If anybody’s ever sent you a report about your website, it probably led with a big number of “impressions.” Here’s what that number means, and what it doesn’t.
The four numbers in every report
These come from Google Search Console, the free tool Google gives every website owner. In Google’s own words:
- Impression: “How often someone saw a link to your site on Google.” We call it a Google search appearance. It counts any time your link’s on the page of results the buyer is looking at, even if they never scroll down to it.
- Click: “How often someone clicked a link from Google to your site.”
- Click-through rate: clicks divided by appearances.
- Average position: where your link sat in the results, on average. Position 1 is the top.
An appearance isn’t a visit, and a visit isn’t a sale
A search appearance means a buyer searched for something and your name was in front of them. That’s all it means. They might’ve clicked somebody else. They might’ve called you without clicking anything. They might not have bought a thing.
So why count them? Because you can’t sell to a buyer who never sees you. Appearances tell you whether you’re in the running for the searches that matter: “tractor dealer near” a town twenty miles out, or a model you stock. They’re the first number to move when you start showing up somewhere new.
For one of our clients, the pages we built went from zero to 49,241 new Google search appearances in their best month. Every one of those was a buyer seeing that dealer, on top of what their own website was already getting.
Why we don’t report sales
We can’t see your sales, and we won’t guess at them. Whether a buyer who found you on Google bought a machine is something your sales team and your lead system know, not us. If anybody claims to know exactly how many sales their search work brought in, ask them to show you how they counted.
Things to know about the numbers
- They’re a floor, not a total. Google says the report “omits some queries that are searched a very small number of times,” to protect searchers’ privacy. The real numbers are higher.
- They run a few days behind. Google says “collected data is usually available in 2–3 days,” and the newest days can still change.
- Your own name is the easy one. Most dealers get plenty of appearances for their own name. The searches that matter are the ones where the buyer hasn’t picked a dealer yet.
Want to look at yours? Here’s how to read Search Console in ten minutes.