What is Google Search Console?Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools) is a free platform for anyone with a website to monitor how Google views their site and optimize its organic presence. That includes viewing your referring domains, mobile site performance, rich search results, and highest-traffic queries and pages. Show
At any given time, I have GSC open in 2 to 10 tabs. Its helpful on a macro and micro level -- both when I need to see how many impressions HubSpot is gaining month over month or figure out whats happened to a high-traffic blog post that suddenly fell. Im a content strategist on HubSpots SEO team, which means GSC is particularly useful to me. But anyone whos got a website can and should dip their toes in these waters. According to Google, whether youre a business owner, SEO specialist, marketer, site administrator, web developer, or app creator, Search Console will come in handy. I remember the first time I opened GSC -- and it was overwhelming. There were tons of labels I didnt understand (index coverage?!?), hidden filters, and confusing graphs. Of course, the more I used it, the less confusing it became. But if you want to skip the learning curve (and why wouldnt you), good news: Im going to reveal everything Ive learned about how to use Google Search Console like a pro. This guide covers:
First things first. If you havent already signed up for GSC, its time to do so. How to Add Your Website to Google Search Console
Google starts tracking data for your property as soon as you add it to GSC -- even before its verified youre the site owner. Verifying Your Site on GSCBecause GSC gives you access to confidential information about a site or apps performance (plus influence over how Google crawls that site or app!), you have to verify you own that site or app first. Verification gives a specific user control over a specific property. You must have at least one verified owner per GSC property. Also, note that verifying your property doesnt affect PageRank or its performance in Google search. Of course, you can use GSC data to strategize how to rank higher -- but simply adding your website to GSC wont automatically make your rankings go up. GSC Verification Methods
Google-hosted sites, including Blogger and Sites pages, are automatically verified. URL Versions: WWW Domain or Not?True or false: hubspot.com and www.hubspot.com are the same domain. The answer? False! Each domain represents a different server; those URLs might look very similar, but from a technical perspective, theyre two unique domains. However, if you type hubspot.com into your browser bar, youll land at www.hubspot.com. What is this sorcery? HubSpot has chosen www.hubspot.com as its preferred, or canonical, domain. That means weve told Google we want all of our URLs displayed in search as www.hubspot.com/. And when third parties link to our pages, those URLs should be treated as www.hubspot.com/ as well.  If you dont tell GSC which domain you prefer, Google may treat the www and non-www versions of your domain as separate -- splitting all those page views, backlinks, and engagement into two. Not good. (At this time you should also set up a 301 redirect from your non-preferred domain to your preferred one, if you havent already.) GSC Users, Owners, and PermissionsThere are two GSC role-types. I know you might be itching to get to the good stuff (cough the data) but its important to do this right.
Think carefully about who should have which permissions. Giving everyone full ownership could be disastrous -- you dont want someone to accidentally change an important setting. Try to give your team members just as much authority as they need and no further. For example, at HubSpot, our technical SEO manager Victor Pan is a verified owner. Im an SEO content strategist, which means I use GSC heavily but dont need to change any settings, so Im a delegated owner. The members of our blogging team, who use GSC to analyze blog and post performance, are full users. Here are detailed instructions on adding and removing owners and users in Search Console. Theres a third role: an associate. You can associate a Google Analytics property with a Search Console account -- which will let you see GSC data in GA reports. You can also access GA reports in two sections of Search Console: links to your site, and Sitelinks. A GA property can only be associated with one GSC site, and vice versa. If youre an owner of the GA property, follow these instructions to associate it with the GSC site. Do You Need a Sitemap?A sitemap isnt necessary to show up in Google search results. As long as your site is organized correctly (meaning pages are logically linked to each other) , Google says its web crawlers will normally find most of your pages. But there are four situations a sitemap will improve your sites crawlability:
