Guide 190 · Reports · GA4 + Tag Manager
Read the Search terms report: the queries behind your clicks, once Search Console is linked
The Search terms report shows the Google queries that brought people to your site — clicks, impressions, click-through rate and average position — but only after Search Console is linked.
After step 5, you can name the query with the most clicks, the query with the best click-through rate, and whether the report is empty because there is no link yet or because there really are no queries.
Download the reference: the Search terms reference (JSON) (1751 bytes, MD5 d281b1380d27408792d9dabb04984178). It holds the report or event definition and the worked example with the recomputed figures shown on this page.
What you need
- Editor access or above on the property, and verified ownership of the Search Console property, if you still need to create the link.
- The link: Admin, then Product links, then Search Console Links. Without it, this report has nothing to show.
- The report path: Reports, then Search Console, then Queries. GA4 calls it the Queries report; the collection is unpublished by default, so publish it from the Library first.
The trace
- Check the link before you open the report. In Admin, under Product links, open Search Console Links. If no link is listed, the report will be empty — that is the expected state, not a data problem. The link pairs one web data stream with one Search Console property, and a property can have only one data stream linked to Search Console. Create it from Admin: click Link, choose the Search Console property, confirm, select the web data stream, review and submit. You cannot edit a link afterwards; to change it, delete it and create a new one.
- Publish the collection, then open the report. The Search Console collection of reports is unpublished by default. Find it under Library in the left navigation and publish it from there. Then go to Reports, then Search Console, then Queries. The table lists one row per query, with the Search Console metrics for the linked property.
- Read the row as a query, not a visit. The Organic Google search query is the query that triggered an impression. The clicks are the organic Google Search clicks Search Console recorded; the impressions are the organic Google Search impressions. Click-through rate is clicks per impression, and average position is the average ranking of your pages for the query. A query with many impressions and few clicks ranks but does not attract; a query with few impressions and a high click-through rate attracts but rarely shows.
- Wait out the delay before you judge a new link. Search Console data is available in Search Console and in Analytics 48 hours after it is collected by Search Console. Data is available from the time of site verification if the web data stream came first, or from the date the data stream was created if verification came first. A link made today does not show today's queries tomorrow.
- Know what the report cannot do. Search Console metrics work only with Search Console dimensions and the Analytics dimensions Country, Device category and Landing page — you cannot drill deeper by Analytics dimensions. The Search Console reports do not support time-series charts, and Search Console keeps data for the last 16 months, so the reports in Analytics hold at most 16 months.
Dead ends
DEAD END — OPENING THE REPORT BEFORE THE LINK EXISTS. An empty Queries report with no Search Console link is not broken data. The metrics in this report each require an active Search Console link. Link first, publish the collection second, read the report third.
DEAD END — EXPECTING TODAY'S QUERIES TODAY. Search Console data reaches Analytics 48 hours after Search Console collects it. Yesterday's numbers can still be partial, and a query that appeared in search this morning may not be in this report until the day after tomorrow.
DEAD END — DRILLING BY AN ANALYTICS DIMENSION. You can drill deeper by Search Console dimensions, but not by Analytics dimensions. If you need a query split by a dimension this report does not offer, the split lives in Search Console itself, not in this report.
End state
The Search terms report is the query list. The worked example below recomputes the click-through rate for three queries, so a query with many impressions can be read as a rate before anyone calls it a winner.
Worked example — stated inputs, recomputed results. The queries below are stated inputs for the example. Every click-through rate in the table was recomputed from clicks and impressions.
| Query | Impressions | Clicks | Click-through rate | Average position |
|---|---|---|---|---|
how to start a business canada | 1,842 | 96 | 5.2% | 4.7 |
register a business ontario | 3,105 | 74 | 2.4% | 8.2 |
business licence bc cost | 612 | 41 | 6.7% | 3.1 |
| Total | 5,559 | 211 | 3.8% | — |
Click-through rate is clicks divided by impressions: 96 ÷ 1,842 = 5.2%, 74 ÷ 3,105 = 2.4%, 41 ÷ 612 = 6.7%. Overall, 211 ÷ 5,559 = 3.8%. Google's own example returns a click-through rate as a fraction: 0.0588 means 5.88% of impressions resulted in a click. Average position is the same kind of arithmetic: a page at position 3 for one query and position 7 for another averages to 5 — (3 + 7) ÷ 2.
Sources
- Analytics Help — [GA4] Queries report — the Queries report, its dimensions and metrics, the 48-hour delay, the 16-month window, and that the collection is unpublished by default
- Analytics Help — Connect Search Console to Google Analytics — the link itself: one stream to one property, Editor role plus verified ownership, the Admin steps, and that a link cannot be edited
Checked 11 November 2026. The click paths above are the ones in Google's help and developer pages, opened in full on 11 November 2026. No step in this guide was run inside a live Analytics property, because that needs a Google sign-in and this site does not sign in as anyone. The worked-example figures on this page were recomputed in Python with decimal arithmetic, and the downloadable JSON file carries the same recomputed figures. Google moves menu items without warning; if a path on this page no longer matches, the linked help page is the current map.