Google Search Console Impressions

What Is an Impression

The impressions metric refers to the number of times an audience views your advertisement or other pieces of content.

It measures the total count of views, regardless of whether users clicked on or interacted with the content.

Impressions can be tracked across multiple mediums, such as websites, social media platforms, search engine result pages, mobile apps, and traditional media channels.

The metric provides advertisers with an estimate of the potential reach of their campaigns, but doesn’t indicate actual engagement. This is why it’s often analyzed alongside other metrics like CTR, conversions, CPC, etc.

How to Calculate Impressions

Calculating impressions means tracking the total count of ad views, regardless of whether a user clicks on the ad or not.

And while the formula for calculating impressions may differ slightly based on the specific medium. But in its simplest form, it comes down to this:

Impressions = Total ad views

Let’s say you’re running a display ad campaign on a website and your ad is shown 1,000 times to visitors on the website.

Each time the ad loads on a webpage, it counts as one impression, which means the total number of impressions is also 1,000.

What Is a Good Number of Impressions

There isn’t a universal benchmark for what constitutes a good number of impressions, as it depends on a long list of factors.

For some campaigns, a high number of impressions might be desirable to maximize brand exposure and reach as many potential customers as possible.

In other cases, a lower number of impressions with a higher level of engagement, such as click-through rates or conversions, might be more important.

That said, we pulled out benchmark data from our product related to organic impressions that you might find interesting.

According to Google Search Console Benchmarks for All Companies, a good number of organic impressions is around 122k a month. And within the last two months, we’ve seen a significant increase of up to 200k impressions a month.

If you want to stay on top of future trends and be able to instantly compare your performance to companies just like yours (in any given industry), you can join our Benchmark Groups – it’s free for everyone!

How to Increase the Number of Impressions

While the number of impressions you’re generating may not be your most important performance metric, getting more eyeballs on your ads or content won’t hurt your campaign (as long as it comes from a relevant audience).

We spoke to hundreds of marketers on the topic and here are some of the best tips they’ve shared on how to increase the number of impressions on your campaigns:

• Create “Rate Limited” reach campaigns: If you’re running Facebook Ads, a great way to expand your reach is to create “rate limited” reach campaigns. In other words, you build a reach campaign with a smaller budget and limit your impressions per user for a set number of days. Then, deliver this campaign to a super broad audience (e.g. only specify gender, age, and location) to reach a larger number of people at a much lower price. Those who engaged with your campaign can later be retargeted.
• Focus on building engagement: Your potential reach and the number of impressions you generate are also tightly connected to how your audience engages with your ads. Focus on building engagement in a way that makes the audience want to comment and share your post with their network.

More resources to help you improve:

• 8 PPC Metrics You Should Track to Improve Campaign Performance
• The 10 Facebook Metrics That Every Marketer is Tracking [Original Data]
• The 10 Most Important Google Ads Metrics [Original Data]
• Content Marketing Reporting: Best Practices and Tools for Building Great Reports (Free Ready-to-Use Templates Included)
• How to Use Search Analytics Report in Google Search Console: Best Practices
• Marketing Benchmarks by Industry