A brand new research by Patrick Stox, Model Ambassador at Ahrefs, finds that, on common, Google Search Console hides the key phrase time period for 46.08% of clicks.
The research examined one month of information throughout 146,741 web sites, concerned near 9 billion complete clicks, and divulges that Google probably leaves many longtail key phrase information hidden from GSC customers, based on its creator.
Proportion Of Clicks Lacking Key phrase Knowledge By Site visitors Quantity
Every dot within the scatter plot under represents one of many web sites studied.
The horizontal or x-axis illustrates the positioning’s complete visitors, and the vertical y-axis represents the proportion of clicks for which the key phrase is hidden.

Stox notes dramatic variations in these figures and cites two websites with visitors from 60 million to 100 million clicks displaying 2.27% and 90.3% hidden phrases, respectively.
In his evaluation, Stox notes, “You see a lot of websites across the center and a big spike at 95%-100% lacking clicks. So most of the websites are lacking about half their information, however numerous websites are lacking a lot of the information.”
Stox additionally shared his ideas on the varieties of key phrase phrases almost definitely being hidden in a tweet and mentioned:
“Google provides a couple of causes for this discrepancy:
- Privateness
- Queries made a small variety of instances
I doubt that many are for privateness, in order that leaves quite a lot of long-tail queries that Google isn’t exposing to web site homeowners and SEOs.”
Hidden Key phrase Phrases By Site visitors Vary
A second information visualization within the report illustrates that web sites within the excessive decrease and better ranges for visitors quantity are likely to have extra hidden information.

Stox notes that Ahrefs drew their information from the API to get all information obtainable.
How A lot Of Your GSC Key phrase Knowledge Is Hidden?
The research reveals that the amount of hidden information varies extensively by web site.
Stox created this Knowledge Studio report you could copy and use to examine for lacking information in your web site.
For those who select, you possibly can self-report your findings to Stox, who intends to mixture and share them in an replace.
Need to be taught extra to reinforce the worth of your GSC information?
Roger Montti wrote a wonderful piece on why your Google Search Console and Google Analytics information by no means match – and the way that impacts the insights you possibly can take from every supply.
Learn the total GSC Clicks research report from Ahrefs to be taught extra about its findings and methodology.
Featured picture: Shutterstock/Alones
if( sopp != 'yes' && addtl_consent != '1~' ){
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s) {if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)}; if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0'; n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window,document,'script', 'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js');
if( typeof sopp !== "undefined" && sopp === 'yes' ){ fbq('dataProcessingOptions', ['LDU'], 1, 1000); }else{ fbq('dataProcessingOptions', []); }
fbq('init', '1321385257908563');
fbq('track', 'PageView');
fbq('trackSingle', '1321385257908563', 'ViewContent', { content_name: 'hidden-keywords-gsc-ahrefs-study', content_category: 'marketing-analytics news seo' }); }