For the longest time, the Search Engine Console was not the greatest. But that may soon be a thing of the past.

Search Performance

The reporting got a bit of a boost. You can now look up 16 months worth of data in their “Search Performance” reports.

Inside of the report, you will see the click-through-rate, number of impressions, clicks, and your average position. All of this data can be extremely useful information.

You can see where you rank for a certain keyword, how many impressions that got, and whether or not those turned into clicks. Then, using this information, you can tailor your website to the keywords that people are finding you with the most.

Index Coverage

Google will now tell you which URLs are being properly indexed, and which are not. If any are not being processed correctly, Google is going to tell you why that is happening.

This is how Google describes the process of fixing a URL for better indexing:

1. When you drill down into a specific issue you will see a sample of URLs from your site. Clicking on error URLs brings up the page details with links to diagnostic-tools that help you understand what is the source of the problem.
2. Fixing Search issues often involves multiple teams within a company. Giving the right people access to information about the current status, or about issues that have come up there, is critical to improving an implementation quickly. Now, within most reports in the new Search Console, you can do that with the share button on top of the report which will create a shareable link to the report. Once things are resolved, you can disable sharing just as easily.
3. The new Search Console can also help you confirm that you’ve resolved an issue, and help us to update our index accordingly. To do this, select a flagged issue, and click validate fix. Google will then crawl and reprocess the affected URLs with a higher priority, helping your site to get back on track faster than ever.
4. The Index Coverage report works best for sites that submit sitemap files. Sitemap files are a great way to let search engines know about new and updated URLs. Once you’ve submitted a sitemap file, you can now use the sitemap filter over the Index Coverage data, so that you’re able to focus on an exact list of URLs.

AMP

Rolling out  AMP specific URLs? One of the best new features is that the Search Console will now be monitoring your AMP URLs.

If there is an issue, you will be alerted of what’s wrong, how to fix it and  will be able to submit the changes for re-verification.

Job Posting Report

Is your company hiring?

With Google Search Console’s new job posting report, you can check to make sure that your “careers” page is getting indexed correctly. You will also be able to check out results of the job listing as well.

Search Console Update

Need help understanding all of these updates? Contact Blue Sand Group today. We can help you get the most out of Google’s Search Console!