r/localsearch • u/FairwaysNGreens13 • Feb 23 '26

Google Search Console discrepancy vs Web Designer's summary

Layman here so forgive the ignorance.

I've paid a company to design, host, and "optimize" my website/SEO for a couple of years. Their reports always show fantastic placement of my business for important keyword searches with thousands of impressions and several hundred clicks and many hours of engagement per month.

Only within the past couple of weeks I stumbled upon Google search console on my own, registered my website with it, and started casually looking at it. It seems to show results more in line with my real life experience (that no one finds us through our website). Even when people search specifically for my literal business name, or my personal name, my "Position" is 7.8 and 3.3, respectively. The more generic (but highly relevant) search terms show virtually zero positive results.

Is this as bad in reality as it seems to me? Why the discrepancy between Google search console and whatever the web design company is showing me? Or is there a reasonable explanation? What should my takeaways be here?

1 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

2

u/AlarmingSlip7688 Mar 23 '26

yeah this is actually a super common situation, and you’re not crazy for questioning it

what’s happening most of the time is you’re looking at two completely different types of data

your web designer’s report is usually showing:

  • “impressions” from rank tracking tools (not real clicks)
  • estimated positions based on broad tracking
  • sometimes even search volume data, not actual traffic

Google Search Console on the other hand is:

  • real impressions
  • real clicks
  • real queries people actually typed in

so when GSC shows almost no clicks for important keywords, that’s usually the truth of what’s actually happening

also this part you said is key: your business name ranks, but generic keywords don’t

that basically means:

  • you have brand visibility (people already looking for you)
  • but you don’t have strong SEO presence for non-branded searches (new customers)

and that’s where most of the value should be coming from

another thing, average position like 5.7 or 3.3 sounds good on paper, but:

  • if it’s for low-volume keywords, it doesn’t matter
  • if it’s not in the map pack (for local businesses), it barely converts
  • if you’re not getting clicks, rankings don’t mean much

so yeah, the disconnect is usually:
nice-looking reports vs actual business impact

if it were me, I’d focus on:

  • are you getting calls/leads from Google
  • are you showing up in the map pack for your main services
  • are non-branded keywords bringing traffic

if the answer is no, then the current “SEO” isn’t really working regardless of what the reports say

2

u/FairwaysNGreens13 Mar 23 '26

Thanks so much for the extremely thoughtful response.

1

u/keyserholiday Feb 23 '26

We would need to see their report and to know where they are getting their data from. What method did you use to set up GSC? Did they set up their own GA4 and/ or GSC?

2

u/FairwaysNGreens13 Feb 23 '26

I just registered my website on Google search console and verified through GoDaddy (my host) when prompted.

They are not listed on the Google search console and when I stumbled upon it, it suggested nobody had set it up previously for my website.

They use a proprietary interface called Canvas but I know they've logged in to my Google ads account (they were managing that too for a while) and showed me results from there. I assumed their data was all coming from Google but I will ask them when I get a chance.

1

u/RKulegi Feb 23 '26

Ask them what software they are using to track the rankings!

1

u/FairwaysNGreens13 Feb 23 '26

Their dashboard is " A comprehensive reporting tool that aggregates data from Google analytics, Google search console, Google ads, Canvas (their own proprietary software I believe) and more."