How to See Your Keywords in Google Search Console

Your Google Search Console keywords are in the Performance report, under the Queries tab: Search Console calls them queries, and the table lists the search terms that led to your site, with clicks, impressions, CTR and average position for each. You can narrow that list to one page, filter it with regex, and export it, but it is never the complete list.

That last point matters more than the clicks it takes to get there. Below: where the keywords are, how to see them for a single page, how the regex filter works, why some queries never show up, and which rows deserve your attention first.

How do you see which keywords your site ranks for in Google Search Console?

Search Console doesn't use the word "keywords". The Queries dimension is "the search terms that led to your site". ^{[3]Google Search Console Help. Performance report (Search results): Dimensions and data groupings}

1. Open Search Console and select your property.
2. Click Performance (the Search results report). By default it shows click and impression data for the past three months. ^{[1]Google Search Console Help. Performance report (Search results): Overview and basic setup}
3. Below the chart, make sure the Queries tab is selected. The tabs above the table (Queries, Pages, Countries, Devices, Search appearance, Dates) decide how the table rows are grouped. ^{[1]Google Search Console Help. Performance report (Search results): Overview and basic setup}
4. Sort by clicking a column header: Clicks for the terms that already send traffic, Impressions for the terms where you are seen most.

Each row carries four numbers. Clicks and impressions count what happened; CTR is clicks divided by impressions; average position is "the average position of the topmost result from your site". ^{[1]Google Search Console Help. Performance report (Search results): Overview and basic setup} Two caveats from Google: a query in your list does not mean you will see your site when you search it yourself, and the newest days can be preliminary data that "may change in the next few hours". ^{[1]Google Search Console Help. Performance report (Search results): Overview and basic setup [4]Google Search Console Help. Performance report (Search results): About the data}

The thing people get wrong: the position next to a query in the Queries tab is not the position of a specific page. Data grouped by Queries is aggregated by property, so only your site's topmost result counts. ^{[1]Google Search Console Help. Performance report (Search results): Overview and basic setup} If two of your pages appear for a query at positions 1 and 3, the Queries tab reports 1. Google's own example: three of your URLs at positions 1, 2 and 3 give a property position of 1, but a by-page position of 2. ^{[4]Google Search Console Help. Performance report (Search results): About the data}

How to see the keywords for one page

The site-wide list tells you what your domain is known for. The per-page list tells you what one URL is actually ranking for, which is the view you need before you rewrite a title, expand a section or merge two pages.

1. In the Performance report, click the Pages tab.
2. Click the URL you want. Clicking any row in a table filters the whole report to that row. ^{[2]Google Search Console Help. Performance report (Search results): Advanced filtering and comparison}
3. Switch back to the Queries tab. The table now lists only the queries for which that page appeared.

To go the other way, from one query to the pages that rank for it, Google's steps are: click the Queries tab, click a query to filter the report to it, then open the Pages tab to see which URLs were shown. ^{[5]Google Search Console Help. Performance report (Search results): Common tasks and use cases} If two of your URLs appear there with similar impressions, that is the first sign of overlap; how to check for keyword cannibalization walks through confirming it.

Mind the numbers when you switch views. Data grouped by Pages is aggregated by page, so a page's position is the topmost position of that page alone, while the Queries tab counts your whole property. CTR and position "are generally higher when aggregating by property". ^{[1]Google Search Console Help. Performance report (Search results): Overview and basic setup [4]Google Search Console Help. Performance report (Search results): About the data}

A worked example: one page's query list

The table below is constructed to illustrate the pattern. Picture a reporting-template post filtered on the Pages tab, then read on the Queries tab over three months:

Read it in three passes. The head term sits at 6.8 with 1,400 impressions: it already works, and a stronger title could lift its CTR. "seo report template free" and "client seo report example" sit just past page one with real impressions; the page is relevant to them but does not answer them yet, which usually means a missing section. "monthly seo report" at 23.9 with no clicks is a different intent and may deserve its own page. Sorting by Impressions surfaces this order faster than sorting by Clicks, because the queries with zero clicks are the ones you have not won yet.