Once youve built your sitemap, submit it using the GSC sitemaps tool. GSC Sitemaps ReportAfter Google has processed and indexed your sitemap, it will appear in the Sitemaps report. Youll be able to see when Google last read your sitemap and how many URLs its indexed. GSC Dimensions and MetricsThere are a few terms you should understand before using GSC. Whats a Google Search Console query?This is a search term that generated impressions of your site page on a Google SERP. You can only find query data in Search Console, not Google Analytics. Whats an impression?Each time a link URL appears in a search result, it generates an impression. The user doesnt have to scroll down to see your search result for the impression to count. Whats a click?When the user selects a link that takes them outside of Google Search, that counts as one click. If the user clicks a link, hits the back button, then clicks the same link again -- still one click. If then, they click a different link -- thats two clicks. When a user clicks a link within Google Search that runs a new query, thats not counted as a click. Also, this doesnt include paid Google results. Whats average position?This is the mean ranking of your page(s) for a query or queries. Suppose our guide to SEO tools is ranking #2 for SEO software and #4 for keyword tools. The average position for this URL would be 3 (assuming we were ranking for literally nothing else). Whats CTR?CTR, or click-through rate, is equal to Clicks divided by Impressions, multiplied by 100. If our post shows up in 20 searches, and generates 10 clicks, our CTR would be 50%. Filtering in Google Search ConsoleGSC offers several different ways to view and parse your data. These filters are incredibly handy, but they can also be confusing when youre familiarizing yourself with the tool. Search TypeThere are three search types: web, image, and video. I typically use web, since thats where most of the HubSpot Blog traffic comes from, but if you get a lot of visits from image and/or video search, make sure you adjust this filter accordingly. You can also compare two types of traffic. Just click the Compare tab, choose the two categories youre interested in, and select Apply. This can lead to some interesting findings. For example, I discovered this color theory 101 post is getting more impressions from image search than web (although the latter is still generating more clicks!). Date RangeGSC now offers 16 months of data (up from 90 days). You can choose from a variety of pre-set time periods or set a custom range. As with search type, you can also compare two date ranges in the Compare tab. Queries, Page, Country, Device, Search AppearanceClick New next to the Date filter to add up to five other types of filters: query, page, country, device, and search appearance. These filters can be layered; for instance, if I wanted to see data for SEO-related queries appearing on mobile search, Id add a filter for queries containing SEO on mobile devices. If I only wanted to limit the results even further to posts on the Marketing Blog, Id add another filter for Pages containing the URL blog.hubspot.com/marketing. You can get very specific here -- I recommend playing around with different combinations of filters so you see whats possible. Index Coverage ReportThe index coverage report shows you the status of every page Google has tried to index on your site. Using this report, you can diagnose any indexing issues. Each page is assigned one of four statuses:
Submitted SitemapsIn this area, you can make your sitemap available to Google and see its status. How to Use Google Search Console
Can you see why I love GSC? Lets dig into each use case. 1. Identify your highest-traffic pages.
2. Identify your highest-CTR queries.
Note: Its useful to look at this in tandem with Impressions (check Total impressions to see this information side-by-side). A page might have high CTR but low impressions, or vice versa -- you wont get the full picture without both data points. 3. Look at average CTR.
4. Monitor your CTR over time.I recommend keeping an eye on CTR. Any significant movement is significant: If its dropped, but impressions have gone up, youre simply ranking for more keywords, so average CTR has declined. If CTR has increased, and impressions have decreased, youve lost keywords. If both CTR and impressions have gone up, congrats -- youre doing something right! 5. Monitor your impressions over time.As you create more content and optimize your existing pages, this number should increase. (As always, there are exceptions -- maybe you decided to target a small number of high conversion keywords rather than a lot of average conversion ones, are focusing on other channels, etc.) 6. Monitor average position over time.Average position isnt that useful on a macro level. Most people are concerned when it goes up -- but thats shortsighted. If a page or set of pages starts ranking for additional keywords, average position usually increases; after all, unless youre ranking for the exact same position or better as your existing keywords, your average will get bigger. Dont pay too much attention to this metric. 7. Identify your highest-ranking pages.
Because youre looking at average position by URL, that number is the mean of all of that pages rankings. In other words, if its ranking for two keywords, it might be #1 for a high-volume query and #43 for a low-volume one -- but the average will still be 22. With that in mind, dont judge the success or failure of a page by average position alone. 8. Identify your lowest-ranking pagesFollow the same steps that you would to identify your highest-ranking pages, except this time, toggle the small upward arrow next to Position to sort from highest (bad) to smallest (good). 9. Identify ranking increases and decreases.
