One SEO professional asked John Mueller during the Question and Answer segment of a hangout about what counts as a click for an FAQ rich snippet.
They asked: does Google ever add links to FAQ answers, even if there isn’t one included in the text?
John explained that in general, Google counts it as a click if it’s really a link to your site and someone clicked on it.
Regarding rich results, John can’t say for sure that they would never add a link to a rich result that they show in the search results.
Sometimes, he could imagine that google does add a link. But, it’s not the case that they would say “Oh, there’s a rich result on this page. Therefore, we’ll count it as a click, even though nobody clicked on it.” It’s really more so that if there is a link in the results, and people click on it and go to your site, then this is what Google would count.
SImilarly, for impressions, Google would count it as an impression if one of those links to your sites were visible in the search results.
It doesn’t matter where it was visible on the page, whether it’s at the top or the bottom of the results page.
If it’s visible – theoretically – to someone on that search results page, then they will count it as an impression.
This happens at approximately the 26:23 mark in the video.
John Mueller Hangout Transcript
John (Submitted Question) 26:23
Two related questions, what counts as a click for an FAQ Rich Snippet? Does Google ever add links to FAQ answers, even if there isn’t one included in the text? You link to the Help Center article on that, which I think is pretty much the definitive source on kind of the clicks and impressions and position counting in Search Console.
John (Answer) 26:48
In general, we count it as a click if it’s really a link to your website and someone clicked. And with regards to the rich results, I can’t say for sure that we would never add a link to a rich result that we show in the search results. Sometimes I could imagine that we do. But it’s not the case that we would say, Oh, there’s a rich result on this page therefore, we’ll count it as a click, even though nobody clicked on it. It’s really like if there’s a link there, and people click on it and go to your website, that’s what we would count. And similarly for impressions, we would count it as an impression if one of those links to your sites were visible in the search results. And it doesn’t matter like where it was visible on the page, it’s on the top or the bottom of the search results page. If it’s theoretically visible to someone on that search results page, we’ll count it as an impression.
