Average position in Search Console

Source: Search Console Help, What are impressions, position, and clicks?.

For each search, Search Console records the topmost position any link of your site held. A carousel takes one position, and every item in it shares that position. An AI Overview works the same way: it takes one position, and every link in it gets that position. A result has to get an impression for its position to be recorded.

The average is weighted by impressions. A day with many impressions moves it more than a quiet one, and so does a popular query against a rare one.

Why it can get worse while traffic grows

The same gift shop publishes twenty buying guides in May. Google starts showing them at positions 30 to 60 for hundreds of new searches. Average position slides from 8.2 to 14.6. Clicks still rise 20%: the old rankings held, and the new pages add a few clicks. The average only took in many new, low impressions.

Google Ads dropped its own average position

Google Ads retired average position for ads in 2019. It now reports where ads show through top and absolute top impression rates, explained in search top impression share. Search Console's position also ignores ads: organic position 1 can sit below several ads on the page.

1. In Search Console, open Performance, then Search results.
2. Click the Average position box above the chart to draw it.
3. Keep Search type on Web, and choose the dates in the Date filter.
4. The Queries and Pages tabs below give the position per search and per page.

Average position is in the Organic search group of Add a metric, once Search Console is connected and one site chosen. It is one of the metrics where lower is better.

Optizads stores each day's clicks, impressions and position from Search Console, with up to 16 months of history, as far back as Search Console keeps. For a period it adds each day's position times its impressions and divides by the impressions, the weighting Search Console uses. The result matches Search Console's own figure for the same dates.

Search Console's last two or three days come in late, so Optizads reads the last 35 days again each night. Search Console dates follow Pacific time, while Google Ads days follow your account's time zone: compare weeks or months, not single days.

• Averaging daily or per-page positions without weighting them by impressions.
• Reading a worse average as lost rankings when new, low rankings were added.
• Comparing it with an ad's position on the page. Organic position does not count ads.
• Mixing Web with Image or News results, which Search Console reports separately.

• Impression: One showing of an ad.
• Ad Rank: The score Google uses to decide whether an ad shows and in what position.
• Search term: What someone actually typed when your ad showed.

• Organic CTR (Search Console): CTR in Search Console is your organic clicks divided by your organic impressions in Google's results.
• Top and absolute top impression share: Search top impression share is the share of the top-ad impressions your ads could have won that they did win.
• Sessions (GA4): A session in Google Analytics 4 is one visit to your site or app, opened by the session_start event.
• Engagement rate (GA4): Engagement rate in Google Analytics 4 is the share of sessions that were engaged: engaged sessions divided by sessions.