How to understand Low CTR with High impressions

[Saimon86]

Hi all,

i've been analysing my pages ctr and i get surprised on how manies pages there are in there with a very high number of impression (considering my blog's nich) and a very low number of clic. I.e more then 3000 impressions (last 3 months) and CTR is 0% (almost 1 clic)
So then i've been checking the keywords which let this page to been shown up on the serp (1,5 is the positon) and they are reasonably coherent with the content of this page.
I'm sure this is something common and i was trying to find any tips from anybody who have had already the same issue.
This is a curios and interesting topic to understand for my point of view; i mean, how a page, being almost the firs/second result on the serp, have had almost any clic?
Do you think that problem is somewhere in tag title or in the post content itself?

[NickMNS]

Are you referring to Google search console statistics?

[Saimon86]

yes sure...i'm sorry to didn't specify it

[NickMNS]

I.e more then 3000 impressions (last 3 months) and CTR is 0% (almost 1 clic)

3000 impressions in 3 month is a low figure, this translates to an average of about roughly 30 impressions a day. The fact that the CTR is at 0% is reflective of this. The position of 1.5 tells you that when your site got an impression it was most likely shown in the first or second position.

Note that you only see an impression when your website appears in the SERP. So if there are 1000 searches for the keyword "widget" and your website appears 10 times out of the 1000, you will only see 10 impressions in GSC. This can be very misleading, specially when you pair it with a position metric of 1.5. The interpretation is actual simple, it is either you appear at position #1 or #2 or not at all.

What you need to do is not focus on the 1.5 position and try to increase 1. But rather focus on the 3000 impressions and grow that by 10x or 100x.

Then your next question will be, how to do I do that? But that is the million dollar question. Build more and better content, get more links, become an authority on your subject matter, etc.. The list goes on. what it will ultimately take is hard to know.

Good luck, you will need it.

[JorgeV]

Hello,

high number of impression (considering my blog's nich)

If 3000 impressions in 3 months, is a high number for this niche, it means that an extremely low number of people have an interest in it.

3000 impressions, does not mean 3000 different persons. The same person can use the search several time, ... myself, I find it more convenient to use Google search to return to the same site daily, instead of bookmarking it, and each time am counted as one impression.

Yourself, maybe, you are running a search to see where you rank, or which other sites are ranking for the chosen theme.

So, there are so few people interested in your niche, that , it's highly possible that they also find what they are looking for on the site ranking above you.

You can always check the site above you, to try to figure out why it outranks you, and find a way to do it better.

[Saimon86]

Hello,

3000 impressions in 3 month is a low figure

i'm consious that 3000 impressions on 3 months is a low figure but in the other hand there are pages with almost the same impressions, with 500 clics and 10,5 position (ctr%13,8). This is confusing me a bit on what strategy adopt to increse the low figure pages. I mean how a page which show up on the tenth position could have hundreds more of clics? better content of the nine/ten pages above (on the serp)?

an extremely low nomber of people have an interest in it

I always saw this, maybe wrongly, as a relative data. It's a reality that numbers are low but we would need to consider that competition is really low too on my niche and i will never reach massive numbers. I mean, i can't change niche, my skills and expertise are in there, so i'll rather focus on sites above me and try to do it better, which is something that i have had nevere considerd because ai always tryed to do my job at the best without focusing on the others, but it's seams that now is arrived the time.

[RedBar]

but in the other hand there are pages with almost the same impressions, with 500 clics

Ok, I'm being totally dumb here since I do not use GSC.

500 clicks to where?

[not2easy]

@RedBar - In GSC you see a list of your pages in serps that shows their position and the number of times those pages were in the results (impressions) along with the CTR from the serps to that page on your site.
HTH

[FranticFish]

If you add the number of impressions per keyword that you can see data for do you get anything close to 3,000?

In my experience, what Google Search Console counts as an 'impression' is NOT a human seeing SERP with your site. Rather, it is your site being part of a collection of SERPs - even if you were on page 10.

[NickMNS]

If you add the number of impressions per keyword that you can see data for do you get anything close to 3,000?

