Google Search Console The Powerful Evidence for Search Engines on 2023

You can learn more about what matters to your audience, how they find your content, and whether or not it appears in search results by tracking the performance of your website. Site owners and SEO specialists can do just that with the aid of Google Search Console, which is a collection of free tools and reports.

How to manage your website with Google Search Console

For websites of all kinds, but particularly for those that represent brands and enterprises, Google Search Console (GSC) is a goldmine of data. It can assist you in determining the search phrases people use to locate your website and in the analysis of crucial data like clicks, impressions, and your average position in Google search.

Also, you may use GSC to work through technical difficulties to make sure that your pages are correctly indexed and available to searchers. When it finds problems with your site, GSC will even send you email alerts, and you may let Google know once the problems have been resolved.

The aforementioned features are merely the fundamentals, but they are all vital components of keeping your site up to date so that it may continue to promote your company or brand. GSC can assist you with a lot more things, but first you must configure it for your website.

A website’s Google Search Console setup

Go to the GSC landing page and click “Start now” to begin. You must then log into the Google account you want to link to the Search Console account for your website. If you’re utilising Search Console for the first time, you’ll be prompted to choose between creating a domain property and a URL prefix property.

Google Search Console The Powerful Evidence for Search Engines on 2023
Google Search Console The Powerful Evidence for Search Engines on 2023

A domain-level property gives you a thorough overview of your site’s performance on both HTTP and HTTPS, including all URLs across all subdomains.

On the other hand, a URL prefix property only covers URLs with the prefix supplied. If you want to track particular subfolders, such as https://m.example.com for your mobile site, for instance, this would be a suitable solution.

Verification. Google demands verification as part of the setup procedure because a site’s GSC can have a lot of data and settings that you wouldn’t want unauthorised people to have access to. The only way to verify a domain property is to add a DNS record to your domain name provider, which is required when adding a domain property.

Check to see that your domain registrar is included in the drop-down menu after adding your domain (shown above). Choose it to start the automated authorisation procedure if it does. The TXT record, which is the line of characters next to the “copy” button, must be copied in order to verify your domain name provider if your domain registrar isn’t listed. Google advises trying again in a few hours if the verification doesn’t work the first time because it can take some time for the modification to take effect.

If you chose a URL prefix property rather than a domain property, you can use an HTML file upload, an HTML element, a Google Analytics tracking code, a Google Tag Manager container snippet, the previously described methods, and more to determine who owns the website.

Features of Google Search Console that are most crucial

After confirming site ownership, you can start using GSC for your website. It will resemble the picture below in some ways.

Performance, Coverage, Experience, and Enhancements are the main divisions. If you wish to use GSC’s data and services for your site, you must become familiar with these areas and reports.

reports on performance. You can find data on the Performance tab (on the left-hand navigation panel) that might help you plan your digital strategy. We surveyed readers of the Search Engine Land Newsletter to learn how they utilise performance reports and GSC in general because they are such versatile tools; we’ll be highlighting their stories throughout this guide :-

“Performance on Search results is, by far, my favourite and most-used Google Search Console function. The detailed keyword, click, and impression data enables me to highlight highly specialised user searches in sectors where it would be very challenging to conduct keyword research. Search Console allows you to become granular and examine what actual searches actually provide traffic to a website, unlike other well-known SEO tools that just display keyword data for bigger volume terms. In particular, this function supports my keyword assignment work, enables me to spot trends fast, and helps me generate new data-driven content ideas.

The Performance tab in all accounts will display statistics from Google search results, but websites who have received significant traffic from Google News and Discover will also see reports tailored to those channels. We’ll concentrate on this component of the performance report since traditional search performance is the most typical scenario. The data offered here includes, but is not restricted to :-
  • The most popular searches utilised to find your content.
  • Impressions, which measure how frequently users see your website in Google search results.
  • Clicks (how frequently people visit your website from Google search results).
  • CTR on average (the percentage of impressions that resulted in a click).
  • Your website’s average position in search results.
Google Search Console The Powerful Evidence for Search Engines on 2023
Google Search Console The Powerful Evidence for Search Engines on 2023

The filter bar (circled in yellow), metrics choices (shown by the red arrows), and dimensions tabs can all be used to customise the report so that it displays the data you are most interested in (indicated by the hashed blue box).

  • The information can be filtered by search type (web, image, video, or news), date range (up to the previous 16 months), question, page, country, device, and search appearance using the filter bar (the search result type or feature)
  • You can toggle the chart (shown in green) to show the necessary statistics over a specified timeframe by checking or unchecking the boxes next to total clicks, total impressions, average CTR, and average position.
  • Based on the dimension you’ve chosen, the table (shown in orange) gives you an overview of clicks and impressions (queries, pages, countries, devices, search appearance and dates)

Getting accustomed to utilising the filter bar is a smart idea. Try your hand at filtering your data by query, page, country, device, and search appearance by clicking on the “+ New” button to display a menu.

Google Search Console The Powerful Evidence for Search Engines on 2023
Google Search Console The Powerful Evidence for Search Engines on 2023

These filters can also be used to compare two values. When you wish to evaluate something differently, try a different filter and edit or delete filters as necessary. The redesigned interface may be used to find out the worth of specific keywords and sections of your website, the traffic source by nation, the kinds of devices people are using to search, and how Google is serving up your pages.

“I enjoy finding cross-channel chances utilising the Performance Report’s built-in filters. I utilise the position filters in particular to find terms that are just outside of page 1 or just outside of the local pack (we use GMB specific UTMs to differentiate these). I then decide whether onsite improvements, internal linking, technical SEO, and/or link building are appropriate to boost ranks based on how the destination URL appears. The Performance Report is another tool I use to decide which Search Network terms to bid on and which new content opportunities to pursue (which supports existing and new keyword ranking potential). I really support integrated marketing. That is considerably simpler with Search Console, especially the Performance Report.

reports for Index Coverage. This report displays the position of the URLs on your website in Google’s index and can be used to resolve any technical SEO problems that might be preventing your pages from appearing in search results.

“The Coverage function in the search panel is my favourite. It displays any mistakes that might be keeping the pages on your website from appearing in the search results and describes how to resolve the problems. You may lose visitors and conversions if you are unaware of mistakes on your website. Utilize the data it provides to address problems with the mobile view of a website, such as text that is too small to read or material that is bigger than the screen. Addressing problems like these enhances the viewing experience for better outcomes.

Google will notify you via email if it discovers a new index coverage problem on your website, but it won’t do so if an already existing problem gets worse. It’s wise to periodically review this report to make sure all problems have been resolved.

Google Search Console The Powerful Evidence for Search Engines on 2023 5
Google Search Console The Powerful Evidence for Search Engines on 2023

The Page Experience report gives you a quick overview of…

  • The proportion of “Good URLs” — the percentage of mobile URLs that, according to the Mobile Usability report, have a “good” Core Web Vitals status and no mobile usability concerns.
  • The overall impressions you receive from effective URLs.
  • The amount of “Failing URLs” (URLs marked as “Bad” or “Need improvement”) in Core Web Vitals.
  • Any security concerns that would make it impossible for your site to be regarded as offering a positive page experience.
  • And whether a sizable portion of your pages use HTTP rather than HTTPS.

According to Google, having excellent content will always be more important than having a fantastic page experience, yet excellent content with a subpar page experience may nevertheless score highly.

reports on enhancements. These reports display trends for errors, valid pages with errors, and valid pages, much like the Index Coverage report. Google search results don’t display pages with problems. Pages with faults may not display in locations where they would normally be eligible to do so, such as the Top Stories carousel for AMP pages, for example, although they can still be seen in search results.

You’ll find the AMP status report in the Enhancements area of your GSC if you’re using AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages), Google’s framework created to make pages faster for users of mobile devices by serving them via its own cache.

Structured data syntax mistakes are collected in the unparsable structured data report. Because the faults can be preventing Google from classifying the feature type, they are covered in this report rather than the report for the specific feature (like event or job rich results, for example).

Depending on the structured data markup you’ve implemented, more reports may show up in the Enhancements tab. They may include, to mention a few, reports for sitelinks search box markup, video, logo, and breadcrumb markup. You may use the “verify fix” button that appears when you zoom in on a certain error type in any given report to tell Google that you’ve fixed the problem that was keeping it from correctly accessing a particular section of your website.

Using Google Search Console to troubleshoot


You already have access to a large amount of the information you’ll need to fix indexing problems in the Index Coverage and Enhancements reports. To assist you in resolving issues that can prevent your pages from appearing in Google search, GSC also provides the URL inspection tool and manual actions report.

the tool for inspecting URLs. You can use this feature to get details about the Google-indexed version of a specific page. It’s especially helpful because it collects all of a page’s errors in one location.

“[The] URL inspector is an excellent resource. Being able to concentrate on the around a dozen websites that generate the majority of our internet income is excellent —

Google Search Console The Powerful Evidence for Search Engines on 2023
Google Search Console The Powerful Evidence for Search Engines on 2023

A page’s current index state, AMP or structured data issues, and much more are all visible. The top-right corner of the page also has a “test live URL” button that you can use to check if the page can be indexed. This button is particularly helpful for checking whether problems persist after you’ve applied a remedy.

If you wish Google to reindex your page, you can use use the tool for requesting indexing (although indexing is not guaranteed). This is also helpful after you’ve corrected errors or made significant page adjustments.

“I adore being able to check a page’s indexing status and ask for indexing if necessary. It facilitates quick and simple indexing of newly added pages or revisions.

the report on manual actions. When one of Google’s human reviewers concludes that a page or pages on a site do not adhere to the company’s webmaster quality requirements, manual steps are taken by Google. Hidden text, taking part in link schemes, and misusing structured data are a few examples of these infractions. A manual action can have a variety of effects, from worse ranks for certain pages to the exclusion of the entire site from search results.

If Google takes a manual action against your site, you’ll get an email about it. Any manual actions are also displayed in the GSC’s main overview part and can be accessed from the manual actions section (located in the left-hand navigation panel)

Study up on Google Search Console

Take some time to investigate what is possible and the features and data that are most important for your brand or business now that you are comfortable with the GSC interface and its basic functioning. When you’re ready, you can start learning about more complex capabilities; to stay up to speed with the most recent information, visit our page on the Google Search Console library. Check out Google Search Console Training on YouTube if you need to review your fundamentals or learn more about what GSC can accomplish.

Google Search Console :- What is it ?

You can track, maintain, and troubleshoot your site’s visibility in Google Search results using the free service Google Search Console. Although you are not need to register for Search Console in order for your website to appear in Google search results, doing so might help you understand and optimise how Google views your website.

Does SEO use Google Search Console ?

Google Search Console: What is it? Google Search Console (GSC) is a free Google service that enables you to monitor the SEO performance of your website, identify technical SEO problems, enhance ranks, and preserve your site’s online presence.

Google Search Console :- Why Use It ?

Anyone with a website can use Google Search Console, formerly known as Google Webmaster Tools, for free to track how Google sees their website and improve its organic presence. This includes seeing your referring domains, the functionality of your mobile site, rich search results, and the most popular searches and pages.

What advantages does Search Console offer ?

The free Google Search Console service enables users to track website traffic, examine keyword performance, address problems, and receive notifications from Google about their website. It offers information on how a website is performing in organic search as well as suggestions for improving the site’s indexing by Google.

What distinguishes a site from a URL in Google Search Console ?

Do you see the distinction? While URL impressions will show you the Landing Page, site impressions will provide you a precise query. Both of these techniques for aggregating data are available to you. One data source, however, is limited to using only one of these.

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