Clicks, impressions and CTR — what each one counts

Updated 2026-08-04

The exact definitions of a Search Console impression, click and CTR, including the scrolling rule for image and carousel results and why your totals never add up.

The three headline metrics have precise definitions, and most confusion about Search Console comes from assuming they mean the obvious thing.

Impression

An impression is counted when a link to your site appears in a result set the user sees. The rules that surprise people:

• The user does not have to scroll to it, for standard results — if it is on the loaded page, it counted.
• For carousels and image results that require scrolling sideways, an impression counts only once the item is scrolled into view.
• Two of your pages ranking for one query is two impressions.
• Page 2 counts. An impression at position 47 counts identically to one at position 1.

Click

A click is any click that takes the user to a page outside Google. Clicking a result, then hitting back, then clicking the same result again is one click, not two. Clicks on expandable features that keep the user on Google are not counted.

CTR

Clicks ÷ impressions, expressed as a percentage. Because impressions include page 2 and beyond, a site with lots of deep-ranking terms will show a low CTR that says nothing about the titles.

Why the numbers never add up

This one causes the most support tickets. Sum every row of your query table and the total will be lower than the reported total.

Two reasons, both intentional:

Anonymised queries. Google omits rare queries — ones so infrequent they could identify the searcher. Those impressions and clicks are in your totals but in no row of the table. On a small or niche site this can be most of your traffic.

De-duplication by dimension. Totals count unique searches. If one search shows two of your pages, that is one query-level impression and two page-level impressions. So the page table legitimately sums higher than the query table for the same period.

Neither is a bug and neither can be turned off. Treat the totals as authoritative and the tables as a ranked sample.