The Ultimate Guide to Google Search Console: Unleash Your Website’s Potential

Reports at a Glance: A Quick Overview

Overview Page: Your Site’s Health in a Snapshot

• Description: The Overview page offers a summary of your website’s health. It includes information on manual actions or security issues applied to your site, graphs displaying total clicks and indexed pages (both error and valid), and summaries of error and valid enhancements (such as mobile-friendly URLs, AMP pages, and structured data found on your site).
• Suggested use: If you’re only checking in periodically, this is the place to start. Look for manual actions or security issues, spikes in coverage or enhancement errors, and dramatic dips in click counts. If you find any, delve deeper into the respective reports to troubleshoot.
• Useful for: Everyone

URL Inspection Tool: Unveil the Secrets of Your URLs

• Description: The URL Inspection tool allows you to see the information that Google’s index has about a specific URL on your site or test a live page. It provides extensive details, including page HTML code, AMP/mobile usability errors, JavaScript output, canonicals, and more.
• Suggested use: Use this report to troubleshoot crawling errors that Google encountered on your site. It’s accessible by clicking into a specific URL in the Coverage report. You can also use it to fix and retest a page before resubmitting it for indexing.
• Useful for: SEOs, developers

Performance Reports: Measure Your Impact on Google Search

• Web Search
• Discover (if your property has sufficient traffic on Discover)
• News (if your property has sufficient traffic on News)
• Description: These reports allow you to explore how many people saw and clicked on your site in Google Search, what queries displayed your site, and your average search position. They provide data on clicks, impressions, click-through rate (CTR), and position for your site, along with user query strings.
• Suggested use: Periodically review these reports to check for spikes or dips in clicks or impressions. Examine the query strings showing your site and investigate traffic drops.
• Useful for: SEOs, site owners

Page Indexing Report: Track Your Index Status

• Description: This report displays the index status for all the pages on your site. Pages are grouped based on whether they are, or can be, indexed, along with explanations for indexability.
• Suggested use: Periodically scan for spikes in errors or drops in indexed counts to identify crawling problems on your site.
• Useful for: SEOs, developers/site administrators

Video Page Indexing Report: Shine a Spotlight on Videos

• Description: If your site boasts a sufficient number of prominent videos, this report will show you how many pages with videos were found on your site and how many of those pages could be indexed.
• Suggested use: Periodically ensure that most of your videos, especially important ones, have been indexed by Google. Use the report to troubleshoot if needed.
• Useful for: SEOs, site owners

Sitemaps Report: A Glimpse into Your Sitemaps

• Description: This report reveals which sitemaps have been submitted for your site, sitemap statistics, and any errors encountered by Google during processing.
• Suggested use: Periodically check to see if Google processed your sitemaps or use it for debugging if Google can’t seem to find new pages on your site.
• Useful for: SEOs

Removals Tool: Control Your URLs in Search

• Description: The Removals Tool empowers you to temporarily block URLs on your site from appearing in Google Search or clear the search snippet until the next document crawl. It also shows a history of your block requests and user requests to mark pages as adult-only.
• Useful for: Site owners

Crawl Stats: Monitor Google’s Crawl Activity

• Description: This report shows how frequently Google is crawling your site and the number of requests it’s making. Note that it’s available only for domain-level properties, not URL-prefix properties.
• Suggested use: If your site is overwhelmed by Google crawl requests, track the issue here and request a reduced crawl rate if necessary.
• Useful for: Advanced SEOs, website administrators

Page Experience: Elevate User Satisfaction

• Description: Discover what percentage of URLs on your site Google considers to offer a good page experience for users. This metric combines fast page availability, mobile-friendliness, and support for HTTPS.
• Useful for: Site owners, advanced SEOs

Core Web Vitals Report: Real-World Performance Metrics

• Description: This report reveals how your pages perform in real-world usage, with a focus on Core Web Vitals metrics.
• Suggested use: Assess how your pages perform for users and take action to fix poorly performing pages.
• Useful for: SEOs, developers

Mobile Usability Report: Optimize for Mobile Users

• Description: This report provides a mobile usability evaluation for all indexed pages on your site.
• Suggested use: Periodically check for mobile usability issues on your site.
• Useful for: SEOs, developers

AMP Report: AMP Up Your Web Pages

• Description: This report indicates which AMP pages on your site could or couldn’t be indexed.
• Suggested use: Periodically check for issues affecting AMP pages on your site or unexpected spikes in errors or drops in indexed AMP pages.
• Useful for: SEOs, developers

Rich Result Status Reports: Unveil Rich Results Insights

• Description: These reports show which rich results Google could or couldn’t crawl. Each rich result type has a separate report. Only a subset of rich results is supported.
• Suggested use: Periodically scan for errors and debug issues. Determine how many rich results of a specific type Google can process.
• Useful for: SEOs, developers

Manual Actions Report: Tackle Manual Actions Head-On

• Description: This report reveals any manual actions taken against your site.
• Suggested use: If you spot a manual action in your overview page, open the report to understand the details, fix the issue, and file a reconsideration request after resolution.
• Useful for: Everyone

Security Issues Report: Guard Your Site Against Threats

• Description: This report highlights any security issues detected by Google on your site.
• Suggested use: If you notice a security issue in your overview page or receive browser alerts for dangerous or hacked content, access the report for insights on fixing the problem and initiating a reconsideration request.
• Useful for: Everyone

Links Report: Uncover Your Backlinks

• Description: The Links report reveals which sites link to yours, along with link text and internal link targets within your site.
• Suggested use: Use this report to determine if you are linked to by spammy or useful sites.
• Useful for: SEOs

AMP Test Tool: Validate Your AMP Pages

• Description: This tool allows you to test any AMP page for validity. While this functionality is available in the URL Inspection report, the AMP Test tool works on pages outside your property that you own and includes less information.
• Useful for: Developers, technical SEOs

Mobile-Friendly Test Tool: Ensure Mobile Compatibility

• Description: Use this tool to check whether any page is mobile-friendly. Like the AMP Test tool, it works on pages outside your property that you own and includes less information than the URL Inspection report.
• Useful for: Developers, technical SEOs

Rich Results Test Tool: Examine Rich Results

• Description: This tool tests any page for rich results. It’s available in the URL Inspection report but works on pages outside your property that you own and includes less information.
• Useful for: Developers, technical SEOs

Change of Address: Seamless Site Migration

• Description: Inform Google when you migrate your site to another domain.
• Useful for: Site owners, site developers

Associations: Unlock Data Sharing

• Description: Manage your property associations to enable data sharing between your property and Google Analytics, YouTube channels, Android apps, and other Google services.
• Useful for: Site owners

Legacy Tools and Reports: Still Useful

• Robots.txt Tester: Test the syntax of your robots.txt file and whether it will block a given URL.
• Data Highlighter Tool: Extract data from template pages on your site.
• Crawl Rate Settings: Lower Google’s crawling traffic to your site.
• Web Tools: Various other tools that might be useful for your site.

Google Search Console is a treasure trove of insights and tools, offering a comprehensive view of your website’s performance in Google Search. Whether you’re fine-tuning your SEO strategy or ensuring your site is in tip-top shape, GSC has the resources to help you achieve your digital goals. Dive into the reports and tools, analyze the data, and watch your website thrive in the ever-evolving online landscape.

Remember, Google Search Console is your ally in the quest for digital success. Use it wisely, and your website will reap the rewards. Happy optimizing!

Source: here