Google Analytics and Search Console, explained simply

Say you run a bakery that takes orders for celebration cakes. On a Monday you open both tools to see how last month went. The numbers below are invented for this illustration.

Search Console says your site was shown 4,000 times in Google Search, received 160 clicks, had a click-through rate of 4% and an average position of 11.2. Its top search was “custom birthday cake” plus your town’s name.

Analytics says you had 900 sessions in total, 131 of them from Organic Search. Twelve visitors sent the cake order form.

You now have three questions. Why does Search Console say 160 and Analytics say 131? Which of those twelve order forms came from people who searched “custom birthday cake”? And is 11.2 good or bad?

The answers, in short: the two tools count different things in different ways; neither tool can tell you which search led to which order; and an average position is only useful once you know what it is averaging. The rest of this guide explains each one.

Search Console reports on your presence in Google Search. In Google’s words, it shows “how your website is performing in Google Search results, such as how many times your website shows up in search results (impressions), how many times people click to visit your site from Search (clicks), which search terms bring people to your website (queries), and more.”

It also reports whether Google has indexed your pages. The Page indexing report shows how many of your addresses have been crawled and indexed, and gives a reason for each one that has not. Google notes that you should not “expect every URL on your site to be indexed”, because some are duplicates or carry no useful content. The useful habit is checking that your important pages are on the indexed side.

Search Console covers Google Search only. It says nothing about visitors from social media, email, other search engines or people typing your address.

Analytics reports on what people do once they reach your site. Google describes it as data about “visitors’ interactions with your website, such as which pages they visit, how long they stay, and what actions they take.”

It groups visits by where they came from. Its default channels include Organic Search (“non-ad links in organic-search results”), Direct (no clear referral source, including typed addresses, saved links and missing attribution), Referral (links on other sites), Organic Social, Email and Paid Search.

Its most important feature for a business is the key event. Google defines a key event as “an event that measures an action that’s particularly important to the success of your business.” For the bakery, that is a sent order form. For a law firm, a consultation request. Until at least one key event is set up, Analytics can tell you about traffic but very little about whether the site is doing its job.

Click-through rate (CTR). The clicks divided by the times you were shown. In the bakery example, 160 clicks from 4,000 impressions is 4%. If a page is shown often but rarely clicked, its title and description in the results may not be answering what people searched for, or the search itself may want something you do not offer.

Impression. Counted, in Google’s words, “whenever an item appears in the current page of results, whether or not the item is scrolled into view.” Being shown is not the same as being seen.

Average position. For each search, Search Console takes the “topmost” position your site held, and averages that “across all queries.” Position 1 is the top of the results.

So what is a good average position? There is no universal good number, because the average mixes very different searches. Say the bakery appears first when people search its own name, and around position 30 for “wedding cakes” in a nearby city it does not deliver to. The average of those two is about 15, which describes neither. And if you publish a new page that starts appearing far down for a new search, your average position gets worse even though you gained visibility you did not have before.

Read position per search and per page, not for the whole site. For the searches that match what you sell, watch whether position and clicks are moving in the right direction over a few months. Google also notes that a search listed in your report may not show your site to everyone, because results vary by “time, place, device, and recent history of the person searching.”

Google’s own guide on using the two tools together names the closest comparable measures: Search Console clicks and Analytics sessions. A click “happens when a person clicks on a link in a Google Search result leading to your website.” A session “is a period of time during which a user interacts with your website or app.” They are related, but they are different things, and Google lists reasons they diverge:

Analytics is not installed on every page, or not correctly. Clicks to a page without the tag are invisible to Analytics.

Consent choices. With basic consent mode, Google tags stay blocked when consent is refused. Advanced consent mode can send cookieless signals. Behavioral modeling requires an eligible property and compatible reporting settings; do not assume a small site qualifies. Check the setup and report before calling totals modeled estimates.

Time zones. Search Console reports days in Pacific Time by default. Your Analytics property may use your local time.

Different attribution. The tools assign credit for a visit by different rules.

Canonical addresses. Search Console reports the one address Google treats as the main version of a page. Analytics records whichever address the visitor actually loaded.

Different breakdowns. Search Console splits search into web, image, video, news and Discover. Analytics groups them differently.

Files that are not web pages. A click on a PDF in search counts in Search Console, but Analytics usually cannot record a visit to a PDF.

Bots. Analytics excludes known bot traffic automatically.

