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Review of Search Console terms.

The following Checkboxes (as of March 2019) exist at the top of Search Analytics Report

Checkboxes

  1. Clicks
  2. Impressions
  3. CTR
  4. Position
Radio Buttons
  1. Queries
  2. Pages
  3. Countries
  4. Devices
  5. Search Appearance
src="images/search-console-queries.jpg" width="921" height="685" alt="Search Console Queries">
Search Console Queries

Review of Definitions

CheckBoxes that appear in Search Analytics Report
  1. Click = user "clicked" impression (to visit your site) Click means the user selected the result and they found the SERP enticing.
  2. Impressions = your site is shown in search results. When a person executed a query, a page from your site appeared in their search result. For example, if a searcher queried "database life cycle", if our site http://www.relationaldbdesign.com was ranked number 5 and 1 through 10 of the search result was shown to the user, this would count as an impression.
    However, if my page ranked number 11, and only 1 to 10 of the results were displayed to the user, this would not count as an impression for the query unless the user clicked to see the next page of results, 11 to 20.
  3. CTR (click-through rate) = how often users clicked the impressions. Percentage of the site's page that was selected in the result. This provides insight into how well the results displayed match the query and the user's intent.
  4. Average position = average top position for the query
    To calculate average position, we take into account the top-ranking URL from your site for a particular query but often across different users. In the example of the query "database life cycle" we do use the position of number 5 for the website and disregard the later positions of the query for this search.
    If another user made the same query but our top result was in the number 3 position, the average top position would be 4, since it is the average of 5 and 3.

Search Analytics consists of 4 Checkboxes

  1. Clicks
  2. Impressions
  3. CTR
  4. Position
For example, if your page ranked number 11 for a query, and the user saw only pages 1 - 10, this would not count as an impression.
Search Analytics (2016) consists of the following 4 checkboxes
1) Clicks 2) Impressions 3) CTR 4) Position
2. Average Position: Average position = average top position for the query
To calculate average position, we take the top ranking URL from your site for a particular query, but often across different users. Example: database life cycle
#5 for relationaldbdesign
Disregard the later positions of the query for the search.
Sample query: Google Blog for site owners

Radio Buttons that appear in Search Analytics Report

  1. Queries = user's search term(s)
    queries are often written in brackets such as: [concatenated primary key]
  2. Pages
  3. Countries
  4. Devices
  5. Search Type
  6. Dates

Definitions of terms outside of Search Console and Search Analytics Report

Qualified Query/ Qualified Traffic:

Qualified means if a user arrives at your site or sees your site in "Search Results", there is a realistic chance that they would like your content and convert. You want to rank for terms that represent qualified traffic, so that users will be satisfied with the search results.
"Qualified" = realistic chance of the user being satisfied with your site
This means their original motivation behind entering the query is congruent with the content they encounter at your website. Focus on ranking for qualified traffic instead of ranking for search terms where the users will be unsatisfied with the results. De-emphasize irrelevant search queries during the improvement of your site. It is a more effective strategy to focus on your site receiving qualified traffic rather than trying to rank for terms where users would be unsatisfied with the result. For example, while the "Google Webmaster Central Blog" has impressions for the standalone query "google", this query will not bring us qualified traffic because it is too generic. Those searchers likely want the Google home page. Therefore, we can de-emphasize unqualified queries like "google" during our site improvement.
Site improvement requires refactoring of HTML along with improving CSS and Javascript load times.