The main purpose of SEO practice is to improve the website traffic of a particular webpage or an entire website from search engines. Google Search Console will help you to do this process. It is a free tool and it is offered by Google. GSC, one of the Free SEO tools, is a web service offered by Google that can check multiple functionalities and metrics. This service is called as Google Webmaster tool till May 20, 2015. In January 2018, Google has introduced a new version with some updates and it is named Google Search Console and it will be very useful for SEO Services.
An Overview of Google Search Console GSC:
Google Search Console is the gateway for crawling and indexing the web page. It creates a link between the Website and Google. GSC is used to observe, optimize, and problem-solving your website which can present in google search results. That is, Monitoring the site continuously and getting organic traffic to the site. Maintain the results with good site traffic.
This Google Search Console will provide what was the error in the site, what is the site that has been indexed from that we can recover the error site and know the indexed sites and ranking of the webpage or website.This is the basic and free tool we can access through a normal Gmail account.
In the Google Search console, we have two types of verification
They are,
- DNS verification
- URL prefix verification
DNS Verification
There are many ways to verify the domain. And this is one of the easiest ways to verify a domain in Google Search Console. It is used to verify the domain name system from the hosting domain like Godaddy.
We just give the domain name in that and click continue it will provide the code which can be used for configuration.
The generated code must be copied and it should paste on the hosting domain for DNS configuration like GoDaddy.
In that go to GoDaddy DNS management and click add and select txt in the drop-down and give @ as a host finally paste the generated URL in the text value and then save the process by clicking the save button.
Now, we can verify the domain in Google Search Console and it is successfully verified. If it contains any error, wait for a few minutes because GoDaddy may not update at that time. After a few minutes again, it can be successfully verified.
URL Prefix:
It is used to verify the URL of your particular website or webpage.
Google Search Console helps to track the performance of website like,
- Click
- Impression
- CTR (Click Through Rate)
- Position
Clicks
A click is just a marketing metric that can be used to calculator how many times the user can click the site.
Impressions
An impression is the just digital view or engagement for the content that is how many times the webpage has been viewed in SERP.
CTR
CTR is Click Through Rate. When a click is divided by impression we can get the result as Click Through Rate.
Position
The average position can be defined based on the keyword. In other words, it defines the ranking position for the specific keyword.
Main features in Google Search Console
There are three main features in Google Search Console. They are
- Performance
- Coverage
- Enhancements
Performance
The search results can be provided under the performance section.
In this, we can get the metrics like how our site is performed in google search results. By these, we can see how many times the website can be ranked through average positions in SERP. We are able to know the rich results associated with special features.
In this performance, we are able to understand data analytics. From that, we can set the range and get the analytics and analyze it to improve the performance.
There is also one added feature: we can also compare the data analytics and get the report. According to the report, we can analyze it.
In that, we can see which keywords are ranking, and also we can able to know how many clicks and the impression we have got. From all these analyses, we can export as google sheets or excel sheets.
A Query is nothing but a keyword. By using this keyword in the blog or site. It can be used to make a good position.
The Countries used to know where the keyword is ranking more.
The devices option is used to know which device can be used more like a laptop, desktop, mobile, etc,
URL Inspection
- It is used to inspect whether the site is indexed or not.
- This tool can be used to update from old webpage to new webpage
- It can be used to launch the new section on your website also.
- This tool can be used to introduce a new mobile design.
- It is used to update the robots.txt file.
- It will be used to transfer from unsecured to the secured protocol via HTTP to HTTPS.
Coverage
It can come under the topic of Index. The Google Search Console Coverage report provides the information about which have been indexed and lists URLs. And it can diagnose the URL which has a problem while it tries to crawl and index them.
SiteMap
It is used to list all the URL which can be listed in a website. It helps the crawlers to get all the pages on a website.
Removals
Removals are used to remove the indexed webpage temporarily. There is two option while removing the URL. They are
- Remove this URL only
- Remove with this prefix
Remove this URL can remove the URL only. But removing the prefix will remove the subcategories of the URL. So generally we can select and remove this URL only. After removing this URL it will redirect to 404. It is valid for up to 6 months only.
Robots.txt is not used for permanent removal. If you want to remove the URL permanently, you should give noindex.
New features of Google Search Console
Search Console is a great tool that was given by google and it is purely a free version.
Now, this search console also added some new features.
- Page Experience
- Google Speed Insights
Page Experience
- This is the new feature that can be updated recently in Google Search Console.
- The purpose of the Page Experience report is to evaluate the user experience of the site.
- The Page Experience metrics can evaluate each and every page of a website.
- It will be useful to ranking signals for a URL of SERP results on Mobile devices.
- In simple words, Page Experience evaluates every URL in the website. And it currently working for mobile browsers.
- When a report is developed, it helps to provide a better page with a good user experience.
Page Experience is evaluated using,
- Core web vitals
- Mobile usability
- Security Issues
- HTTPS Usage
- Ad Experience
These all come under the enhancement of Page Experience
Core Web Vitals
- It can be used to report how the pages should be performed in the real world.
