How to see how much traffic your website gets

The Performance report in Search Console shows four figures, and Google defines each.

• Clicks: the number of times someone clicked through to the site from Google’s results.
• Impressions: how many times the site appeared in results.
• CTR: the clicks divided by the impressions.
• Average position: the average position of the site’s topmost result.

The report opens on the past three months. It also lists the searches themselves, which Analytics does not. Search Console needs no tag on the site, only proof that the site is yours.

Google Analytics counts visits from search, social media, advertisements, other websites and people typing the address. It records only from the day its tag is added, so a site without it has no history to read. Our guide to adding Google Analytics to a website covers the set-up.

Search Console’s clicks and Analytics’ sessions will never match, for three reasons.

• Search Console counts Google Search only, and Analytics counts every source.
• Analytics misses visitors who decline cookies or block its tag.
• One counts clicks on a result, and the other counts visits that loaded the tag.

Read each for what it measures. Neither figure is the wrong one.

Wix, Squarespace and Shopify each show visitor figures in their dashboards. Those counts are made by the platform itself and follow its own definitions, so they differ again. Pick one source for month-to-month comparison and stay with it.

Total visits say little alone. Three figures say more.

• Visits to the pages that sell: service, product and contact pages.
• The searches that bring visitors, from Search Console.
• Enquiries or sales for each hundred visits.

A fall in any of them has a cause that can be found. Our guides to why website traffic is dropping and a high bounce rate start there.