by on Apr.07, 2009, under Greek Web Masters

The Search Queries page provides information about Google Web Search queries that have returned pages from your site, including:

Available Search Queries data

  • Queries: The total number of Google Web Search queries that returned pages from your site results over the given period. (These numbers can be rounded, and may not be exact.)

  • Query: A list of the top search queries that returned pages from your site.

  • Impressions: The number of times pages from your site were viewed in search results, and the percentage increase/decrease in the daily average impressions compared to the previous period. (The number of days per period defaults to 30, but you can change it at any time.)

  • Clicks: The number of times your site’s listing was clicked in search results for a particular query, and the percentage increase/decrease in the average daily clicks compared to the previous period.

  • CTR (clickthrough rate): The percentage of impressions that resulted in a click to your site, and the percentage increase/decrease in the daily average CTR compared to the previous period.

  • Avg. position: The average position of your site on the search results page for that query, and the change compared to the previous period. Green indicates that your site is climbing in search results.

By default, the Search Queries page shows combined query stats for all search types. To see stats for other Google search properties, click the All drop-down and click Image, Mobile (smartphone) (for example, iPhone, Palm, Android), Mobile, Video, or Web. The same query can appear in several different views, so the combined number of queries for each search type may not match the number of queries shown for All.

To see additional information about a query, such as the position of your page on the Google search results page, and the URL of the page returned by the search query, click the query. The Query Details page provides list of pages on your site that appeared in search results for that query, along with impressions, clicks, and CTR. In addition, the Position table shows how often your site appeared in a specific position in search results. For example, if Position 1 has 36 impressions, it means that there were 36 searches for the query in which your site was the very first site listed in search results.

Note:The data on the Query Detail page reflects any filters you set on the main Search Queries page.

How to use Search Queries data

This data can provide valuable information about your site. We recommend the following steps:

  • Review the Query list for expected keywords.

  • If keywords you expect to see don’t appear, your site may not have enough useful content relevant to those keywords. If unexpected words (like “Viagra” or “casino”) appear, it’s likely that your site has been hacked.

  • Compare Impressions and CTR to identify how you can improve your content. (Tip: Sort by Change to see queries with significant new activity.)

    There are several steps you can take to make your content appear more compelling so that users click your site in search results pages. Your page title appears in the results, so make sure it’s relevant and accurate. Google can display the text in your pages’ meta descriptions in search results, so review your meta descriptions.

  • If you have an AdWords account, review the Query list for keyword ideas. (Looking for more ideas? Check out the Publisher’s Guide to Toolbar.)

About Search Queries data

The data we display may differ from the data displayed in other tools, such as Google Analytics. Possible reasons for this include:

  • Webmaster Tools does some additional data processing—for example, to eliminate duplicates and visits from robots—that may cause your stats to differ from stats listed in other sources.

  • Some tools, such as Google Analytics, track traffic only from users who have enabled JavaScript in their browser.

  • Some tools define “keywords” differently. For example, the Keywords tool in Google Adwords displays the total number of user queries for that keyword across the web. The Webmaster Tools Search Queries page lists shows the total number of keyword search queries in which your page’s listing was seen in search results, and this is a smaller number.

  • There may be a lag between when the numbers are calculated and when they are visible to webmasters—although data gets published in intervals, we are continually collecting it.

If you can no longer see a search query you saw recently, make sure you haven’t filtered the results by country or type of search.

Webmaster Tools aggregates query information, and displays search queries once the count of each query reaches a certain threshold. Your logs may show a particular query as having a high rank for a certain day or period, but that query does not appear in on the Search Queries page. If the query continues to be a top referrer, however, it will move to the top of our aggregate results and will appear on the Search Queries page.

Also, Webmaster Tools stats show only search queries from Google. Your log files may combine search results from all search engines.


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