Google Search Console (aka google webmaster tools) is a set of tools and reports that allow webmasters or anyone who operates a website really able to monitor, manage, and improve their websites. It is a web service provided by Google free of charge. Google Console Account gives you information about your website and the people who visit it. GSC is being used by bloggers, SEO’s, marketers, webmasters, etc. Using google webmaster tools and the analytical data that is provided by it can make optimizing your website a lot easier. Further, It needs to be used to push your SEO even further.
Google Webmaster Tools helps you understand how people find your website, so you can make changes to improve its performance. This includes things like fixing broken links, making sure your site loads quickly, and ensuring that your site has relevant content.
Google Webmaster Tools Account is one of the most important tools for optimizing your website. If you want to rank higher in Google searches, then you should definitely take advantage of GSC. The tool allows you to track your rankings, view keywords that drive traffic to your site, and find ways to improve your content.
GSC account is one of the most important tools for optimizing websites, especially if you want to rank well organically. The tool allows you to track user behavior on your website, such as what keywords people use to find your content, how often they visit your site, and whether they click on links from other websites.
It is an invaluable tool for everyone to
Here are 5 Steps to Setup google webmaster tools. They are
Therefore,
You can use GSC to do the following.
Google Webmaster Tools is a set of free tools that provide the number of reports that allow webmasters to monitor & manage the website’s visibility in Google Search results.
To access the new GSC, please follow these steps:
There are several steps to follow for getting Console Account up and running. The entire process is pretty straightforward and is given below:
The four metrics of Console Account are
The above metrics are all pulled for both desktop & mobile devices. So that they can be compared with each other to know about desktop clicks vs mobile clicks.
It is a search query that generated impressions of a webpage of a website on a Google SERP. The query results data is available only to Google Search Console.
An Impression means Every time when a Link URL appears in a search result, it generates an impression of it. There is no need for the user to scroll down to see your search result for the impression to count.
When a user selects a link that takes the user go outside of Google Search, it is called as click. Then it counts as one click. However, If the user clicks a link, hits the back button, then clicks the same link again, still it considered as only one click. where as , a user click a different link, it is considered as two clicks.
Let’s take the following scenario. When a user clicks a web link with in the Google Search. Intern, if it runs a new query, then that is not considered as a click.
Also, this doesn’t include paid Google results too.
This is the mean ranking of your webpage(s) for a query (or queries). Lets assume, a webpage on my website is ranking #3 for “Gregg Vs Pitman” and #4 for “Teeline Vs Pitman” The average position for this URL would be 3.
Click Through Rate(CTR) is equal to Clicks divided by Impressions, multiplied it by 100. If a webpage of my website shows up in 20 searches, and it generates 10 clicks, the CTR would be 50%.
The steps to verify your website with Console are listed below. They are
The structured data type reports available in Console are
The components of Search Console Account are
Here are the reports available in the new Search Console Account:
To explore the features of Google Search Console Account, set up an account & verify your website with Search Console. There is a range of different reports you can access. They are designed to provide varying insights into your site. Below, you will find a brief rundown of what you can find within each report.
The Google Search Console is a set of free web analysis tool offered free of charge by Google. With the tool, both websites and apps can be analyzed and monitored. GSC further provides information about on-page as well as off-page factors, lists all un-natural links, if the website has been hacked or condition of the registered website or app via GSC.
Google launched a Google Search Console enhancement report called FAQ structured data. FAQ report is an enhancement report present in Google Search Console. It monitors FAQ issues & shows all errors, warnings, and valid FAQ items related to your marked-up FAQ pages. It also shows you a search appearance of it.
The how-to report is a Google Search Console report. GSC How-To Report is an enhancement report in Search Console that shows you website errors, warnings and valid items for pages with HowTo structured data.
To get access to Google Search Console, add your domain name to GSC and prove that you own that domain. This is pretty easy as Google provides 5 ways to let you do that. here are the steps to do that.
To get access to google search console all you need to do is either verify your website with Google or verify the property of GSC with Google. Here a property may be a domain, subdomain or particular path of a website.