- It will test the speed and stability of the page loading speed of each URL when it is experienced by users.
- It will provide the rating for each page. So, A page must contain a good core web vitals rating then only it can qualify in Page Experience Status.
- It will take few days to import the data from the core web vitals report to the Page Experience report.
- So a rating of the URL Page Experience report is behind from URL’s rating of CoreWeb Vitals report
- When a URL does not contain a Core web vitals report then it will not appears in the Page Experience Report.
Mobile Usability
- It can check whether the pages and sites are mobile-friendly. If it is not, we have to optimize according to mobile use.
- When a URL contains without mobile usability data then it is considered to be a good review.
- A URL must have no usability errors. Then only it will be qualified in the Page Experience Report.
Security Issues
- When a site is identified as a security issue then it will be disqualifying all URLs on the website. It will affect the SERP result in Google Search.
- When a URL as Security issues will see as a banner on the Page Experience Report
HTTPS Usage
- When a webpage must be served over HTTPS (HyperText Transfer Protocol Secured) then it is eligible for good page experience status in Google Search Console.
- If a page experience report is not having a URL level on HTTPS data for the website.
- If the website contain too high a ratio for HTTP URLs then it will display the warning on our website. And it will show that the HTTPS section is failing.
Ad Experience
- Ad Experience evaluates the website whether uses the advertising techniques like distracting, interrupting, and not conductive to a good user experience.
- It can evaluate the entire website not a single webpage.
- When anyone page has a bad experience, then the entire page having the bad experience only.
- Now, many sites are not tested for the ad experience, so the site is considered as passing the Ad Experience test.
- The page experience report currently doesn’t know about Ad Experience Status for the Site. But, we have to check the Ad experience status by ourselves like,
- If we have a URL prefix on Google Search Console property and begins with the protocol either HTTP or HTTPS and it is the main property selector of Google Search Console.
- If we have domain property then we must create an equivalent URL – prefix property in the Google Search Console. When we open the Ad Experience report for mobile. Because Domain Property of Google Search Console is not supported in the Ad Experience Report.
- Choose the Property from the list in the Ad Experience Report, if it seems like not reviewed then the Ad Experience Status to be good in the Page Experience report as I said before.
- Ad Experience Changes rarely. So we don’t need to check oftenly.
Search Console Insights
Google announced the new search console insights in the upcoming days
It uses the data from Google Search Console and Google analytics.
- From there it will insights like
- Performance of the content
- Ranking keywords and content
- Duration of a Page view
- Search Queries
- Backlinks
- Performance of Social Media
Search Console Insights are available from these links
- Top of overview page in Google Search Console
- Google IOS App
- Planning for Android app also
It will be underworking. After few days we can get the report for the past 28 days of the site performance.
Search console insights appear in the right of SERP results which can perform the search for a query and it will be helpful to rank the website in Google Search Engine.
The main use of search console insights is to help the site owners better understand their audience.
This feature is used to answer some questions like
- What is the best performance piece of the content?
- Which is the trending content?
- How can the audience discover the content across the website?
- What do audience can search in Google before reaching the content?
- Which article refers the website and content to the users?
- Another way to access the data searching a query in Google when the site ranks and it return the Google-powered results on the top of the page and it is titled “Search Performance for this query”
- This is the entry point to Search Console Insights that can utilize the Google Search Console without using Google Analytics.
- But it is necessary to use both Google Search Console and Google Analytics to get a full and better experience.
- Search Console insights also support the Google Analytics UA property and it is also in working progress to support the Google Analytics 4.
- It can be used by all Google Search Console users in the upcoming days.
- Google testing the Search Console Insights for more than a year. It is still in beta testing. It will soon available to everyone.
Enhancement
It will have some added enhancement features like
- Core web vitals
- Mobile Usability
- Breadcrumbs
- AMP
- FAQ
- Logos
- Sitelink Search Box
BreadCrumbs
When navigating between URLs to another link is called Breadcrumbs.
AMP
AMP is an Accelerated Mobile Page. It is used to create fast page loading and looks good on mobile devices.
FAQ
FAQ is Frequently Asked Questions. It contains a list of questions and answers for a particular topic. It is a rich result on search which can help to reach the right users.
Logos
In this section, the logos can be controlled by your homepage which can be designed according to your knowledge.
Sitelinks Search Box
It appears with the listing that can be used to search the website directly from search results.
Main Uses of Google Search Console
- It will be useful to identify the highest traffic page and traffic queries.
- It will fix the indexing problem after resolving the request for re-indexing.
- Observe the impression over time
- Compare website search performance with different countries
- We can detect which webpage is not indexed and also we can able to know the reason for not indexing.
- We can identify which devices can be used more from that we can maintain our site according to that compatibility.
- We can also able to discover any mobile usability issues also
- We can able to identify the error detection
- It will be useful to done site submission also
- By Google Search Console, we can know how many internal and external links sites have. We can also know the top linking sites this is one of the added advantages to improve the site performance.