What’s new in Google Search Console?

Over the last few months, Google has been releasing a range of new features for the Google Search Console webmaster’s tool. A vital component to any SEO professional’s toolbelt, GSC is core to checking your website’s performance so it’s key to keep up to date with the latest features.

What is Google Search Console?

Google Search Console is a free web service provided by Google that helps website owners monitor and improve their website’s presence in Google’s search results. It allows website owners to see how Google crawls and indexes their website, view search analytics data, and identify and fix any issues that may be affecting their site’s performance in search results.

Why is Google Search Console good?

Google search console is great for a range of reasons, but the main and most important reason GSC is awesome is that it’s a free tool, provided by the search engine, that allows a direct link between your website and the search results. Unlike other tools like SEMRush or Ahrefs, that estimate traffic, in GSC your data is directly pulled from the search engine. So although you can only see data for your website and not competitor websites, the data you are seeing is accurate.

Other reasons why Google Search Console is loved by SEO professionals include: 

1. Performance Reports: These reports provide information on how your website is performing in Google search results, including the number of clicks, impressions, and average position for your website’s pages.
2. Index Coverage Reports: These reports show how well Google is indexing your website’s pages, and any issues that may be preventing some pages from being indexed.
3. The URL Inspection Tool: This tool allows you to check the indexing status and see any errors for individual pages on your website.
4. Sitemap Submission tool: You can submit a sitemap of your website’s pages to Google through Search Console, which can help Google understand the structure of your site and crawl it more efficiently.
5. Mobile Usability Reports: These reports provide information on any mobile usability issues that may be affecting your website’s performance in mobile search results.

By using Google Search Console, website owners can gain valuable insights into how their website is performing in Google search results, and identify areas for improvement to help increase their visibility and attract more organic traffic.

So what’s new in Google Search console?

Video indexing reports now include an impression overlay and sitemap filter

The Video indexing report in Google Search Console is a tool that helps website owners track the performance of videos on their website in Google Search results. The report provides insights on how Google crawls and indexes videos on a website, and whether they are eligible to appear in Google’s video search results.

The report shows data on video performance, such as impressions, clicks, and average position in search results. It also provides information on structured data errors and warnings that may prevent videos from being indexed or displayed in search results.

Google has now added a useful impressions overlap on the report which gives a great visual on how your videos are performing over time, based on the number of videos that are being indexed.

(image source: https://searchengineland.com/google-search-console-video-indexing-report-gains-video-impressions-overlay-and-sitemap-filter-392518)

The other new feature in the video report is that you can now filter through your videos and only see ones that are in your website’s sitemap. This is important as you may have videos across your website that you don’t care about – and only want to track the performance of ones that are important. This filter simplifies this task.

Structured data is no longer needed for product results

Product structured data in SEO refers to a specific type of markup language that website owners can use to provide search engines with detailed information about the products they sell. This structured data can be added to the website’s HTML code to provide search engines with additional context about the product, such as its name, description, image, price, availability, and more.

Google has announced that it no longer needs structured data in order to pick up on products on pages. Google said ‘Google now includes products found only in page content, without associated Product structured data’. This actually led to an increase in impressions for some website owners around the first week of January. If you hadn’t used structured markup on your website, this may be good news as you now don’t require it in order for your products to be recognised by google and picked up in rich snippets on the search results pages.

Content ideas in GSC

Back in December, Search Engine Land posted about Google search console testing out content ideas. Similar to content topic ideas generated in paid for SEO tools like SEMRush, Google Search Console seems to be trialling the generation of content topics for your website based on keywords on your website, and search demand for the related queries that bring people to your domain.

This could be a powerful tool for content writers looking to create more varied content and answer real questions their audiences are asking. This feature seems to be in an experimental phase, but it is worth looking out for the ‘content ideas’ tab on the left hand side of your GSC menu bar, as you may be one of the lucky ones they are trialling it on.

Google Search Console Shopping Tab

Under the ‘shopping’ tab in Google Search Console, Google has added a new element called ‘shopping tab listing’. This feature has been rolled out so if you’re an online store owner and are eligible, you can access the feature from Google’s platform.

This new listings tab will show you your product feed (as long as you keep your product structured data up-to-date) and help sellers see more information on how their products are performing in the search results, which is always valuable where optimisations can be made and performance can be improved.

(image source: https://searchengineland.com/google-search-console-adds-shopping-tab-listings-feature-389645)

These are just a few of the recent updates to Google Search Console. It’s important to stay up-to-date with the latest changes to ensure that you’re making the most of the platform and optimising your website for search engine visibility. Stay in the loop by reading more of our blogs or speak to one of our experts to learn more about the latest in all things search.