How to filter keywords with regex in Search Console

The plain query filter (Queries containing, Queries not containing) is not case-sensitive "but is otherwise exact, including any spaces". ^{[2]Google Search Console Help. Performance report (Search results): Advanced filtering and comparison} When you need several variants at once, use a regular expression:

1. Click + Add filter at the top of the report.
2. Choose Query (the same steps work for Page).
3. Choose Custom (regex).
4. Pick Matches regex (the default) or Doesn't match regex to exclude everything that matches.
5. Enter the expression and click Apply. ^{[2]Google Search Console Help. Performance report (Search results): Advanced filtering and comparison}

Search Console uses RE2 syntax. Matching is partial by default, so the pattern can match anywhere in the query unless you anchor it with ^ (start) or $ (end), and it is not case-sensitive unless you start the pattern with (?-i). ^{[2]Google Search Console Help. Performance report (Search results): Advanced filtering and comparison} Patterns worth keeping:

• Queries that start with a question word (Matches regex): ^(how|what|why|when|which)\b
• Several spellings or variants of one topic (Matches regex): (report|reporting)
• Everything except your brand and its typos (Doesn't match regex): (keylogs|key logs|keylog)
• Long queries of five words or more (Matches regex): ^(\S+\s){4,}\S+$

Excluding the brand is usually the first filter to set. Search Console also has a built-in branded-query filter, but it isn't available for sites with few impressions. ^{[3]Google Search Console Help. Performance report (Search results): Dimensions and data groupings} For using these patterns to shortlist realistic wins, see how to find low-hanging fruit keywords.

One side effect: any filter on query or URL can change the totals in the chart, "due to data truncation and the omission of anonymized queries". ^{[2]Google Search Console Help. Performance report (Search results): Advanced filtering and comparison} Compare filtered numbers with filtered numbers, not with the unfiltered chart.

Why you cannot see every keyword (1,000 rows, anonymized queries)

Two separate limits hide queries from the table. First, privacy: anonymized queries are "those that aren't issued by more than a few dozen users over a two-to-three month period". Their wording is never shown, but they still count in the chart totals unless you filter by query. ^{[7]Google Search Central Blog. A deep dive into Search Console performance data filtering and limits} Second, storage and display: Search Console "stores top data rows and not all data rows", and its tables "can show a maximum of 1,000 rows". ^{[6]Google Search Console Help. About Search Console data}

The second limit can be worked around. The Search Console API returns up to 25,000 rows per request and up to 50,000 rows per day per site and search type. ^{[7]Google Search Central Blog. A deep dive into Search Console performance data filtering and limits} Google points to bulk data exports for the fullest query list. ^{[3]Google Search Console Help. Performance report (Search results): Dimensions and data groupings} The first limit cannot: no export recovers withheld wording. Anonymized queries vs. Search Console row limits shows how to tell which of the two you are looking at.

Which keywords to act on first

A sorted Queries table is a list, not a plan. Google itself recommends watching trends in impressions and clicks more than position alone. ^{[5]Google Search Console Help. Performance report (Search results): Common tasks and use cases} In practice the rows worth acting on first share three traits: real impressions, a position just off the top of page one or on page two, and a CTR below what similar positions earn on your site. Positions 11 to 20 have their own playbook in striking distance keywords.

Doing this by hand means exporting, filtering by position and estimating each query's upside. The low hanging fruit finder does that pass on your own Search Console data: it keeps keywords in positions 4 to 30 above an impression floor and ranks them by the visits they could bring back, scored against your site's own CTR curve.

What to do next in Search Console

Open the Performance report, set the date range to the last three months, and run three views: the Queries tab sorted by Impressions with your brand excluded by regex; one important page filtered on the Pages tab, then read on the Queries tab; and one query with two of your URLs on the Pages tab. Note any query with high impressions and a position past 10. Those are the rows where an edit to an existing page is most likely to pay off.