Average Position is a field used in the Google Search Console Performance report, in relation to a query or pages ranking.

It is not intended to be an absolute ranking, but an average of what position the URL was in for all given impressions within the designated time frame.

It can be used as a helpful guide as to how pages & queries are performing. 

How To Interpret The Average Position On Website Ranking Reports

While there are true organic rankings that are contained within each search engine’s indexes, we do not often see that content.

Things like personalization, cookies, cached data & more impact the search results that we are shown, in order to in the search engine’s eyes show users the most fitting content.

The Average Position report can be interpreted as an estimated range of where you may rank for a given query, page, device or location.

Having an Average Position of 1.2 would mean that a query is much more likely to show up in rich results on the SERPs than something that has an Average Position of 7.

Similarly, an Average Position of 10.5 is likely a lower hanging fruit to optimize to be on the first SERP than something with an Average Position in the 20’s.

Keep in mind too that the Google Search Console reports sample their data, which adds another layer of muddiness to this metric.

It is still beneficial to understand how it works & to be able to assess the strength of optimizations & opportunities for marketers & webmasters.