At this point, you can look at the data in GSC, or export it. For an in-depth analysis, I highly recommend the second -- itll make your life much easier. To do so, click the downward arrow beneath Search Appearance, then download it as a CSV file or export it to Google Sheets. After you have this data in spreadsheet form, you can add a column for the position differences (Last 28 days Position - Previous 28 days Position), then sort by size. If the difference is positive, your site has moved up for that query. If its negative, youve dropped. 10. Identify your highest-traffic queries.
Knowing which queries bring in the most search traffic is definitely useful. Consider optimizing the ranking pages for conversion, periodically updating them so they maintain their rankings, putting paid promotion behind them, using them to link to lower-ranked (but just as if not more important) relevant pages, and so on. 11. Compare your sites search performance across desktop, mobile, and tablet.
12. Compare your sites search performance across different countries.
13. Learn how many of your pages have been indexed.
14. Learn which pages havent been indexed and why.
15. Monitor total number of indexed pages and indexing errors.
The total number of indexed pages on your site should typically go up over time as you:
If indexing errors go up significantly, a change to your site template might be to blame (because a large set of pages have been impacted at once). Alternatively, you may have submitted a sitemap with URLs Google cant crawl (because of noindex directives, robots.txt, password-protected pages, etc.). If the total number of indexed pages on your site drops without a proportional increase in errors, its possible youre blocking access to existing URLs. In any case, try to diagnose the issue by looking at your excluded pages and looking for clues. 16. Identify mobile usability issues.
17. Learn how many total backlinks your site has.
Every backlink is a signal to Google that your content is trustworthy and useful. In general, the more backlinks the better! Of course, quality matters -- one link from a high-authority site is much more valuable than two links from low-authority sites. To see which sites are linking to a specific page, simply double-click that URL in the report. 18. Identify which URLs have the most backlinks.
If you want to help a page rank higher, adding a link from a page with a ton of backlinks is a good bet. Those backlinks give that URL a lot of page authority -- which it can then pass on to another page on your site with a link. 19. Identify which sites link to you the most.
Knowing your top referring domains is incredibly useful for promotion -- Id recommend starting with these sites whenever you do a link-building campaign. (Just make sure to use a tool like Moz, SEMrush, or Arel="noopener" target="_blank" hrefs to filter out the low-authority ones first.) These may also be good candidates for comarketing campaigns or social media partnerships. 20. Identify the most popular anchor text for external links.
Anchor text should be as descriptive and specific as possible -- and best case scenario, include your keyword. If you find websites linking to your pages but using anchor text like Click here Learn more, Check it out, etc., consider sending an email asking them to update the hyperlink. 21. Identify which pages have the most internal links.
Its normal for some URLs to have more inbound links. For example, if you run an ecommerce site, every product page in your Skirts category will link back to the Skirts overview page. Thats a good thing: It tells Google your top-level URLs are the most important (which helps them rank higher). However, a heavily skewed link distribution ratio isnt ideal. If a tiny percentage of your URLS are getting way more links than the rest, itll be difficult for the 95% to receive search traffic -- youre not passing enough authority to them. Heres what a heavily skewed distribution looks like: The optimal spread looks like this: Use GSCs link data to learn how your links are distributed and if you need to focus on making your link distribution more smooth. 22. Learn how many total internal links your site has.
23. Find and fix AMP errors.
Google recommends fixing errors before looking at the pages in the Valid with warnings category. By default, errors are ranked by severity, frequency, and whether youve addressed them. 24. See Google how Google views a URL.
Heres how to interpret the results. If the URL is on Google, that means its indexed and can appear in search. That doesnt mean it will -- if its been marked as spam or youve removed or temporarily blocked the content, it wont appear. Google the URL; if it shows up, searchers can find it. Open the Index coverage card to learn more about the URLs presence on Google, including which sitemaps point to this URL, the referring page that led Googlebot to this URL, the last time Googlebot crawled this URL, whether youve allowed Googlebot to crawl this URL, whether Googlebot actually could fetch this URL, whether this page disallows indexing, the canonical URL youve set for this page, and the URL Google has selected as the canonical for this page. The Enhancements section gives you information on:
Editor's note: This post was originally published in October 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness. Topics: Technical SEO |
Google Search Console update 2021
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