{
  "slug": "impressions",
  "name": "Organic impressions",
  "aliases": [
    "Impressions",
    "Total impressions"
  ],
  "definition": "The number of times one of your results appeared on a Google results page for a search, whether or not anyone clicked it.",
  "category": "Search performance",
  "type": "raw measure",
  "unit": "impressions",
  "direction": "higher-better",
  "verification": "verified",
  "calculation": "`nvl(sum(impressions), 0)`, a plain sum of the Search Console impression column across the selected rows.",
  "aggregation": "Sums across rows and dates. It is also the weight behind average position and behind every CTR figure in this reference, so it should never be filtered differently from the metric it weights.",
  "grain": "One date range × the selected slice, whole site, one keyword, or one page.",
  "dimensions": [
    "query",
    "page",
    "country",
    "device",
    "intent",
    "category",
    "brand",
    "rank bucket",
    "search type"
  ],
  "requiredFilters": [
    "date range",
    "source medium"
  ],
  "sources": [
    "search-console"
  ],
  "reports": [
    "ai-overview-report",
    "cannibalization-report",
    "competitor-search-report",
    "content-decay-report",
    "content-performance-report",
    "ctr-opportunity-report",
    "internal-linking-report",
    "keyword-ranking-report",
    "paid-organic-overlap-report",
    "search-opportunity-report",
    "technical-seo-audit-report",
    "weekly-search-report"
  ],
  "skills": [
    "search-pulse",
    "weekly-search-report",
    "rank-movement-review",
    "striking-distance-sprint",
    "cannibalization-check"
  ],
  "verbs": [
    "search_performance",
    "gsc_breakdown",
    "seo_ranking_movement_report",
    "compare_periods"
  ],
  "rungs": [
    "R2"
  ],
  "levers": [
    "L2",
    "L5"
  ],
  "questions": [
    "Did our impressions grow last month?",
    "Which keywords have impressions but almost no clicks?",
    "Impressions by device for non-brand demand"
  ],
  "interpretation": "The Retrieved rung in one number: whether you enter the pool a ranking system draws from at all. Rising impressions with flat clicks usually means you entered more results pages at positions that do not earn, which is a position or a snippet question, not a demand question.",
  "caveats": [
    "Google's September 2025 num=100 reporting change moved the impression baseline. Windows that straddle it produce artifact movement in impressions and average position, and comparisons across it need re-cutting rather than narrating.",
    "Privacy-suppressed query rows are omitted from query-level breakdowns; the BigQuery export groups those impressions under a placeholder query instead.",
    "Search type defaults to web, so image, video and news impressions are excluded unless asked for."
  ],
  "freshness": "1 to 2 days behind, Google's own reporting lag. Any answer touching the last 48 hours says so on the card.",
  "failureModes": [
    "Narrating an impression spike that is a reporting-change artifact as a demand event.",
    "Comparing impressions across a window boundary where the reporting basis changed."
  ],
  "notSameAs": [],
  "related": [
    "clicks",
    "ctr",
    "avg-position",
    "unique-keywords"
  ],
  "workflows": [],
  "lastVerified": "2026-08-04"
}