No. Keywords ("queries" according to GSC) are only reported for a small sample of impressions, yet all impressions are reported so it is very unlikely that these would add up.

In my experience, what Google Search Console counts as an 'impression' is NOT a human seeing SERP with your site. Rather, it is your site being part of a collection of SERPs - even if you were on page 10.

No. This not the case. An impression is recorded when a users accesses the page on which the link appears, if you are on page 10 a user must scroll to page 10 for that to be counted as an impression. Here is Google's detailed, and somewhat confusing explanation as to what counts as an impression and how position is calculated.
[support.google.com...]

Basically if a tree falls on page 10 of the forest of search results and nobody gets to page 10, then the tree doesn't exists, but if a user does get to page 10 but still doesn't see the tree, then it could exists, depending if it was an forest of images, or amp pages or plain web search pages.

[goodroi]

IMHO this is an important sentence from that Google page

The URL pointed to by this link records an impression when the user opens the page containing this result (even if the result is not scrolled into view).

So if you rank #10 on page 1 and users never scroll past rank #5, you can have high impressions but no real eyeballs seeing you.

[FranticFish]

@NickMNS

I wasn't suggesting that the data in Analytics and GSC was complete - indeed I've whinged about it on here more than once in the past.- first the move to [not set] to hide up to 75-80% of keywords and then removing [not set] as a bit of data at all.

it is very unlikely that these would add up

Just downloaded a CSV (week's worth of data) from one small site (less than 20 pages). Number given at the the top Impressions column EXACTLY matched the sum of all the impression data. YMMV.

if you are on page 10 a user must scroll to page 10 for that to be counted as an impression

Just checked the same small site:
- 100 of the 1350 rows of data were from 98 onwards
- 500 of the 1350 rows were from 66 onwards
- 1000 of the 1350 rows were from 21 onwards

So I'm not sure I believe the Google statement on this.

I find it impossible to believe that these are humans clicking that far down the results pages in those sorts of numbers.

Could be rank checking bots perhaps.

[NickMNS]

@FranticFish
We may not be talking about exactly the same things, we need to be clear. Because we are likely agreeing more than disagreeing.

I wasn't suggesting that the data in Analytics and GSC was complete

I am only talking about GSC, nothing I have said in my posts above applies to Google Analytics.

Number given at the the top Impressions column EXACTLY matched the sum of all the impression data. YMMV.

Yes, this is the case generally, even on my end, with one exception the "queries" report . I was referring to the "queries" report exclusively, and I was referring to that report because your comment was:

If you add the number of impressions per keyword

Now regarding last point:

Just checked the same small site:
- 100 of the 1350 rows of data were from 98 onwards
- 500 of the 1350 rows were from 66 onwards
- 1000 of the 1350 rows were from 21 onwards

Is this data from "queries report" or "pages report"? I don't think it makes a difference in this case, but it would be good to know for the sake of clarity. I assume that "98 onwards" refers the average position.

I see the same in my reports, and I agree at first glance that does seem spurious. In my reports these results each tend to be for very few impressions, but not always. The only plausible explanation is that this is the result of image searches. In image search results are count from left to right and top to bottom one page one desktop can have hundreds of results, remember there the results are lazy-loaded with near infinite scroll. I checked a few queries and effectively my pages appear far down in image search and not at all in web search.

Note that the position is "average position", so even if your website appears on page 3 of the results but it also appears in image search the image search will bias the results as impressions will be more frequent and with a much greater position value.

edit: I just would like to add, that what I describe above doesn't necessarily need to be the result of image search, but could also be related to other search "formats" like AMP carousel or Video, although image search is likely to have the greatest impact.

[NickMNS]

@Goodroi
I fully agree that is a very important sentence.

Another important sentence is in the section "What does position value mean on the Search Analytics report?"

A link must get an impression for its position to be recorded. If a result does not get an impression—for example, if the result is on page 3 of search results, but the user only views page 1—then its position is not recorded for that query.

Ok! technically two sentences.

This confirms the point I was making in my second post of this thread. IMO this is one of the most misunderstood things about reporting GSC.

[goodroi]

^ Yup :)