Reading a performance report, sixteen months at a time
To read a Performance report, set the date range to the last 16 months, look at clicks and impressions together, and ask of every change whether it is the season, the site, or Google. The worked example below does exactly that, month by month, for a website invented for this page.
Riverloop Cycles is not real. It is a made-up bicycle repair workshop in Brisbane, its figures are invented, and every percentage below is calculated from them. Only the dates of Google’s updates and Google’s advice are real, and they are sourced.
General information, not business advice. This page explains Google’s published documentation in plain words. Google’s tools change: check Search Console Help, Google Search Central and web.dev for the current version, and ask a qualified professional about your own site.
03.1
Set the timetable
Three settings come before any reading.
- Date range: last 16 months. Google suggests this to see a change in context and rule out a dip that happens every year. To keep more than 16 months, it points to the Search Analytics API or bulk data exports.
- Granularity: monthly. Weekly and monthly views smooth out daily ups and downs, such as weekends and holidays, so longer trends show.
- All four metrics on. The default shows clicks and impressions; CTR and average position can be switched on above the chart.
03.2
The invented report
| Month | Impressions | Clicks | CTR | Avg position |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jun 2025 | 41,000 | 820 | 2.00% | 12.4 |
| Jul 2025 | 42,000 | 860 | 2.05% | 12.1 |
| Aug 2025 | 43,500 | 910 | 2.09% | 11.8 |
| Sep 2025 | 46,000 | 1,040 | 2.26% | 11.2 |
| Oct 2025 | 49,000 | 1,180 | 2.41% | 10.9 |
| Nov 2025 | 52,000 | 1,260 | 2.42% | 10.6 |
| Dec 2025 | 50,500 | 1,120 | 2.22% | 10.7 |
| Jan 2026 | 47,000 | 940 | 2.00% | 10.8 |
| Feb 2026 | 48,500 | 1,010 | 2.08% | 10.5 |
| Mar 2026 | 51,000 | 1,150 | 2.25% | 10.3 |
| Apr 2026 | 56,500 | 1,240 | 2.19% | 9.9 |
| May 2026 | 58,000 | 1,050 | 1.81% | 9.8 |
| Jun 2026 | 57,000 | 1,020 | 1.79% | 9.9 |
| Jul 2026 | 55,000 | 1,190 | 2.16% | 9.7 |
| Aug 2026 | 54,000 | 1,260 | 2.33% | 9.6 |
| Sep 2026 | 57,500 | 1,380 | 2.40% | 9.4 |
CTR is clicks ÷ impressions, the way Search Console calculates it. All figures are invented for this example.
03.3
Reading one: the year over year
Sixteen months gives four months that appear twice: June to September. Across those months, Riverloop’s clicks went from 3,630 in 2025 to 4,850 in 2026, up 34%, and impressions from 172,500 to 223,500, up 30%. Average position moved from the 11s and 12s to under 10. That is steady growth, and it is the backdrop for everything else.
In Search Console you would see this by choosing Compare in the date filter, then comparing the last 3 months year over year; the table then adds a difference column for each row.
03.4
Reading two: a dip around the new year
From November 2025 to January 2026, Riverloop’s clicks fell from 1,260 to 940 and impressions from 52,000 to 47,000, while average position barely moved (10.6 to 10.8). Fewer people saw the site, but where it appeared, it appeared in the same place.
When both clicks and impressions fall together, Google’s guide says to work through its list of common causes, and seasonality is one of them: a change in demand from outside the site. Its suggested check is to filter the report to one top query at a time and look up each query in Google Trends, to see whether interest fell across the web or only for you. Google’s ranking history does list a core update starting on 11 December 2025 (US Pacific time), but a steady average position makes a ranking change the weaker explanation here. Only next December’s figures will show whether the dip repeats.
03.5
Reading three: May, when clicks fell and impressions didn’t
This is the one that matters. In May 2026, impressions reached the highest of the sixteen months (58,000), yet clicks fell from 1,240 to 1,050, and CTR dropped from 2.19% to 1.81%. Average position held at 9.8.
Google’s guide reads that shape directly: if impressions stay the same but clicks drop, the page title and snippet may not be the best they could be, so people don’t understand the page, or another site may have a more appealing rich result. In the invented story, Riverloop’s owner had rewritten every service page’s title on 12 May.
There was a second candidate. Google’s ranking history lists the May 2026 core update starting on 21 May 2026 and running for 11 days and 21 hours. For a change that lines up with a core update, Google suggests waiting at least a full week after it finishes, then comparing a week after with a week before it started, and asking whether any drop in position is small or large. Riverloop’s position didn’t drop at all, which points back to the titles. The owner restored plainer titles in late June, and July’s CTR returned to 2.16%.
03.6
What to look for, every time
- Shape
Do clicks and impressions move together (demand, ranking, indexing) or apart (titles, snippets, how results look)?
- Season
Has the same month done this before? Sixteen months is the longest view the report gives without an export.
- Position
Is any drop small, such as 2 to 4, or large, such as 4 to 29? Google treats them differently and advises against radical changes to pages already doing well.
- Where
Is it the whole site, a group of pages, or one page? Compare periods on the Pages tab and sort by the difference in clicks.
- Google’s side
Check the data anomalies page and the Search Status Dashboard for anything on the same dates.
- Gaps
Remember what the table leaves out: some rare queries are anonymised to protect privacy, and the table shows at most 1,000 rows, though both still count in the chart totals.