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 Performance report adds merchant listings to images report
Google now will show the merchant listing performance within the Google Search Image tab in Search Console data.
Google’s link reporting tool is now fixed
Last week there was a bug with the Google Search Console report.
Google Search Console link report may be broken today
Many are noticing huge declines in the number of links reported in the link report within the Google tool.
Google Search Console reporting error for product snippets
You may have noticed a spike in impressions and clicks between May 15 to May 27 - it was a bug.
Google rolls out AI Overviews in US with more countries coming soon
AI Overview link cards get a higher click through rate than normal web search results but Google won't break out click data in Search Consoles for content creators.
Google Search Console security update improves management of ownership tokens
You can now more easily see and remove which have access to your Search Console profiles.
3 underutilized Google Search Console reports for diagnosing traffic drops
Decode your website's traffic declines with GSC's detailed reports, covering device segmentation, search appearance and crawl stats insights.
Google issues search ranking penalties through manual actions
Check your properties within Google Search Console for manual actions to see if your were impacted.
Google Search Console recipe rich result report adds two new properties
Google added recipeInstructions and recipeIngredient and thus you may see an increase in warnings for recipe items.
Google Search turned off some event rich results
Google says you may see a drop in clicks and impressions for your event search appearance reported metrics in your performance report.
Google performance reports updates how it counts clicks and impressions for job listing and detail pages
No changes were made to Google Search, this is just a reporting change.
Googlebot crawl rate tool is now gone
You can no longer set your desired crawl rate within Google Search Console.
How to link GA4 with Google Search Console
Combine the power of Google Analytics 4 and Google Search Console data for a deeper analysis of your site's organic search performance.
Google Search Console to stop reporting on product results search in performance reports
This e-commerce related search reporting will end next month, in January 2024, Google said.
Google officially drops Mobile Usability report, Mobile-Friendly Test tool and Mobile-Friendly Test API
We knew this was coming and now these Google mobile tools are no longer available.
New Google Search vacation rental rich result
This new vacation rental structured data comes with new Search Console and Rich Results reports.
Google Search Organization markup adds name, address, contact information, and other business identifiers
Google has updated the Search Console and Rich Results test reporting to support these new additions.
Google Search now supports discussion forum and profile page structured data
Google can show these as rich results in Google Search and Google also added new Search Console reports.
Google Search Console was down today
You may be seeing a 500 error when trying to access the tool.
Googlebot crawl rate tool in Search Console is going away
The tool is going away on January 8, 2024 because Google says it is no longer useful.
Google Search Console experience and enhancement reporting bug
Google is working on a fix, this has no impact on indexing or ranking.
Google Search Console adds robots.txt report
Google has sunset the robots.txt tester.
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.
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.