There is a second, quieter gap inside Search Console itself. Searches made by very few people are left out of the tables to protect privacy. Google calls them anonymized queries: searches “that aren’t issued by more than a few dozen users over a two-to-three month period.” They still count in the chart totals, so the rows in your query table will usually add up to less than the total clicks. On a site with modest traffic, many individual searches can fall into this group.

So if the bakery sees 160 clicks and 131 Organic Search sessions, that difference alone does not establish a fault. Some gap is expected. A sudden change in the gap is worth investigating, because it often means the Analytics tag was removed or a consent banner changed.

Which search led to which sale. Analytics does not receive the search words on its own. You can link Search Console to Analytics to see search data inside it, but Google notes that Search Console metrics “are only compatible with Search Console dimensions” plus landing page, device and country. You can see that people who searched “custom birthday cake” landed on your cakes page, and separately that the cakes page produced enquiries. You cannot reliably join the two into “this search produced that order.”

Whether an enquiry was any good. Analytics can count form submissions. It cannot tell you whether the person was a real customer, whether you quoted, or whether you won the work. That lives in your inbox, your booking system or your customer records.

Everyone. Some visitors decline tracking, some block it, and some arrive in ways that are hard to attribute. Treat every number as a good measure of trends, not as an exact census.

Why someone did not buy. Both tools show what happened. Neither explains it. A page with many visits and no enquiries tells you where to look, not what is wrong.

Long histories by default. Search Console keeps 16 months of performance data. In Analytics, standard reports are not affected by the data retention setting, but explorations and funnel reports only reach back as far as that setting allows (2 or 14 months on a standard property).

Choosing which numbers actually matter for your business is a separate question, covered in our guide on what to measure on a business website.

You do not need to learn either tool fully. For most business owners, three reports are enough.

Search Console, Performance report, Queries and Pages tabs. Which searches showed your site, which pages they led to, and how clicks and position are moving compared with the previous period. Look for searches that match what you sell, and for pages shown often but rarely clicked.

Search Console, Page indexing report. Whether your important pages are indexed. Read the reason next to any important page that is not.

Analytics, Traffic acquisition report, with your key event added. How many sessions each channel brought and how many enquiries, orders or bookings each channel produced. This is where you see whether search is pulling its weight compared with social media, email and referrals.

Once a month, ten minutes with those three is worth more than a dashboard nobody reads.

Verify your site in Search Console. Use the property for your real domain, and check it covers the address versions your site actually uses.

Link Search Console to Analytics. This adds two reports to Analytics: one of search queries and one of landing pages with both tools’ metrics side by side. One Analytics web data stream links to one Search Console property, and the linked reports show up to 16 months of data.

Set up your enquiry as a key event. Google recommends its standard generate_lead event for a lead form, and its setup tutorial counts the lead when someone reaches the confirmation page after a successful submission. Count successful acceptance by the form system once, not the button click or an unrestricted page view. If a confirmation page is used, test refreshes and direct visits for duplicate or false events. Acceptance does not prove inbox delivery or qualification.

Keep personal information out. Google’s policy is that no data should be passed to Analytics that Google “could use or recognize as personally identifiable information.” That means no names, email addresses or phone numbers in events, page addresses or page titles.

Decide how consent works on your site before launch, so you know when tags are blocked, when cookieless signals may be sent, and whether the property and report are eligible for behavioral modeling. Refused consent does not mean every visitor appears as a modeled estimate.

If you would like this set up properly for your site, our analytics and measurement service explains what we configure and what you receive. For the other half of the picture, read what SEO actually does for a business website, and our SEO and content strategy service covers the work that moves the Search Console numbers.

When you want to talk about your own site, you can discuss your project. More guides are in the Learn library.

Google Search Central, Using Search Console and Google Analytics data for SEO: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/monitor-debug/google-analytics-search-console

Search Console Help, Performance report (search results): https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7576553

Search Console Help, What are impressions, position, and clicks?: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7042828

Search Console Help, Page indexing report: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7440203

Google Search Central Blog, A deep dive into Search Console performance data filtering and limits (October 2022): https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/10/performance-data-deep-dive

Analytics Help, Connect Search Console to Google Analytics: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/10737381

Analytics Help, Default channel group: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9756891

Analytics Help, About key events: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9267568

Analytics Help, Recommended events: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9267735

Analytics Help, Tutorial: Set up a key event: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/12966437

Analytics Help, Consent mode on websites and mobile apps: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9976101

Analytics Help, Best practices to avoid sending personally identifiable information: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6366371

Analytics Help, Data retention: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/7667196