Google Search Console goes live with new consolidated view

One day after Google said it would be consolidating the data within the Google Search Console’s performance report to the canonical URL, the company decided to start the preview of the consolidated data view on Thursday, a month or so earlier than they planned.

If you login to Google Search Console and click on your performance report, you should see a message at the top that reads “Performance data is now based on canonical URLs.” There is another option to “Switch to old view.” Google posted the old view of the data will be available until April 10th.

What it looks like. Here are screenshots of the view from some on Twitter, comparing the consolidated view and the old view:

Google Search Console performance report consolidated view is live but the data seems the same to me so far… https://t.co/bdQhx5j1lk pic.twitter.com/Ir4ZSmnnPt

— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) February 7, 2019

And here's an example of an m-dot subdomain being consolidated to the responsive pages (since they are canonicalized to the desktop pages). 1.25K clicks and 40K impressions drop to just 51 clicks and 1.49K impressions. So it's working. :) pic.twitter.com/tTYS7hluio

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) February 7, 2019

In some cases, the reports show significant changes and in others, they do not.

Google confirmed. John Mueller, a Google Webmaster Trends Analysts, confirmed on Twitter that this is rolling out now as a preview.

Yep! We're doing a preview and tracking the data in parallel until Apr 10, to help make understanding & transitioning to the new way easier.

— ? John ? (@JohnMu) February 7, 2019

How do I access this? Just go to your performance report, select a verified property and start digging into your data.

Why it matters. Here’s what I said yesterday. But, in addition to that, you should all look at how the consolidated view impacts the data in the new performance reports. Dig in, filter our your AMP and mobile data and compare it in both the new consolidated view and old view. Understanding this data is important when tracking your performance in Google search.

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About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.