Clicks measure actual user visits from Google's search properties to your site. When someone sees your listing in results and clicks it, GSC logs one click. This counts across all Google search surfaces: standard web search, image search, video results, Google Discover, and Google News. Clicks differ from impressions, which just mean your URL appeared in results whether anyone clicked or not. Your click-through rate (CTR) is clicks divided by impressions. A page with 1,000 impressions and 50 clicks has a 5% CTR. Industry CTR benchmarks vary wildly by position: position 1 averages 30–40%, position 5 drops to 5–8%, and position 10 sits around 2–3%. GSC counts one click per user action, but there are edge cases. If someone clicks your result, hits back, then clicks it again within the same session, GSC may count that as one or two clicks depending on timing. Cross-device tracking doesn't exist in GSC, so the same person clicking from phone and desktop counts as two clicks. Clicks from logged-out users or privacy-focused browsers may be sampled or approximated. Clicks also have a 16-month data retention limit in GSC. Older data disappears, which matters when analyzing long-term trends. The Discover and Google News tabs show separate click counts that don't appear in the main Performance report unless you filter by search appearance. We use clicks as the primary conversion metric for organic search because they represent real traffic, not just visibility. When auditing a client's GSC, we compare clicks against Google Analytics sessions to spot discrepancies. A 10–15% variance is normal due to tracking differences, ad blockers, and redirect chains. Anything beyond 20% suggests tracking issues or bot traffic. For our portfolio sites, we track clicks per page to identify which URLs actually drive traffic versus which just rank but don't convert impressions into visits.