What are impressions and clicks?

Impressions are how many times your site appeared in Google’s search results. Clicks are how many of those times someone clicked through to your site. Both come from your Google Search Console, and they are measured, not estimated - the only real search-traffic figures for your own site in RankDots.

Where you’ll see them

• Keywords screen: Clicks and Impressions for each keyword.
• Pages screen: Clicks and Impressions for each page, next to CTR and Rank.
• Opportunities: the recommendations and their traffic estimates are built on this data.

Until you connect Search Console, these columns show a Connect GSC button instead of figures. Nothing needs installing on your site; you connect through your Google account.

How to read them

Impressions measure visibility; clicks measure traffic. An impression means Google showed your link to someone. A click means they chose it.

Many impressions, few clicks: you are seen but not chosen. Often the title does not match what people want, or the page sits low on the results page. This is the pattern behind the title recommendations in Opportunities. What is click-through rate? [link is coming] explains what a normal share of clicks looks like.

Few impressions: Google rarely shows you. That is a ranking or coverage problem, not a title problem. Expanding the content or creating a dedicated page is the usual fix.

Watch both after you publish or change a page. They show what your work actually did. Allow weeks, not days: new and changed pages need time to be indexed and to settle.

How we get them

RankDots reads impressions and clicks for each keyword from the Search Console property you connect, for the last 28 days, in the country you chose when you created the project.

A page’s figures are the clicks and impressions of all its keywords added up - whether the page is a content idea or a URL that already exists. They count your site’s results for those keywords, whichever of your URLs appeared.

The figures are not refreshed automatically. To bring them up to date, start a rescan from Opportunities.

These are counts made by Google about your site, which makes them measured data. What is measured and what is estimated explains why that matters when they disagree with an estimate.

What they don’t tell you

• What visitors did next. Search Console stops at the click; your analytics tool shows what happened on your site.
• Demand you are not reaching. Searches where your site never appears are not counted. Search volume shows the full demand.
• Anything older than 28 days, or newer than your last rescan. The figures cover the 28 days before they were read.
• Other countries. Only the country chosen at project creation is counted.

What next

• What is click-through rate? [link is coming] 
• “Optimize title” and “Rewrite title” recommendations [link is coming]