How do you find striking-distance queries in Search Console without a rank tracker?

Striking-distance queries are queries that show your site at an average position inside a band you choose, such as 8 to 20. You can list them from Search Console alone: export the Queries table, keep the rows in that band, and rank them by impressions. The band is a rule of thumb, not a Google measure.

• Google's help page says the report averages the topmost position your site held over impressions, and that a position number can mean different things in different situations (Google, Search Console Help, read 30 October 2026).
• A Search Console export is truncated to 1,000 rows of representative examples, and anonymized (rare) queries are omitted from the table (Google, Search Console Help, read 30 October 2026).
• Penlid's striking distance tool starts with a band of average position 8 to 20 inclusive and a minimum of 10 impressions, and calls striking distance a rule of thumb, not a Google measure (Penlid, striking distance tool, read 30 October 2026).

What counts as a striking-distance query?

A striking-distance query is one whose average position in Search Console falls inside a band, below your best positions, that you choose yourself. Penlid's striking distance tool calls the idea a rule of thumb and not a Google measure; the Google pages we read do not use the term, and Search Console lists these rows as queries. The tool starts with a band of 8 to 20, both ends included, and lets you move either edge, so treat any band as a setting: pick one, write it down and reuse it.

Do not read the band as page 2. Google's position page offers several explanations for a position value of 11, and one of them reads it could mean first item on page 2, so we describe the band by position numbers and not by pages.

How do you list striking-distance queries from Search Console alone?

You list them by exporting the Queries table from the Performance report and keeping the rows whose average position sits inside your band, in a spreadsheet or with the free striking distance tool. The first three steps follow the tool page's instructions:

1. Pick the dates. Choose your property, open Performance, then Search results, and set a date range. A longer range gives each query more impressions to average over, but it blurs any movement inside the range.
2. Show the metrics. On the Queries tab, switch on Clicks, Impressions, CTR and Average position by clicking each metric's tile above the chart.
3. Export. Use the Export button, then Download CSV, and keep the ZIP or its Queries file.
4. Filter and sort. Keep the rows whose position is inside your band and whose impressions reach your minimum, then sort by impressions, largest first. In a spreadsheet that is two filters and a sort (our method, not a Google procedure).

The tool does this in your browser with no upload and writes every listed query to a CSV. It does not read a table that has a Page column as well as a Query column, because positions cannot be added up by query.

Average position is an average over impressions, not a single rank

Average position is an average over impressions, not a single rank, because Google builds it from the topmost position a link to your site held each time it appeared. Its definition turns on the topmost position occupied by a link to your property or page, and Google adds that a position number can mean different things in different situations. Results also vary by searcher, since they are specific to the time, place, device, and recent history of the person searching.

By a rank tracker we mean a tool that checks a list of queries you supply. The Queries table instead lists the queries that actually showed your site, with Google's own impression and click counts, but it cannot show the spread of positions behind each average, so treat the list as places to look and not as ranks to report. That comparison is our reading; we did not test any tracker.

What does a Search Console export leave out?

A Search Console export leaves out the rows beyond its 1,000-row cap and the rare queries Google omits for privacy, so a list built from it can miss queries you care about. Google's export page says Data is truncated to 1,000 rows of representative examples of your data, and its dimensions page says Search Console stores and shows only the most important data rows. Its troubleshooting page adds that, because the table shows at most 1,000 rows, some rare or long-tail rows might be omitted from the table. None of the three pages says how the kept rows are picked, so we cannot say whether a query with many impressions and few clicks, the kind this list looks for, would be among them.

Anonymized queries are a second gap: Google says anonymized (rare) results are omitted from the table, although the chart totals count them unless a query filter is applied, and the guide to how much of your traffic is in anonymized queries covers how to measure that. A report filtered to part of the site, such as a country, a device or a page folder, is its own table of up to 1,000 rows; for ways past the cap, see the guide to the 1,000-row export limit.

How do you choose which striking-distance queries to work on first?

Start with the queries that have the most impressions in your band, because your site was shown for them most often, then run three checks before you spend time on any of them:

• Brand. Google says Branded queries typically lead to higher-ranking pages from your site, and the tool's page notes that separating them often changes what a position or a CTR means; the guide to splitting branded from non-branded queries shows how.
• Page. Click the query, then open the Pages tab: Google says View the Pages tab to see which URLs were shown. Google also attributes click, impression and position data to the canonical URL, so the page you find may not be the address you expected. If two of your pages show for one query, see how to detect keyword cannibalization.
• CTR. Google lists a common use of the Queries dimension as to find queries with high impressions and low CTR for opportunities. What counts as low depends on your own results and not on an industry average; see why to use your own CTR-by-position curve, and the free CTR gap tool builds one from the same file.

Google's common-tasks page also says to focus more on trends in impressions and clicks than on position alone. After you edit a page, a query that moves has moved after the edit, which is timing evidence and not proof the edit did it. Google frames a check of page changes as a way to confirm whether your improvement in Search maps closely in timing to your site changes. The guide to telling whether a content update worked explains our own method, which compares a page with untouched pages and is still timing evidence rather than proof, and the free did it work tool runs it on a Search Console export of your pages.