Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a collection of tools and resources to help website owners, webmasters, marketers, and SEO professionals improve their websites. This powerful platform allows users to monitor website performance in the Google search index, providing invaluable insights and actionable data.
An essential tool for anyone serious about improving search performance and visibility, Google Search Console offers a unique window into how Google perceives and interacts with your site, providing data that can’t be found anywhere else. That’s why we’re committed to keeping you informed fast about Google Search Console news.
Key features
Google Search Console offers a huge variety of features that include:
- Search Appearance Information: Gain insights into how your site appears in search results.
- Search Traffic Analysis: Understand your audience better by analyzing your overall search performance.
- Technical Status Updates: Receive notifications about critical issues affecting your site’s performance in search results.
- Crawl Data and Indexing Insights: Monitor how Google crawls and indexes your site.
- Performance Reports: Access detailed data on your site’s search performance. Core Web Vitals reports provide crucial information about your site’s user experience.
- URL Inspection Tool: Examine specific URLs to understand how Google views and indexes them and troubleshoot any issues.
- Links Analysis: Explore internal and external links to your site.
Leveraging Google Search Console effectively can lead to significant improvements in your site’s search performance. For example:
- The Performance Report can help identify underperforming pages that might benefit from content optimization.
- The Mobile Usability Report can guide improvements in your site’s mobile experience, which is crucial in today’s mobile-first indexing environment.
- The Links Report can inform your link-building strategy by revealing the most linked content and the top linking sites.
The evolution
Originally launched as Google Webmaster Tools, the platform was significantly rebranded in 2015 to become Google Search Console. This change reflected its broader utility for various marketing professionals beyond webmasters.
The evolution of Google Search Console mirrors the changing landscape of SEO and digital marketing in general. As search algorithms become more sophisticated and UX takes center stage, the platform has adapted to provide more insights and actionable data.
Maximizing your Google Search Console experience
We invite you to read our guides and tips for using Google Search Console, along with the latest news and feature updates. The goal of our content is to help you make the most of Google Search Console.
For example, you can learn how to use Google Search Console to get easy SEO wins. You can also explore our comprehensive SEO’s guide on the platform, as it offers an in-depth look at techniques and best practices for seasoned professionals.
Stay tuned to Search Engine Land to ensure you’re always up-to-date with the latest features and best practices of Google Search Console, helping you maintain a competitive edge in the ever-evolving world of SEO.
Google Search Console experience and enhancement reporting bug
Google is working on a fix, this has no impact on indexing or ranking.
Google adds reports for learning video rich results
The reports are within Google Search Console's performance report, where you filter by search appearance.
Google page experience report updated in Search Console
Plus the good page experience search appearance filter from the Performance report has been removed.
Google sees spike in failed hostload exceeded error in Search Console
Google's request indexing tool may be having issues due to abuse by spammers.
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Google adds new vehicle listings structured data
With this new structured data, Gogole launched a new rich results report and testing tool support for the markup.
Google Search stops showing How-to rich results on desktop
This change comes one month after Google announced HowTo would no longer appear on mobile devices and just for desktop users.
Google Search Console rolling out new Merchant Center integrated reports
These new reports will show you issues with products not showing on Search and changes in visibility of your product listings.
Google reduces the visibility of HowTo and FAQ rich results in search
You may see a drop in click through rates from Google Search if you are impacted.
Google Search Console link report fixed
Two weeks ago Google confirmed its link report had reporting issues, those reporting issues are now resolved.
Google to fix link report in Search Console
After numerous reports of Google showing a fraction of the sites links, Google said it will fix an issue with the report.
Google’s Core Web Vitals INP issues email causing concern
Google Search Console sent out emails to site owners where their INP scores are not meeting the mark.
Google updates page indexing report in Search Console with more fine-grained issues
Some SEOs began to notice a spike in errors and issues being reported by Google Search Console. Google said it is not an issue, but a reporting change.
Google adds INP report to Search Console
In order for you to prepare for when Google replaces FID with INP as a core web vital metric, Google has launched a new report to aid you.
Google releases new search spam report form
You can use this form to submit search spam reports on spam, paid links, malicious behavior, low quality, and other search quality issues.
Google Search Console may show more breadcrumb warnings
Google updated its rich results breadcrumbs report to show more warnings.
Google Search Console video indexing report gets three new issue details
These new reasons include video outside the viewport, video too small and video too tall.
Google Search Console Insights adds your growing content report
This new report is designed to help those who have not associated their Search Console Insights property to their Google Analytics property.
Google Search Console shows the wrong mobile indexing status for some sites
Some have been wondering why their mobile-friendly sites are being crawled using the desktop crawler, well, it might be a reporting bug.
Google Search Console performance report delayed but Google will fix the issue
At the time of writing this story, the reports were delayed by over 65 hours.
Google Search bug caused a drop in video traffic
Between May 4 and May 17, there was a bug with Google Search that caused sites to get less traffic to their video content.
Google-InspectionTool – the new Google crawler for Google testing tools
Google has added a new Google crawler to its list, this one is uses for testing tools you use in Search Console or other Google properties.
Google no longer requires video descriptions as part of structured data
Empty descriptions will no longer show up as errors in the Search Console reports.
Google Search Console page experience report going away
The Core Web Vitals and HTTPS report is staying but the mobile-friendly test is going away.
Google shows shipping and return information in the search results
Google Search Console added a report to monitor and fix the structured data required to enable this display.
Core Web Vitals report within Google Search Console updated
You may see a change in the number of URLs reported in the Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console
Google Search Console breaks out Merchant listings and Product snippets appearances
This is an update to previously launched reports from last September.
Google Search Console users and permissions management updated
Make sure to review user permissions and levels of access with this update.
Google Search Console adds daily bulk data exports to BigQuery
This will allow you to potentially do more analysis with your data in other platforms.
Google warns against using 403 or 404 status codes for Googlebot crawl rate limiting
Instead, Google recommends you use Google Search Console's crawl rate feature.
Understanding and resolving ‘Discovered – currently not indexed’
Learn potential reasons why you're seeing this status in Google Search Console, plus ways to address related crawling and indexing issues.
Google Search Console Video indexing report gains video impressions overlay and sitemap filter
Google has upgraded the video indexing report to help your videos perform better in search.
Google improves error classification in video indexing report
The total number of errors should not change, this is just a reclassification of those errors.
Product results in Google’s performance report may see an increase in impressions and clicks
This report no longer requires structured data and if Google finds products in your content, it may show in this report starting January 6th going forward.
Google Question Hub to close down
But will it be replaced by the Google Search Console "content ideas" feature?
Content ideas may be coming to Google Search Console
This feature looks and feels a lot like the Google Question Hub.
Subscribe with Google publishers may see an increase in clicks and impressions from Google Search
This started on December 5th, in the search performance report in Google Search Console.
Google Discover performance reports improve accuracy
Google Search Console said click and impression data may appear to increase because of this update.
How to use RStudio to create traffic forecasting models
Learn the basics of producing time series forecasts in RStudio from your Google Search Console click data.