What are organic clicks and impressions, and how do you measure them in Metabase?

Organic clicks and impressions are the raw material of search performance: how often your pages appear in Google results, and how often searchers choose them. They come from Google Search Console performance rows at a query × page × day grain — which, synced into a warehouse, turns Search Console's 16-month window into permanent history you can query in Metabase.

What organic clicks and impressions measure

Impressions measure visibility — Google considered your page relevant enough to show. Clicks measure relevance — the searcher agreed. The gap between them, read through average position and CTR, tells you which lever to pull: low position means a rankings problem, good position with weak CTR means a title-and-snippet problem.

The split that makes the trend honest is branded vs. non-branded. Branded queries track brand strength; non-branded queries track SEO. Mixed together, one can silently cover for the other for quarters at a time.

What data does it need?

• A gsc_performance_daily table with query, page, stat_date, clicks, impressions, and position, synced daily from the Search Console API.
• A small gsc_query_classification table with an is_branded flag per query, maintained by hand or by rule.
• Optionally, sessions from your web analytics tool to follow organic visitors past the click — GSC stops at the SERP.

SQL patterns

SELECT
  date_trunc('week', stat_date) AS week,
  SUM(clicks) AS clicks,
  SUM(impressions) AS impressions,
  ROUND(100.0 * SUM(clicks) / NULLIF(SUM(impressions), 0), 2) AS ctr_pct,
  ROUND(
    SUM(position * impressions) / NULLIF(SUM(impressions), 0), 1
  ) AS avg_position
FROM gsc_performance_daily
WHERE stat_date >= CURRENT_DATE - INTERVAL '12 months'
GROUP BY 1
ORDER BY 1;

SELECT
  date_trunc('month', g.stat_date) AS month,
  CASE
    WHEN COALESCE(c.is_branded, false) THEN 'branded'
    ELSE 'non-branded'
  END AS query_type,
  SUM(g.clicks) AS clicks,
  SUM(g.impressions) AS impressions
FROM gsc_performance_daily g
LEFT JOIN gsc_query_classification c
  ON g.query = c.query
WHERE g.stat_date >= CURRENT_DATE - INTERVAL '12 months'
GROUP BY 1, 2
ORDER BY 1, 2;

Pitfalls

Where this metric applies

• Google Search Console + Metabase — performance rows at query × page × day grain
• Google Analytics 4 + Metabase— organic sessions and conversions past the click
• Plausible + Metabase — privacy-friendly organic session tracking

Related

Metrics

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