Why GSC Impressions Are Up But Traffic Is Falling: 4 Things To Consider First – Ask An SEO

This week’s Ask an SEO question is:

“Why have page impressions increased so much in GSC, but my page traffic is reducing? I thought it might be AIO, but when I look into this, not all pages have AI Overviews – what else could be causing impressions to increase so much?”

Good question, and there are a few reasons why this could be happening.

• New content got indexed and began to rank.
• The layout of the search engine results page has changed.
• You have irrelevant pages showing up for a query.
• SERP features.

New Content Ranking

Sometimes new blog posts, product or collection pages, or groups of pages get indexed and begin to show up in the top pages of Google. When this happens, impressions start to increase, but you may not be in a traffic position yet.

SERP Layout Changes

You may have the same rankings, or all of a sudden have new rankings but no clicks (including positions 1 and 2). This happens when the layout of the search engine results page changes. It can happen short-term or long-term, and it is virtually impossible to track because it also changes based on where the person is located.

Some of the SERP features that stop SEO results from getting clicks include:

• AI Overviews.
• Featured snippets (also known as answer boxes).
• PPC ads (sponsored listings that look like SEO results are a huge traffic killer and likely money maker for Google).
• Shopping ads (there are sometimes two or four rows of these).
• Map packs and local business listings showing up.
• People Also Ask, things to know, and other rich results.
• Video thumbnails being shown.
• Social media and forum results.

Each of these will push or distract from the SEO result getting traffic. If you’re listed on the first page, but these stop you from getting the click, your impressions will increase, but your traffic will not. In this situation, try modifying your title and description, look to create multiple types of media, including video and image content when relevant, and if you have a physical location, optimize it for the local packs.

Irrelevant Pages

Sometimes you’ll show up for a large phrase, but it isn’t something you sell, a service you provide, or a type of content that is on your page. I see this happen regularly with strong websites that are clean SEO wise and have the ability to rank.

Ecommerce sites will launch a new collection of products, which can be themed like colors or brand collaborations. If the homepage and brand are strong, the keyword-rich internal link pointing to the new category or collection page powers it up and can boost it to show up for phrases that are irrelevant. This can include colors, the brand you collaborated with, other brands’ terms that have the same name as your new product collection, etc.

I’ve seen service providers show up for irrelevant phrases to their services. An exterminator may specialize in termites, and their SEO decided to overoptimize their page with keyword-stuffed headers and content. The title and meta tag are all about the service, but the query “termites” is aligned with anatomy, biology, ways to remove them yourself, etc. The other sites showing up better meet the needs of the searcher, so some traffic will click to the exterminator, most will go where they’ll find the information they’re looking for.

Hacked sites get this a lot. Vulnerabilities in plugins, direct hacks, and anything that allows someone to start publishing content on your site can cause irrelevant queries to show up for porn, payday, pills, gambling, etc. Plug your base domain into a tool like Semrush, Ahrefs, Moz, seoClarity, etc., that offers rank tracking data and look for the keywords with large search volumes. If you don’t have a paid tool, go into Search Console and look at queries. Sort by impressions and look for which have large impressions but no clicks. Now click the query, and you’ll see the page showing up.

You can also export the list of queries and have it analyzed by Claude, ChatGPT, etc., quickly by asking which queries are not relevant to your website topically. From there, you can locate the hacked pages or irrelevant experiences quickly and take action.

SERP Features

Getting a new SERP feature, like being in a People Also Ask, is exciting, but it won’t always lead to more traffic. The best you can do is brand building, so people know about your website or company and why you exist. When this happens and you start populating, you may be able to get the clicks.

Brand building here is removing promotional and self-serving content from pages that are not product and conversion-oriented. This includes blog posts and informative pages. Don’t talk about why you’re great on your product and category pages either; focus on solving the customer’s needs. This will sell your products and services as a solution and hopefully keep them coming back.

Don’t say “Our XYZ is the best for ABC”; instead, say, “The XYZ on this page works perfectly for A, B, and C if combined with 123.” This is part of reducing “we, we” syndrome and conversion rate optimization. It’s one of the quickest and fastest wins.

On your blog, don’t brag about your products and stuff them in. Instead, give solutions users can use if they’re not a customer to build their trust. This goes far with SEO and getting social media shares, too. People will know you provide solutions and will be more likely to keep returning for more. Our clients who do this well tend to get more traffic from SERP features than the ones that always need to self-promote.

Start With These To Diagnose

Increased impressions without any traffic are a common thing in SEO. These are four of the normal starting points to diagnose and fix the issue. If it’s a matter of being at the bottom of the SERPs, you’ll need to work on getting to the top positions, but that is an entirely different topic, so I didn’t include it here. I hope this helps.

More Resources:

• Why Is Organic Traffic Down? Here’s How To Segment The Data
• AI Overview CTR Fell 61%, But Clicks Didn’t Collapse
• What Is A Migration Hangover Traffic Drop & How Do You Avoid It?

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Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal