Google Search Console is a platform that tracks the status of websites and web pages, showing where they rank in Google Search results. It was formerly known as Webmaster Tools. It’s a useful tool for website owners, developers, and content creators to see their site and page interactions on Google and track any growth or problems over a period of time. Google Search Console provides tips and advice for new users the first time they go through Search Console’s tabs, explaining what they can do with that section.
Google Search Console is a useful tool for anyone who owns, manages, or works with a website, including:
- Content managers or writers, who can see what published pieces receive the most traffic and what trends have arisen
- SEO specialists, who can see what ranks highly
- Web designers and developers, so they can know what issues have arisen and find solutions
- Business owners or managers, so they can have a general understanding of their website and its performance
What does Google Search Console do?
Google Search Console’s features allow website owners and managers to see Google Search data and problems that Google is having with their site:
- The Overview section provides a condensed version of some of the website’s important metrics, showing overall click performance, coverage, and enhancement reports.
- Search Results, under Performance, shows results over a span of time that a user can specify. The four search results metrics include:
- Total clicks, the number of times a Google user clicks on a URL
- Total impressions, the number of times Google Search pulls a URL as a search result for the Google page that the Web user is on (regardless of whether they click it or not)
- Average click-through rate, the ratio of clicks to impressions
- Average position within a Google search for both the website and individual pages, which can sometimes vary from a page’s actual position at the time
- The Enhancements section provides five different reports, including Mobile Usability, which lists ongoing site issues or previously resolved ones, and Core Web Vitals, which tracks the quality of site URLs.
- The Coverage section shows site errors that haven’t been fixed, such as inability of Google to crawl the site or index a page, a 404, or a missing URL
- Benefits of Google Search Console
Search Console is free for Google users. To set up an account first requires having a Google account; existing Google users should create a Google Search Console account. They’ll need to select the domain or specific URLs the account will monitor. Google Search Console will require some type of verification proving that the user actually owns the site they’ve entered.
Google Search Console is a useful tool for quickly identifying website errors. Google is the biggest search engine, and it’s important that it can crawl websites. Sometimes it won’t be able to crawl a site, and site owners will want to know and resolve the issue. Google sends email notifications about site problems to the Gmail accounts that are connected to that site in Search Console, so that owners can identify problems more quickly.
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