Based on the URL you wish to verify, There are different methods to verify ownership of a website in Google Search Console. They are
To expedite the Indexing process of the whole site do always submit the site map of the website.
By submitting a site map, you provide Google Search Console Account with your site’s publicly available page URLs and image metadata.
The advantages of google webmaster tools are
In order to use the Console Account, users require a valid Google account. Logging in to this takes place by entering the right e-mail address and password. After this entire website, subdomains, directories, individual subpages or apps can be registered in the console.
The website must first be confirmed to ensure that the corresponding functions are available. Google offers various methods for this. This allows the website to be confirmed with the help of a valid Analytics account. The uploading of your own HTML file to the server is also possible. A safer method is also the insertion of a meta element into the <head> area of the site.
Ensure the successful confirmation of the website. So that the data from the google webmaster tools can be linked to the data of Google Analytics. It is allowing the analysis options to be expanded.
A verified owner of a property means the property verification process of owner has been already completed successfully.
where as, a delegated owner has been added by a verified owner. Also, note that Delegated owners may add other delegated owners as per their needs.
There are three types of GSC roles available. They are Owners, Users, Associate.
As An owner, he has full control over his properties in GSC. They may add and remove other users, change the settings, view all data, and access every feature of the tool as per owner’s wish.
A user can see all data and can take some actions, but a user can’t add other new users.
Full users can see most of the data and can take some actions, while restricted users can only view most data.
There is a third role ie an associate. You can associate a Google Analytics property with a Google Search Console account. GA property will let you see GSC data in GA reports. Likewise, You can also access GA reports in two sections of Search Console. They are
1. links to your site,
2. Sitelinks.
No. A GA property associate only with one website.
A sitemap is not necessary to show up in Google search results. As long as your website pages are logically linked to each other, Google says its web crawlers will normally find most of your pages.
There are four situations where a sitemap may improve the website’s crawlability. They are mentioned below.
The more webpages you have in your website, The crawlers such as Googlebot likely to miss any changes (or) additions of your website.
Any page that has few inbound links from other webpages is harder for a web crawler to discover them.
Newer sites have only few backlinks from other websites making them less discoverable.
In these cases, your sitemap makes it easier for Google to format & display a website in search.
Once you have built your website sitemap, do submit it using the GSC sitemaps tool.
After Google has processed and indexed a sitemap of a website, it will appear in the GSC Sitemaps report. You will be able to see when Google last read your sitemap & how many URLs has been indexed.
The filters provided in Google Webmaster Tools are incredibly handy. They help us in several ways to view & parse the website data. These are mentioned below for you.
There are 3 different search types. They are mentioned below.
1. web,
2. image,
3. video.
Based on the type of website, you typically get traffic for it.
For example, if you get a lot of traffic from either image or video search, then do make sure you adjust the above filters accordingly.
Search type in Google Search Console Image
Further, You can also compare two different types of traffic. Just click the “Compare” tab, choose the two categories you are interested in, and select “Apply.”
This can lead to some interesting insightful findings. For example, a particular webpost is getting more impressions from image search than web search. However, the latter is still generating more clicks than the other.
google search console web vs image impressions Image
Google Webmaster Tools offers around 16 months of website data starting from Most Recent Date of Today. You can choose either from a variety of pre-set time periods (or) set a custom range.
google search console date range selector Image
As with every search type, you may also compare one date range with the other data range in the “Compare” tab.
Queries, Page, Country, Device & Search Appearance
Click “New” link next to the Date filter to add up to five other types of filters: query, page, country, device, and search appearance.
google search console performance – “new” very next to the date filter Image
These filters can be layered.
For example lets take below scenario.
You wanted to see data for SEO Related queries appearing on a mobile search. Then, add a filter for queries containing “SEO” on mobile devices.
If you wanted to limit the search results even further to web posts on the Marketing Blog, it would be better to add another filter for webpages containing the URL “auniqueweb.com/blog/marketing”.
I would recommend you to use different combinations of filters, so you see what is possible.
The index coverage report shows you the status of every webpage Google has tried to index on your website. Using Index Coverage Report, you can diagnose indexing issues. Each webpage is assigned one of four statuses. They are
The webpage of a website couldn’t be indexed.
The webpage is indexed, but it has a problem.
The page is an alternate page with duplicate content with a canonical page. For the same reason, that page has been purposefully excluded, where as the canonical page has been found & indexed.
Here, you can make your website sitemap available to Google bots and see the results of crawling status.
1. Click on Performance.
2. Click the “Page” tab which is next to Queries.
3. To get a full year’s comprehensive overview of your website traffic, You may Change the date range to “Last 12 months”. (feel free to adjust the date range as per your requirement.)
4. Ensure “Total clicks” is selected.
5. Click the small downward arrow icon next to “Clicks” to sort it out from highest to lowest.
google search console pages report image
1. Click Performance link.
2. Click on the “Queries” tab.
3. Change the date range to “Last 12 months” or adjust it as per your requirement
4. Make sure “Average CTR” is selected.
5. Click on the small downward arrow next to “CTR” to sort from the highest to lowest.
Note: It’s very useful to look this against “Total Impressions” to get the full picture of both data points.
google search console pages report with impressions and ctr Image
1. Click the Performance.
2. Click the date to whatever range you’re interested in. (Alternatively, You may click “Compare” to analyze two date ranges at once.)
3. Look at “Average CTR”.
4. Click on Performance.
5. Click the date & choose what ever date range you are interested in. (Or click “Compare” for analyzing two different date ranges for once.)
6. Look at “Total impressions”.
7. Go to the Status > Performance.
8. Click the date & as per your choose your date range requirement. (Alternatively, click on “Compare” link to analyze two selected date ranges at once.)
9. Look at “Average position”.
google search console average ctr Image
Always keep an eye on CTR as Any significant movement is worth to understand it further.
Lets assume 2 scenarios. If CTR is dropped, yet impressions have gone up, it mean you are simply ranking for more number of keywords. Thus, average CTR has declined. If CTR has increased, yet impressions have been decreased, It meant that you have lost keywords. If both CTR & impressions have gone up, It means that your website is performing well.
As you create more content & optimize your existing webpages, this number should increase. In case you decided to target a small number of high conversion keywords rather than a lot of average conversion keywords, It means you are focusing on other channels to improve the engagement of visitors.
This metric is not that useful & users may ignore it in most of their analysis. Read below the valid reason for it to ignore. Lets assume, If a webpage or a set of pages starts ranking for additional keywords, usually average position likely to increase.
google search console average position Image
1. Switch to Performance.
2. Click “Page”
3. Change the date range to “Last 28 days.” as you wanna see accurate snapshot of your pages or you want an up-to-date information.
4. Make sure that the “Average position” is selected.
5. Click the upward arrow adjacent to “Position”. It helps to sort from from smallest (good) to highest (bad).
6. Click Performance.
7. Click the “Page” tab.
8. Change the date range to the following. “Last 28 days”. As you wanna see an up to date & accurate snapshot of your webpages.
9. Make sure “Average position” is selected.
10. Click the small downward arrow next to “Position” to sort from highest (bad) to lowest (good).
Because you are looking at average position by URL, the number mentioned is the mean of all of that webpage’s rankings. To understand it further, Lets assume that it is ranking for two keywords. Though It is ranking at #1 for a high volume query, the other keyword is ranking for #43 for a low volume query Thus, the average becomes 22 ranking in google
Therefore, It is not wise to judge the success or failure of a webpage by “average position” alone.
The procedure mentioned above is for identify ranking pages. Follow the above steps as it is except this time toggling the small upward arrow next to “Position” to sort the data from the highest (bad) to smallest (good).
1. Click Performance tab.
2. Move to the “Query” tab.
3. Click “Date range” to change the dates & choose the “Compare” tab.
4. Select two equivalent time periods as per choices which you would like to compare, then click “Apply.”
Now, Either you may look at the data or export it. For an in-depth analysis, It is always highly recommend to export data from GSC.
