There’s a tool sitting inside your Google Search Console that most business owners open, glance at, and close without really knowing what they’re looking at.

The Queries tab.

It shows you every search term that caused your website to show up in Google results. Here’s how to use the queries to figure out exactly what content to create, what to fix, and what’s already working.

Start With the Right Filter

The queries tab shows everything by default; branded searches, product searches, random long-tail stuff. The first move is to filter for informational queries: the questions people are actually asking. Specifically, you want to look for searches that start with:

  • How
  • What
  • Why
  • Best
  • Where

These are the searches that signal someone is in research mode. And they’re exactly the kind of questions your content should be answering. There are two ways to do it:

  • Manually: Click Add filter in Search Console, select Query, choose Queries containing, and type in your word (like “how”). Run it. Then repeat for “what,” “why,” and so on.
  • With the AI assistant: Google has been rolling out an AI-powered configuration tool inside Search Console (still experimental, but it works). You can type something like “Show me queries containing ‘how to’ or ‘what is'” and it’ll set the filter for you.

Either way gets you to the same place: a filtered list of the actual questions people are typing into Google that your website is (or isn’t) showing up for.

Now, Ask Three Questions About Each Query

Once you’ve got your filtered list, this is where the real work starts. For every query, you’re looking at two numbers: impressions (how many times you showed up in search results) and clicks (how many times someone actually visited your site). Those two numbers together tell you what to do next.

1. High Impressions + You Have Content = Optimize It

This is the most common win we find for clients. You’re showing up for a search, but people aren’t clicking.

Maybe your title doesn’t match what they’re looking for. Maybe the meta description doesn’t give them a reason to choose you over the five other results on the page. Maybe the content exists but it’s buried on a page that doesn’t answer the question clearly enough. Whatever the reason, the signal is: Google already thinks you’re relevant. Your job is to be more compelling.

Start by looking at what’s ranking above you for that query. What does their title say? What does their snippet answer? Then ask yourself: does mine do that better, or does it just exist?
Tweaking a title tag and a meta description can move the needle faster than writing anything new.

It’s worth doing before you create a single piece of new content.

2. High Impressions + No Content = Create It

This is a content gap in the clearest possible sense. People are searching for something, Google is surfacing your site anyway (maybe a somewhat related page), but you don’t have content that actually answers the question.

Here’s a real example of how this plays out: a client ranks for a query like “how long does it take to [service they offer]” – not because they ever wrote about it, but because it vaguely matches a page they have. They’re sitting at position 14 with 2,000 impressions and 12 clicks.

That’s a blog post or FAQ waiting to happen. Write the answer clearly, publish it, and you’ll almost certainly see that position climb, and clicks follow.

High impressions with no dedicated content is one of the clearest green lights you’ll see in SEO. The demand is already there. You just need to meet it.

3. Low Impressions = Think About the Bigger Picture

Low impressions don’t always mean low opportunity. Sometimes it means the query is very specific, or very new, or that the way people search for it is changing.

Here’s something worth understanding about how search works in 2026: AI-powered tools including Google’s AI Mode and ChatGPT don’t run a single search when someone asks a question. They actually break that question down into multiple related searches behind the scenes, pull results from each one, and synthesize them into a single answer.

This is called query fan-out, and this blog from Semrush shows it’s fundamentally changing how brands earn visibility in AI search. In a controlled experiment, content optimized specifically for fan-out queries more than doubled its citations in AI-generated results.

So if someone asks ChatGPT “What’s the best way to market a local business in a small city?”, the AI might actually be running queries like:

  • local business marketing strategies
  • SEO for small towns
  • how to get more Google reviews
  • social media for local businesses

If you have good content on any of those related topics, you have a shot at appearing in that AI-generated answer even if no one searched your exact phrase.

What this means practically: a query with low impressions might not be a dead end. It might be a signal to look at the topic cluster around it. Do you have content covering the broader conversation? The adjacent questions? The “before and after” of that search?

This is the same thinking behind why we recommend building out content systematically rather than one-off blog posts. and it connects directly to link building and authority too, since topic authority and link authority tend to grow together.

So, Where Do You Start?

If you’ve never done this before, here’s a simple starting point:

  • Open Google Search Console and go to Search results
  • Set your date range to the last 3 months
  • Filter by Queries containing “how” then repeat for “what” and “why”
  • Sort by impressions (high to low)
  • Look at the top 10–15 results and ask: do we have content for this? Is it good?

That single exercise will surface more content opportunities than most editorial calendars ever do.

If you want a hand going through your own data and figuring out what it’s telling you, then we can help. Book a free 30-minute strategy call and let’s take a look together.