Google Impression Counts Differently For Sitelinks

Sep 21, 2011 - 9:09 am 13 by

Google WebmasterI spotted a very interesting tidbit I did not know myself on how Google calculates organic search impressions within webmaster tools.

A Google Webmaster Help thread has a Googler explaining that a search result with sitelinks is considered one impression which has two individual listings from the same domain is considered two impressions.

For example, a search for this site returns a main result with a few sitelinks. But this is not considered several organic impressions, it is only considered one impression:

Google Webmaster Tools Impressions

But when you have two separate results, then Google will count them as two unique impressions:

Impressions in Google Webmaster Tools

Asaph from Google said:

You get one impression for each time a URL from your site shows up in the SERP with the caveat that sitelinks are not counted as separate impressions. For example for the query "panther" I get two wikipedia results, so wikipedia would see two impressions for that query.

In the example you gave about the NYT we would count only a single impression for the top level URL and no impressions for the sitelinks. If you clicked on either the top level page or one of the sitelinks, we would count that as one click for the top level page.

Did you know that?

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
- YouTube
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: July 18, 2025

Jul 18, 2025 - 10:00 am
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google June Core Update Done, Local Ranking Update, AI Mode Updates & AI Calling Businesses

Jul 18, 2025 - 8:01 am
Google Maps

New Google Business Profile Check Edit Status

Jul 18, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google: Login Service Pages Are Hard To Rank In Search

Jul 18, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google

Google AI Overviews For Movie Queries

Jul 18, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google Ads

Google Ads Rolling Out Smart Bidding Exploration To Some Advertisers

Jul 18, 2025 - 7:21 am
Previous Story: Google +1 Button To Influence AdSense & Display Ads