Google Search Console (GSC)
Google Search Console (GSC) is a free tool designed to monitor and improve website performance in Google Search. It is essential for understanding different aspects of a website from a search engine perspective. GSC addresses to website owners, SEO experts, and web developers.
Google Search Console Reports
GSC provides a variety of detailed reports to help comprehend how Google crawls, indexes, and discovers pages. It allows users to fix crawling issues, submit new content to the Google index, and track search performance trends. There are multiple key reports accessible in Google Search Console.
The report tracks the website's performance in Google Search. It analyzes clicks, impressions, CTR, and average position. It also provides filters that allow data segmentation by query, page, country, device, and search appearance. Dedicated reports for these segments will also be available if the website receives traffic from Discover or Google News.
URL Inspection
The tool allows for checking the index status of individual pages and provides details such as index status, last crawl date, mobile usability, and structured data. It also enables testing live URLs to see how Googlebot views the page and includes an option to request indexing for new or updated pages.
Indexing
There are four reports in this section:
- Pages: provides insights into which pages of the website Google has indexed and highlights any issues preventing other pages from being indexed. It categorizes pages as indexed or not indexed, offering reasons for non-indexing, such as 404 errors or "no index" tags.
- Video: tracks indexed pages with video content.
- Sitemaps: allows to submit XML sitemaps, including those for videos, images, or specific languages.
- Removals: temporarily blocks pages from search but should be paired with permanent fixes for long-term removal.
Experience
The experience area provides key insights into user experience through three main reports:
- Page Experience: evaluates user experience on the website by analyzing key criteria Core Web Vitals and HTTPS.
- Core Web Vitals: analyze performance metrics like Largest Contentful Paint (loading speed), Interaction to Next Paint (interactivity), and Cumulative Layout Shift (visual stability), categorizing pages as good, needing improvement, or poor for both mobile and desktop.
- HTTPS: tracks secure and non-secure pages, encouraging the use of HTTPS to protect user privacy and improve search rankings.
Enhancements
This section includes multiple reports that analyze structured data on the website. These reports, such as breadcrumbs, FAQs, profile page, review snippets, videos, and more, help identify issues with structured data implementation. Each report highlights invalid items and offers guidance to fix them, ensuring pages are eligible for rich results in search. Properly implemented structured data can enhance the website's visibility and improve click-through rates.
Security and Manual Actions
This area helps protect the website and ensure compliance with Google’s guidelines. The provided reports offer details and recommendations for resolving issues to restore the website’s performance and credibility.
- Security Issues: alerts users to potential threats, such as hacking or malware, allowing them to take swift action to protect the website.
- Manual Actions: notifies users if the site violates Google’s spam policies, such as through unnatural links or deceptive content, which can negatively impact the rankings.
Links
The links report delivers insights into both backlinks and internal links of the website. It highlights external websites linking to the website (Top Linking Pages), the pages receiving the most backlinks (Top Linked Pages), and the anchor text used in those links (Top Linking Text). Additionally, it tracks the number and structure of internal links, helping optimize the website's navigation and authority distribution.
The area includes reports tailored for online stores and product-focused websites with structured data.
- Product Snippets: highlights pages with product markup and detects errors to ensure proper display in search results.
- Merchant Listings: enhances snippets with features like carousels or knowledge panels for better visibility.
- Shopping Tab Listings: show pages in the Google Shopping tab and flag structured data issues to help optimize listings.
Google Search Console Advantages
Google Search Console acts as a diagnostic and optimization tool for SEO. Leveraging the data from GSC comes with a wide range of benefits.
- Improves search visibility: GSC provides actionable insights into how a website performs in Google Search, helping site owners and SEO experts identify and address issues that may be affecting rankings and visibility.
- Optimizes user experience: Google Search Console provides developers and SEO professionals with tools to monitor site speed, mobile usability, and security. This enables them to enhance the overall user experience and ensure the site meets current standards and expectations.
- Tracks organic performance: the tool offers detailed metrics on clicks, impressions, and search positions, allowing SEO experts to measure the effectiveness of their strategies and identify growth opportunities.
- Enhances strategic decision-making: by delivering insights into user behavior, keyword performance, and competitive opportunities, Search Console helps site owners and SEO professionals refine content strategies and prioritize efforts for maximum impact.
- Supports troubleshooting: developers can use Search Console to debug indexing issues, identify crawling errors, and test live URLs, ensuring pages are properly accessible and optimized for search engines.