How to Find Underperforming Pages in Google Search Console

Finding underperforming pages in Google Search Console (GSC) is a key way to identify content that needs to be updated, optimized, or re-promoted. By regularly analyzing your site's performance, you can find opportunities to improve rankings, increase traffic, and provide more value to your visitors. The primary tool for this is the Performance report.

Here are the most effective methods to identify these pages.

Method 1: Find Pages with High Impressions but Low CTR (Click-Through Rate)

This is the most common and effective way to find underperforming content. It identifies pages that Google is showing to many people (high impressions), but that aren't compelling enough to earn a click (low CTR). This often means the page title or meta description needs improvement.

1. Go to your Google Search Console property.
2. In the left-hand menu, click on Performance > Search results.
3. At the top of the report, make sure you have four metrics selected: Clicks, Impressions, Average CTR, and Average position.
4. Scroll down to the table below the graph and click on the Pages tab.
5. Click the filter icon (looks like a funnel) and filter for pages with a good ranking. A good starting point is to filter by Position and set it to Smaller than 10 (this shows you pages on the first page of Google).
6. Once the filter is applied, click the CTR column header to sort the list from low to high.

What you're looking for: You will now see a list of your pages that rank on page one but have the lowest click-through rate. These are your top-priority pages for optimization.

Method 2: Find Pages That Have Lost Traffic (Content Decay)

This method helps you find pages that used to perform well but have lost clicks and impressions over time. This is often called "content decay."

1. Go to the Performance > Search results report.
2. Click on the Date filter at the top of the report.
3. Select Compare.
4. Choose a time frame to compare, such as "Compare last 3 months to previous period" or "Compare last 28 days to same period last year". Click Apply.
5. Scroll down to the Pages tab.
6. Click on the Clicks Difference column header to sort the list from lowest to highest.

What you're looking for: Pages at the top of this list (with large negative numbers) are the ones that have lost the most clicks. These pages likely need to be updated with fresh information, re-optimized for new search intent, or promoted again.

Method 3: Find Pages with Almost No Clicks

This method helps you find content that is getting virtually no engagement at all.

1. Go to the Performance > Search results report.
2. Click on the Pages tab.
3. Click the filter icon.
4. Select Clicks from the dropdown menu.
5. Choose Smaller than and enter a low number, like 10. Click Apply.
6. Now, click the Impressions column header to sort from high to low.

What you're looking for: This shows you pages that are being seen by users (impressions) but are getting almost zero clicks. This can indicate a major mismatch between the page's content and what the user expects to see from the search result.

Other Signs of Underperformance in GSC

• Pages Not Indexed: In the left-hand menu, go to Pages (under the "Indexing" section). Look at the report for "Why pages aren't indexed." If you see important pages listed under reasons like "Crawled – currently not indexed," it means Google has seen the page but doesn't think it's valuable enough to add to its index. This is a strong sign of a low-quality or underperforming page.
• Poor Core Web Vitals: In the left-hand menu, go to Core Web Vitals. If you see a large number of URLs listed as "Poor" or "Needs improvement," those pages are underperforming from a technical and user experience perspective, which can hurt their rankings.

Need Help Boosting Your Site's Performance?

Identifying underperforming pages is the first step. If you need help with SEO, page speed optimization, or getting the most out of your EncodeDotHost hosting, our team is here to help, contact support for expert advice.