Google Search Console

For anyone who manages a website, either for themselves or for customers, it is tough to avoid the Google Search Console. In the past, the free analysis and service tool was known as Google Webmaster Tools, but was renamed and expanded to include new features in 2015. The online tool, which is available for free following a simple one-time registration, provides practical assistance for website optimisation to beginners and experienced web developers alike.

Google Search Console (GSC) is a powerful tool for web developers that provides access to valuable statistics, allows easy manipulation of SEO-relevant site settings, and alerts developers to the presence of malware. Why all this for free? Because Google has a vested interest in websites that are well-programmed and contain limited source code errors. The goal of the search engine is to display as many high-quality sites to users as possible in their search results. Google uses Search Console to provide users with a tool that both benefits itself and allows the site operator to make constant improvements.

Google Search Console, also known as Search Console or GSC for short, is a free, web-based analytics service from Google, which replaced the popular Google Webmaster Tools in 2015. Website runners and mobile app providers can register their projects for the service and gain access to various useful features and statistics about their site. The Google tool can inform the user about existing duplicate content, detect registered crawling problems the Google bot has or weaknesses in the mobile site, among other things. A review of the sitemap and existing structured data is another one of the tool’s available features – as well as an in-depth analysis of the most important keywords your website ranks for in Google’s search results.

The various GSC tools are available on the left-hand menu of the web analysis suite. They are divided into the following six categories, which are explained in more detail in the following sections:

• Performance
• URL check
• Index
• Improvement
• Safety and manual measures
• Links

This performance information is not just available for Google web searches, but also for image and video searches – either the last 7 to 28 days, or the last 3, 6, 12 or even 16 months can serve as a database.

“Sitemaps”, the second index function, allows the user to submit Sitemaps of their own website, or to view sitemaps captured by Google.

Google has a quality policy for website operators which should be adhered to if you want to have good rankings in their search engines. Anyone who tries to manipulate the search index will face sanctions from Google – with possible penalties ranging from a downgrading of the ranking to being deleted entirely from the search results. In the “manual measures” section, users can check whether their own website is affected by these measures.

The second entry, known as “Security Issues” also tells you how secure your web application is. If Google detects security deficiencies, it will let you know at this point – whether it’s spam, malware or unusual downloads.

Since Google Webmaster Tools was renamed to Search Console, the Google Web Analytics suite has undergone some minor and some major changes. In 2018 the new, extensively revised GSC version was finally released after an extended beta phase, but still contains an option to revert to the old version – however, in most cases, users are unable to use data to find information on the old version.

Key innovations in the new Google Search Console include:

• The new version of the web analytics suite works fine on mobile devices.
• Optimised display of all data including new filter options.
• Performance data on search queries, clicks and so on can be accessed from the last 16 months. Previously, only information from the last 3 months was available.
• Information on individual pages is much more detailed.

Better overview of crawling problems and other errors, as well as simpler re-indexing applications.

The latest Google Search Console includes new and improved reports.

The Google Search Console provides a comprehensive overview of the technical condition of a website. Whether it’s the number of clicks and impressions, index status, or link profile – Google provides information free of charge that otherwise would have to be purchased through third-party providers. The Search Console is one of the standard tools for search engine optimisation, and is useful to both beginners and professionals.

While Google Analytics shows how users are behaving on a website, what they click on, and how much time they spend on which areas of the website, the Google Search Console shows how the search engine itself is judging the site from a technical point of view. Google Search Console helps developers better understand how the Google crawler indexes a page, and how the page’s position in the search results comes about.

The GSC provides not only a good start for data analysis and website optimisation – it also represents an important channel of communication between web developers and Google.