Google Search Console, formerly known as Google Webmaster Tool, is a free web service provided by Google for webmasters or site owners. As explained by Google (2021), it allows users to check the indexing status and optimize the visibility of their websites. Put simply, it’s a tool that helps users monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot their website’s presence in Google Search results.
The Google Search Console aids in understanding how Google perceives your site and aids in optimization for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) purposes. It not only displays the status of indexing but also helps diagnose and solve the issues hindering the presence in search results. It’s extremely valuable for SEO because it gives you direct insight into how Google’s systems perceive your site.
Upon verifying and setting up your site with Google Search Console, you can request that Google index your URL, making your site more discoverable in search results. This includes seeing if Google can access your content, submitting new content to crawl, removing content that you don’t want to be displayed on search results, viewing search traffic data for your site, get alerts on issues and fixing them, and much more, as highlighted by Patel (2020).
It’s very straightforward to use Google Search Console for SEO. The first step is to add and verify your website. After verification, Google will start collecting data about your website and show it in your Google Search Console account.
Key features like performance reports, URL inspection, coverage reports are an integral part of how the tool works. The performance report, for instance, offers users insight into how their website performs in Google Search, including information about organic clicks, impressions, click-through rates, and ranking data.
URL Inspection Tool allows users to submit a URL to Google’s Index, and lets you see if it has been indexed and if there are issues. Coverage reports, on the other hand, offer insights into what pages have been indexed, and which ones were blocked by Google.
A fascinating feature of Google Search Console, as highlighted by Moz (2020), is the ability to discover your most popular pages and see precisely which phrases were queried to lead users to your site. This helps you better understand what content is performing the best and what changes you may need to implement to improve overall site performance.
Sources:
Google Search Central (2021); Moz (2020); Neil Patel (2020)