To export the data, click on the downward arrow beneath the “Search Appearance”, And then download it as a CSV file or export it to your Google Sheets account.
Download csv in google search console Image
Further, in the downloaded data of spreadsheet form, you may add a column for the position differences (Last 28 days Position – Previous 28 days Position), then sort it by the size parameter.
If the difference is positive, your website has been moved up for the query. If it’s negative, It means website is dropped.
1. Click on Performance.
2. Click the “Query” tab.
3. Click “Date range” to choose a time period of your choice.
4. Make sure that that the following “Total clicks” has been selected.
5. Click the small downward arrow next to “Clicks” to sort the data from highest to lowest.
6. Knowing which queries bring in the most search traffic is definitely useful. Consider to optimize the ranking pages for more conversion. Periodical updating of content of these high ranking pages helps us to maintain their rankings. High ranking pages Put paid promotion behind them. Thus using them to link to lower-ranked relevant pages, and so on.
1. Click the Performance tab.
2. Go to the “Devices” tab.
3. Make sure all the following “Total clicks,” “Total impressions,” “Average CTR,” and “Average Position” are selected.
4. Compare the performance of website across all search types names desktop, mobile, and tablet.
1. Click on Performance to Go to the “Countries” tab.
2. Make sure that following “Total clicks,” “Total impressions,” “Average CTR,” & “Average Position” search types are selected.
3. Now, Compare your website’s performance across all nations.
1. Click “Overview.”
2. Scroll down to the Index coverage summary section.
3. Look at the count of “Valid pages”.
index coverage in google search console Image
1. Go to Overview >> Index coverage.
2. Scroll down to the Details box.
3. GSC Details Box will list out information of the Errors which are causing indexing issues and how frequent they are.
4. Double-click on any Error type to see the affected webpage URLs.
1. Click on Overview
2. Go to “Index coverage” section of window
3. Make sure the following “Error”, “Valid with warnings”, “Valid”, and “Excluded” are selected.
index coverage drilldown in google search console Image
The total number of indexed pages on your website should typically go up over a period of time as you
a) Publish new blog posts, create new landing pages, add additional website pages, etc.
b) Fix indexing errors of website
For Example, Assume indexing errors of webpages go up significantly very high, it means a website template may have caused the issue. As a large set of webpages have been impacted at once, it must be fixed these issues as soon as possible.
Or if you summited a sitemap with URLs to google. Google can’t crawl. It may be because of ‘noindex’ directives, robots.txt, password-protected pages, etc.).
Assume, If the total number of indexed web pages on your website drops without a proportional increase in errors, it is possible that you are blocking access to existing URLs in one or the way.
In this scenario, You must try to diagnose the issues just by looking at your excluded pages and looking for clues to fix the issues.
1. Click Mobile Usability.
2. Make sure that “Error” is also selected.
3. Scroll down to the Details box. GSC Details box helps you to learn which Errors are causing mobile usability issues and how frequent they are causing issues.
4. Double clicking on an Error type helps you to see the affected page URLs.
mobile usability in google search console Image
1. Click on Links.
2. Now, Open the report of Top linked pages.
3. See the box with the label “Total external links”
4. Click the downward arrow very next to “Incoming links”. It helps to sort records from the highest to the lowest backlinks.
top linked pages externally in google search console Image
Usually, Every backlink of a website is a signal to Google that your content is trustworthy & useful. In fact, the more backlinks the better it is. Of course, quality matters here. One link from a high Authority website is much more valuable than two links from A Low Authority websites. To see which websites are linking to a specific webpage of website, simply do Double Click the URL in the report.
1. Click the Links.
2. Open the report labeled Top linked pages .
3. Click the downward arrow next to “Incoming links”. It is going to sort data from highest to lowest backlinks of webpage.
