Queries are the exact words and phrases users entered into Google Search that triggered your website to show up in the results. Google Search Console logs these queries even if the user didn't click through to your site, giving you visibility into what people are actually searching for when they encounter your pages. The queries report shows four key metrics for each search term: total impressions (how many times your site appeared for that query), total clicks, average click-through rate, and average position in the results. This data typically covers the past 16 months, though Google samples data for high-traffic sites to keep reports manageable. Queries reveal the gap between what you think you rank for and what you actually rank for. You'll often find surprising terms driving traffic, long-tail variations you never targeted, and branded searches you didn't know existed. For the Ottawa SEO portfolio, we regularly discover queries with high impressions but low CTR in positions 8–15, which become immediate optimization targets because a small ranking improvement can double or triple traffic. The report also flags anonymized queries marked as "(not provided)" when Google deems them too rare or potentially sensitive. This typically affects less than 5% of total queries for most sites. You can filter queries by page, country, device, search appearance (like featured snippets), and date range. The most practical workflow is sorting by impressions to find high-opportunity terms, then cross-referencing position and CTR to prioritize. A query with 1,000 impressions per month at position 6 matters more than one with 50 impressions at position 2. One critical limitation: query data in Search Console is not perfectly accurate. Google rounds numbers, aggregates similar queries inconsistently, and sometimes drops queries entirely from the interface while still counting them in totals. Treat it as directional truth, not gospel, and always validate important decisions with actual ranking checks and analytics data.