What an SEO report should show, and what to ask of it
In this guide’s view, a useful monthly search report shows Google Search clicks, impressions, click-through rate and average position taken from your own Search Console, compared with the previous period and the same period last year, alongside the health checks Search Console runs on your site. This guide also suggests that each figure say where it came from and over which dates, and that the report list what was done to the site that month.
Google’s own list of questions to ask before hiring an SEO is on its page Do you need an SEO?, and it includes “How do you measure your success?” This stop is about the answer: the report itself, line by line, and how to read one critically when it arrives.
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.
05.1
A report, line by line
Here is what each part of a sound report contains, and where Google’s tools produce it. Use it as the timetable a real report should run to.
| Line | What it should show | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Headline numbers | Clicks, impressions, CTR and average position for the month | Performance report chart, which totals by property |
| Comparison | The month against the previous period and against the same period last year, with the difference | Compare tab in the date filter; the table adds a difference column |
| Search type | Which figures are web search, and whether image, video or news results are reported separately | Search type filter: web, image, video, news |
| Pages and queries | Which pages and queries gained or lost the most clicks | Pages and Queries tabs, sorted by difference |
| Device and country | Whether a change was on mobile, desktop, or in one country | Devices and Countries tabs |
| Indexing | Whether key pages are indexed, and any new issues | Page indexing report |
| Experience | Core Web Vitals status for mobile and desktop | Core Web Vitals report |
| Warnings | Manual actions and security issues, or a plain “none” | Manual actions and Security issues reports |
| Context | Known Google-side events in the month | Search Status Dashboard and the data anomalies page |
| Work done | Every change made to the site, with the reason | The SEO’s own log; Google suggests asking for one |
05.2
Where the numbers should come from
Search Console reports data about how your site performs in Google Search results, which Google describes as activity that happened before a person arrived at your site. Google Analytics reports what visitors did once they were there. A good report keeps the two apart and labels which is which.
If a report puts Search Console clicks beside Analytics sessions, expect them to differ. Google calls these the two most comparable metrics, but says they are calculated differently, so the numbers won’t match. A report that explains the gap is more trustworthy than one that quietly uses whichever figure looks better.
You don’t need to take a report on trust. With your own access to the property, you can open the same report yourself, and a report view can be shared by link: Google says the link grants access only to that view, not to other pages or actions on the property. For your own access, a restricted user has simple view rights on most data.
05.3
What no report can show
Some limits belong to Google’s data, not to the person reporting it. A careful report says so.
- Not every query. Some queries searched a very small number of times are left out of the table to protect privacy. They still count in the chart totals, unless a query filter is applied.
- Not every row. The table shows at most 1,000 rows, so rare or long-tail rows can be missing from the table but included in the totals.
- Totals that don’t add up. Filtering by page or query can make the matching and non-matching totals fail to add up to the whole, for the same two reasons.
- No fixed ranking. Average position is an average across searches. Results depend on time, place, device and the searcher’s recent history, so a screenshot of one search proves little.
- Not always final. The newest data can be preliminary and change within hours; the report shows complete days by default.
- Not past 16 months. The report’s longest date range is the last 16 months. Longer histories need the Search Analytics API or bulk data exports.
05.4
Questions to ask of the report in front of you
Is this from my Search Console property, and which one? A Domain property and a URL-prefix property for the same site can show different figures, because they cover different URLs.
Which dates, and compared with what? A month against the month before can hide a seasonal pattern that a year-over-year comparison would show.
Is the chart counted by site or by page? CTR and average position are generally higher when counted by property than by page, if several of your pages show for the same search.
Did clicks and impressions move together? If impressions held but clicks fell, Google points to titles and snippets, not rankings.
Why is average position the headline? Google says impressions and clicks are ultimately the measure of success, and not to focus too much on absolute position.
Was anything happening on Google’s side? Ask whether the dashboard listed a ranking update in the month, or the data anomalies page a logging problem.
Which changes were made, and when? Without dates, nobody can line up a change on the site with a change in the chart.
Do the recommendations cite Google’s documentation? Google suggests asking this of any SEO advice, and notes that it doesn’t evaluate or endorse third-party SEO tools.