Google WMT - differences in query to impressions ratio

[tomapple]

Studying Google WMT Query data for some web sites that have recently started using WMT and Google sitemaps. For all of the sites I see a huge difference in the number of impressions to queries ratio between "All Countries" and filtering for "United States" (these are USA based ecommerce sites).

One site for example, June 4th - July 4th data for all countries shows 3,310 queries and 368,000 impressions. For the same time period selecting "United States" the queries are 2,129 and impressions 60,500.

Curious if this is what other USA based sites see? And why do queries outside the US result in such a huge increase in the number of impressions?

[tedster]

Even if the same query is repeated, that still gives your domain another impression. So if you rank on a frequently made search query - then your impressions will be far above the number of queries.

When you add in all countries, then there are a lot more search impressions in the mix.

[tomapple]

Thanks Ted.

What I am confused by is the big difference in impressions per query between those outside the US versus those in the US.

Removing the US queries of 2,129 from the total of 3,310 leaves 1,181 queries from outside the US, but a whopping 307,500 impressions (versus 60,500 impressions from 2,129 queries)

Clicks seem to also follow this odd ratio behaviour. The total clicks was 33,100 - but for the US 4,400. This would seem to indicate 24 clicks per query from outside the US, but only 2 clicks per US query?

[tedster]

Ah now I get it. Could I hazard a guess that there is more "nonsense" going on from non-US accounts?

[aristotle]

Removing the US queries of 2,129 from the total of 3,310 leaves 1,181 queries from outside the US, but a whopping 307,500 impressions (versus 60,500 impressions from 2,129 queries)

The 3310 includes all queries, both U.S. and non-U.S, but many were duplicated in different countries, so the number 3310 represents unique queries only. Also, most of the impressions come from only a small subset of the queries. For example, there might be 10,000 impressions for your main keyword, but only 1 impression for many of the long-tail search queries.

The main puzzle for me is why a large majority of the impressions and clicks are non-U.S. Either the numbers are erroneous or your efforts to mainly target the U.S. aren't succeeding.

[tomapple]

Ah now I get it. Could I hazard a guess that there is more "nonsense" going on from non-US accounts?

Tedster - Yes, according to WMT the non-US accounts are generating the huge number of impressions per query as well as what appears to be a huge number of clicks per query.

The 3310 includes all queries, both U.S. and non-U.S, but many were duplicated in different countries, so the number 3310 represents unique queries only.

aristotle - Sorry, I don't understand this sentence. How do duplicate queries come into play?

The main puzzle for me is why a large majority of the impressions and clicks are non-U.S. Either the numbers are erroneous or your efforts to mainly target the U.S. aren't succeeding.

Although orders are accepted from outside the U.S, these are all ".com" sites with the only contact and address information on the sites being in the U.S.

[aristotle]

Sorry for the confusion. What I meant is that the same query often is searched for in more than one country. For example, the term "antique widgets" could have been searched for by people in several different countries, and a page from your site came up in the SERPs in all those searches. But in the list of 3310 total queries, it still would only appear once, even though it was searched for multiple times in several different countries.

[tomapple]

I take it that what I am seeing as far as a huge number of impressions and clicks per query from non-US searches versus US is not what others are seeing for the last month?

Although Google WMT shows 4,400 clicks for the 2,129 U.S. queries, the Hitslink data for the same time period shows 15,237 referrals from google.com (then of course the other google country sources listed).

[tomapple]

As all of the sites that I am monitoring that use WMT are showing similar (odd?) impressions & clicks per query ratios (as described previously), I would appreciate some of you with US based ecommerce sites giving me an idea of the differences in ratios you see in WMT for US versus non-US queries.