Impressions without clicks
Search impressions rose 52% while clicks moved less than 1%. The audit traced the gap to branded demand, a buried category hub and AI Overviews.
Audit
Search impressions
+52%
Quarter over quarter
Click change
<1%
Same period
Branded search share
94%
Non-brand footprint minimal
Category hub average position
~30
Below its own child pages
Context
An established brand gained page-one visibility across a run of algorithm updates, but the extra visibility produced almost no extra traffic.
Scope
Sixteen months of Search Console data, a full site crawl, live results checks and AI prompt-volume research, run together to explain the gap between impressions and clicks.
Findings
Demand was almost entirely branded. The category hub sat on page three, below its own child pages. AI Overviews were answering the commercial queries directly, and template-level technical issues affected the pages closest to revenue.