Ashutosh Sharma

How did this page receive 161K impressions but only 26 clicks, with an average position of 5.1? 🤔 This is according to Google Search Console, with the additional information being that it occurred for the query "foot locker", in the US, and on mobile. If you ever come across a situation where your page receives a significant amount of impressions with very few clicks, there are a number of common reasons. Common reasons include: 1. Internal Sitelinks 2. Images in Image Packs 3. Images in Knowledge Panels 4. Links in Tweet Carousels 5. Web Stories in the Visual Stories Unit Each of the features above can yield extremely high impressions within the performance report with hardly any (or zero) clicks, due to how the data for each feature is recorded in GSC. While the above are common reasons, a recent situation I shared in an SEO Challenge is a more recent situation that I have witnessed for my own site. The question I had asked on Twitter/X was about whether you could confidently explain how this data occurred to a client, without guessing and providing proof of your reasoning. A lot of the answers received related to a mismatch of user intent. While this is correct, it doesn't explain how the data has come about, showing proof of reasoning. Based on the responses, there were two that stood out from @PeterMindenhall and @SaniNizam1. Peter identified the reasoning and Nizam shared a screenshot that showed the best description available of what is happening. So what actually happened? More recently, I have noticed Google testing out articles for my site by ranking them prominently just on mobile for some very high volume queries. Even if they're not tightly related, Google has been surfacing the articles very high as a test in the standard organic listings, then bringing them back down quickly. How can this be proved? This can not be confirmed by just using data in GSC, due to limitations with filters. Instead, you can use the clues that GSC provides to explore the data in other tools. Based on my experience, @semrush has the best dataset and tools to explore this as accurately as you can. By using filters in Semrush to specify location and device type by the URL, you can see the queries where the page has ranked historically. Within this report, there is the option to view the actual search result on Google using the screenshots functionality (one of my favourite tools). The data shows a position #5 with the page ranking with an image thumbnail, which is the preview that appears next to the result, not an Image Pack. Clicking the snapshot shows the page ranking on mobile in the US for a close variant for "foot loker", which is the best snapshot I could find. The snapshot clearly shows the page ranking as the top result that isn't affiliated for Foot Locker, even above an article written by CNBC. While this ranking position has been short-lived and sporadic, this is evidence to help with making sense of the situation. When reviewing some of the other explanations, I was seeing a lot of answers for it being related to the 5 common situations provided above, along with being related to Top Stories, which isn't possible for my blog to appear in, or something that can be proved. While the data looks similar to some of these scenarios, there is no supporting evidence to suggest that any has been the result of the sudden uptick in impressions. With the answer being a lot more simple than expected. Other theories of influence While it's anyone's guess on whether this is of influence, there is the potential that I'm only noticing this happening more recently for my own site due changes with Google's Helpful Content Systems. While the intent clearly wasn't there for the Foot Locker example, Google still looks to be making a concerted effort to surface content for my small blog. With announcement from Google in May of 2023 stating: "Helpful information can often live in unexpected or hard-to-find places: a comment in a forum thread, a post on a little-known blog, or an article with unique expertise on a topic. Our helpful content ranking system will soon show more of these “hidden gems” on Search, particularly when we think they’ll improve the results." Again, I don't think Google nailed it with this one, and the Helpful Content System changes are unclear to be of influence, but it is interesting to see them at least test my blog for a very short period for a very high volume query (let's aim for the query "SEO" next time!)