Have you ever logged into Google Search Console, looked at your search terms report, and thought “hang on, these numbers don’t add up”? Don’t worry, you’re not imagining things. Search Console is deliberately hiding a massive chunk of your data.

The numbers don’t lie (but they do hide)

Whether you do it once a day or once a month, you should be checking your GSC (you ARE checking your GSC, right?)

You check your total clicks for the month – let’s say 8,000. Awesome! Then you look at the search terms that brought those clicks and start adding them up… only to find they total about 4,000.

So where the fuck did the other 4,000 clicks go?

It’s a bit like trying to count attendees at a concert where half the people snuck in through the back door. You know they’re there – you can hear them cheering – but they’re not showing up in your official numbers.

Is it bad that some clicks are hidden?

Pretty bad, to be honest. A study by Ahrefs of almost 150,000 websites found that on average, 46% of clicks in Search Console have no associated search term. In one of the sites in the study, over 90% of their clicks weren’t accounted for!

And no, it’s not just because you can only see 1,000 rows in the interface. Even if you use the API to get all the data, those clicks are still missing.

Why is Google hiding your data?

Google gives two main ~~excuses~~ reasons:

“To protect user privacy” – If someone searches for something sensitive or highly specific, Google won’t show it to protect their privacy.
“Queries made a very small number of times” – Google doesn’t show terms with very low search volumes.

They might have understated that second point just a bit, considering they’re hiding nearly half of all clicks.

Is it just your website?

Nope. Everyone’s in the same boat, though the amount of missing data varies wildly:

Small websites tend to have more missing data
Medium-sized sites (10,000-1,000,000 clicks per month) typically have the least missing data
Very large sites often have tons of missing data again

So if you’re a small business website owner, you’re probably missing more than the average 46%.

Does that mean Google Search Console is completely useless?

Not at all. Search Console is still your best source for understanding how people find you through Google. The problem is that you can’t take the numbers at face value.

Search Console is perfectly accurate for:

Total clicks to your website
How many impressions your site gets
Where your site ranks for different terms (although remember, average ranking position isn’t always what it seems)
Which pages get the most traffic

It’s just the breakdown of which search terms brought those clicks that’s incomplete.

How to deal with this missing data

So what’s a website owner to do when half their data is playing hide and seek? Don’t worry – you’re not completely in the dark. Here ‘s how I suggest you deal with it:

Don’t obsess over exact numbers

SEO isn’t accounting. You don’t need to balance the books down to the last penny. Rather than fixating on why you can only see 234 clicks instead of 467, focus on which terms are bringing the most traffic relative to each other. Are product-related searches outperforming service-related ones? Are informational queries driving more traffic than transactional ones? These patterns matter far more than exact click counts.

Assume the invisible data follows similar patterns

Google didn’t pull the available data out of its arse, and we can assume the same for the missing data. The missing clicks almost certainly follow the same general patterns as the data you can see, just with more specific variations. If “copywriter London” shows up in your visible data, the invisible clicks probably include things like “copywriter in London who works with small business at the weekend” or “someone to write my website for me based in London” The keywords you can see give you strong hints about the ones you can’t see – they’re usually just longer, more specific versions of the same topics.

Cross-check with Google Analytics

While Analytics won’t show you search terms directly, it will show which pages received traffic from organic search. If your “copywriter for management consultants” page is getting loads of organic visits but the related keywords in Search Console show few clicks, bingo – you’ve found where some of those missing clicks are going. Analytics can’t tell you the exact terms, but it can tell you where the mystery visitors landed.

Look at page-level data instead

The page-level reports in Search Console are far more reliable than the query-level ones. The “Pages” tab seems to show you exactly which pages received how many clicks from Google, with no mysterious gaps. Use this to identify your top-performing content, then check which topics and themes these pages cover. This approach gives you a more complete picture of what’s actually driving traffic.

Think proportionally

Always remember that any traffic analysis you do based on visible queries only applies to about half your actual search traffic. If you decide to focus on a keyword that drives “20% of your traffic” based on visible data, you’re actually focusing on something that might only drive 10% of your total search traffic. Scale all your numbers accordingly, and remember that the hidden long-tail might collectively be more valuable than your top visible terms.

When missing data leads you astray

The dangerous part is when you make decisions based on incomplete data.

For example, you might see from the data in Google Search Console that your brand terms drive 60% of your visible clicks, so you focus all your energy there. But if you could see the whole picture, you’d realise brand terms are only 30% of your total traffic, and you’re ignoring the long-tail terms that actually bring in most of your business.

Don’t give up on Google Search Console!

Search Console is still the best free tool you have for understanding how people find you on Google. Just remember that when it comes to search terms, you’re only seeing about half the picture.

Think of it as an inherent limitation of the tool – one we need to acknowledge and work with, rather than fight against. Understanding these constraints helps us use Search Console more effectively and avoid drawing incorrect conclusions from incomplete data.

And next time you’re presenting Search Console data, make sure to highlight this limitation so everyone understands that the query reports represent only part of the picture – not the complete story of your search performance.

Confused by your Google Search Console? You’re not alone – book in a 1:1 with me and I’ll walk you through it step by step to show you how you can get the most out of it for your website and SEO.