Search

What is Google Search Console

Google Search Console (GSC) is a free tool provided by Google that helps website owners monitor and optimize their websites' performance in Google Natural Search. It offers insights into how Google perceives your site and provides data that can help improve your site's visibility and ranking in natural search results.

We regularly use Google Search Console during our Digital Strategy / regular teams meetings to show clients what phrases / keywords people are searching on in Google, what average position a particular phrase is achieving, how many times its searched on (impressions) and how many times it’s clicked on.

Key Features of Google Search Console:

Performance Reports:
- Displays data on clicks, impressions, click-through rates (CTR), and average position for your site in Google Natural Search.
- Allows you to analyze performance by query, page, country, device, or search appearance.
URL Inspection Tool:
- Helps check the indexing status of specific URLs.
- Provides insights into any issues preventing pages from being indexed or ranked.
Index Coverage:
- Shows which pages are indexed and which have errors preventing indexing.
- Lists reasons for issues, such as server errors, redirects, or crawl anomalies.
  Important note – sometimes the errors flagged in the “index coverage” report appear to be “wrong”. Some of these reasons include
  1. Delay in Data Updates.
    1. The Index Coverage report is not real-time and may lag behind actual changes on your website (e.g if you remove a page, it may take a while for Google Search Console to catch up).
    2. Pages you've fixed, removed, or updated might still show errors or warnings until Google recrawls and reprocesses them.
  2. Misinterpreted Errors
    1. Soft 404 errors could be flagged for pages that return content Google deems irrelevant or incomplete.
    2. Duplicate content warnings might occur due to canonicalization or parameters in URLs.
    3. Canonical URLS are set properly, but Google ignores them (or decides to choose a different URL to what has actually been set).
    4. Server Errors or Temporary Downtime. Google may encounters server errors or timeouts during crawling, those pages might be flagged as "Server error (5xx)" or "Crawl anomaly."

Sitemap Submission:
- Allows you to submit XML sitemaps to inform Google about the structure and content of your website.
Mobile Usability Reports:
- Identifies mobile-friendly issues that may impact user experience or ranking in mobile search results.
Core Web Vitals:
- Evaluates your site's user experience based on loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability metrics.
Security Issues:
- Alerts you to potential security threats, such as malware or hacked content, that could harm your site's reputation or performance.
Manual Actions:
- Displays any manual penalties applied to your site for violating Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, such as unnatural links or thin content.
Link Reports:
- Provides information about internal and external links to your site, including the most linked pages and anchor texts.

Why Use Google Search Console?

Data is collected directly by Google. Whilst manually “googling” a phrase, gives some indication on where it ranks – Google Search Console is a better way / more accurate way of judging how a particular phrase is performing.
Improved Visibility: By understanding and resolving issues flagged by GSC, you can improve your site's presence in search results.
SEO Insights: It provides data and tools critical for search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.
Error Detection: Quickly identifies problems that might be affecting your site’s search performance.
Free Tool: It's entirely free to use, making it accessible to all website owners. At TMD – we are happy give our clients access to their Google Search Console at any time.

GSC is a vital resource for anyone looking to optimize their website and drive organic traffic through Google.