Search Console CSV opportunity finder

Turn an export into a shortlist

Get the right Search Console export

1. Open the Search results performance report. Choose Web search and one complete period, such as the last 28 days, with date comparison off.
2. Keep the country and device focused if you have enough data. Separate branded searches before exporting if you want to review discovery traffic.
3. Export as CSV. If Google supplies a ZIP, extract it and select Pages.csv or Queries.csv. The Pages file finds page candidates; the Queries file finds query candidates. They are not interchangeable.
4. Choose that file above, or paste its rows with the header. You can also paste tab-separated cells copied from a spreadsheet.

Google’s export instructions explain the available formats and row limits. This tool accepts up to 5,000 rows and 2 MB; that does not expand what Google included in your export.

Use English headers: Page (or Top pages), Clicks, Impressions, and Position. For queries, use Query or Top queries. Use decimal points for position. A CTR column is optional because the tool calculates CTR from clicks and impressions. Each page or query must appear once; duplicate rows and combined dimensions are rejected rather than silently added together.

How the shortlist works

The finder keeps rows in your chosen position range with at least your minimum impressions and a CTR below your scenario target. It sorts them by the additional clicks that target would produce at the same impression count. Every number is calculated from your file and your settings; there is no hidden score.

Additional clicks = impressions × target CTR ÷ 100 − current clicks

Results are rounded down to whole clicks. Rows with less than one additional click are omitted. The “why” disclosure counts every row left out, including exclusions, low impressions, positions outside the selected range, and rows already at the target. A download contains all candidates, not just the ones currently displayed.

The default is 1,000 impressions, position above 3 through 10, and a 3% scenario CTR. These are editable screening settings. Three percent is not a measured benchmark for that entire range. Use comparable queries from your own site or the examples in our good CTR guide to choose a target you can justify.

Why one page rises to the top

In the illustrative example, the coffee-grinder comparison has 20,000 impressions, 220 clicks, and an average position of 7.6. At 3% CTR, those impressions would yield 600 clicks: 380 more than the current report. The cleaning tutorial has 12,000 impressions and 90 clicks; the same target gives 360 clicks, an increase of 270. The comparison appears first.

That makes it worth inspecting, not automatically worth rewriting. Open its queries in Search Console: are people looking for a comparison you actually provide? Does the result describe it clearly? If the tutorial is easier to improve or its visitors are more valuable, work on that first. The file cannot make that decision.

Google describes how to investigate pages and queries. Use our position guide when the likely improvement requires a stronger ranking.

What the file cannot tell us

• No forecast. The scenario holds impressions fixed. It does not predict rankings, changes to search results, conversions, or how much a title edit will help.
• No automatic relevance judgment. Exclude irrelevant URLs or queries yourself. A word in a URL does not reveal whether the underlying searches were branded.
• No site-wide total. Exports can omit rows, and page and property totals can use different counting rules. The tool does not add candidate gains into a site-wide traffic promise.
• No invented page mapping. A Queries file does not identify the page behind each query. Click a shortlisted query in Search Console, then inspect its Pages tab.

If your export does not match the report total, read why Search Console totals don’t add up. Missing rows are not recovered by importing the file here.