If you wanna rank a webpage higher in SERP results, do add a link from the webpage that has a ton of backlinks. This approach is a good one to accomplish the task. Those backlinks give the URL the page authority it needed. It can then pass on to another webpage of your website with a link.
top sites linking to this page in google search console Image
1. Initially, Do Click on Links.
2. Now, Do Scroll down & to the following section “Top linking sites”.
3. Further, Go to “More”
Please note, Knowing the top referring domains of a website is incredibly useful for the promotion. Whenever you plan do a link building campaign, It is always recommend to start with these initial websites. To make this more easier you may use either tools like Moz, SEMrush (or) A rel=”noopener” target=”_blank” that will help you to filter out the Low Authority websites.
1. Click Links.
2. Please Scroll down to “Top linking text” section & then, click on “More.”
Usually, Anchor texts should be descriptive as well as specific too. At times, you may include your keyword too. If you find websites linking to your webpages, but using anchor texts like “Click Here”, “Learn More”, “Check it out here”, etc.. In this scenario, do consider to send a email asking them to update the hyperlink.
1. Click on Links.
2. Scroll down to “Top linked pages” & “More.”
It is very normal for some web URLs to have more inbound links.
For example, Let’s assume you have a e-commerce site. Every product page in a category will always link back to the overview page. It is a good thing as it tells Google your Top Level URLs are the most important & helps them to rank higher.
However, a heavily optimized link distribution is not going to be ideal for the cause. If a tiny percentage of your web URLS are getting way more links than the rest, it will be difficult for the 95% to receive search traffic. It is because you are not passing enough authority to those links.
Further, Use Google Webmaster Tools link data to learn the following.
1. how your weblinks are distributed.
2. And, if you wish to make your weblink distribution further smooth.
1. Click Links.
2. Do Scroll down to “Top linked pages”
3. Then, click on “More.”
4. Look at the box labeled named “Total internal links”.
1. Click on AMP.
2. Also, Make sure “Error” is selected.
3. Scroll down to the “Details” box
4. Now, See which types of issues you have and how frequent they are.
5. Usually Google recommends fixing errors before looking at the webpages in the “Valid with warnings” category. By default, errors are ranked by their severity, frequency, & whether you have addressed them.
Google Webmaster Tools is an essential tool for anyone who wants to optimize their website for search engines. Use this free service to improve your website rankings. The Google Webmaster Tools dashboard provides information on how well your website is performing in terms of traffic, page speed, and other factors that affect your SEO (search engine optimization).
If you haven’t set up your GSC account yet, do so now. You’ll need to sign into your Google Account first. Then click “Webmasters” at the top right corner of the screen. Click “Add new property.” Enter your domain name and select “Website”. Select “Google Analytics” as the property type. Choose “Basic” as the property’s settings. Finally, enter your web address in the “Address” field.
Once you’ve entered your website URL, you’ll see a list of errors. These are things that Googlebot has encountered while crawling your site. It might say something like “404 Not Found”, “500 Internal Server Error”, or “301 Moved Permanently”. This means that there was some kind of error when Googlebot tried to access your site.
You should also check the keywords that people are using to find your site. If you’re not ranking well for those terms, then you need to make changes to your site so that it’s more likely to show up in search results.
Once you’ve set up your account, you’ll see a list of pages indexed by Googlebot. This will help you identify any issues with your site that might be preventing it from being found.
You should submit a sitemap.xml to Google so that it can crawl your entire site. If you’re using WordPress, there’s a plugin called Yoast SEO that makes this easy.
Google Search Console: 5 Top Interesting FAQs articles helps to understood Google Search Console features & usage of it.
Super Super Super information on Google Adsense. I liked it Dude.
5 Keyword Ranking Tracker Tools for SEOs & Marketers Keyword Ranking Tracker is an… Read More
5 Reasons For Using An Online Plagiarism Checking Tool Plagiarism is when you copy… Read More
SEO Checker For Website: SEO Analyzer Now a days, seo analysis for website has ben… Read More
Screaming Frog SEO Spider: A Top Web Crawler Introduction to Screaming Frog SEO Spider Tool… Read More
Neil Patel Keyword Tool Ubersuggest Features ubersuggest chrome extension from ubsuggest Keyword tool Ubersuggest :… Read More
Social Media Marketing Definition Benefits Tips: FAQs Social Media Marketing Now a days, Social Media… Read More
This website uses cookies.