Google Search Console, originally known as Google Webmaster Tools, is a tool that SEO professionals can use to monitor Search performance and indexing status. The platform was launched in 2006 (though it’s seen quite a few upgrades since then) and is free to use for anyone who wants to track and optimize their organic traffic. It has become a must-use tool for SEO analysts and website-owners looking to improve organic performance.
With Google Search Console, you can analyze site performance and use these insights to optimize performance. You can also ensure that Google is properly crawling the latest version of your site. Let’s dig into the specifics.
Google Search Console has a Performance section, under which you can view Search results. Simply choose a date range, and you can view organic clicks, impressions, CTR, and average position. At the bottom of the page, you can view your top queries, pages, countries, devices, and more. This tab is perhaps the most crucial part of Google Search Console’s capabilities as a performance-monitoring tool.
This data can be filtered in a variety of ways. Change the date range, filter by query or Search type, or use the Compare tab to look at performance month over month or year over year.
While Google Search Console is a great way to simply monitor performance, you can also help Google’s web crawlers to properly index your page by uploading a sitemap. A sitemap isn’t a requirement for appearing in Search results, but if you have a really large website, a really new website, or just a website with a lot of hard-to-find pages, a sitemap can be incredibly useful. Once it’s uploaded, you can go to the Sitemaps tab under the Indexing section of Google Search Console to view its crawl status. You can learn more about creating sitemaps here.
Finally, Google Search Console can email you when it detects issues with your site. That way, you’re never caught unawares when something goes awry.
If you want to get started with Google Search Console, you can do so by logging into the proper Google account and visiting this page. From here, you can add a property. To do so, enter your website’s URL (“https://” included!), and proceed to verify that you own the site. There are a number of ways you can do this, including providing the Google Analytics tracking code or GTM container snippet code.
Once you’re on the platform, navigating Google Search Console is easy! Simply use the tabs on the left side of the page to view sitemap status, performance metrics, and more.
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