This comprehensive guide covers everything you need to know about the key sections of Google Search Console, as well as tips on how to use
What reports do you look at in Google Search Console?
- Is it the links to your site?
- Or, your crawl errors to see if you need to implement any 301 redirects?
- Do you think of adjusting your URL parameters at all?
You can use Google Search Console for pretty much everything.
Originally known as Google Webmaster Tools for nearly a decade, Google rebranded its suite of tools as Google Search Console in 2015.
With every new year, Google has given us new tools, analytics, and data to track in Google Search Console.
The new version of Search Console, announced in January 2019, is now officially out of beta.
So that meant it was time for a refresh of our complete guide to the Google Search Console.
Let’s face it, between the excess of AMP errors and the fear of Google algorithm updates; Google Search Console can become a system of copy/paste without any actions.
To offer a helping hand, below is a breakdown of the basics of Google Search Console.
From Fetch as Google to the Index Coverage report, you’ll be giving your SEO reports a mini upgrade on the regular. Plus, I share my monthly SEO health checklist.
Read on – the HTML improvements are calling your name.
What You’ll Learn about Google Search Console
To make reading easier, this article is divided into four sections; each is a central area within Google Search Console:
- Overview
- URL Inspection
- Performance
- Index
- Enhancements
- Security & Manual Actions
- Legacy tools & reports
- Links
Also, by now, you should have received a notice in your Messages in Google Search Console or an email from Google. It should look something like this:
To find the new Google Search Console, log in the same way you previously did by going to your dashboard: https://search.google.com/search-console.
Here is a look at how the old Google Search Console dashboard looked.
Here is a look at the new Google Search Console dashboard.
And, if you’re interested in how both the old Google Search Console and the new Google Search Console compare, I walk you through that in this site
The overview report in Google Search Console featured three main reports:
- Performance.
- Coverage.
- Enhancements.
I’ll dive deeper into each of these reports later.
URL Inspection Tool
What is the URL Inspection tool?
The URL Inspection tool might be one of my favorites because you get to see how Google views your website. This tool allows you to test how Google renders your site.
If you published a new blog post or redesigned a webpage, you can use this URL inspection tool to submit the URL to signal to Google to crawl that page.
It’s similar to the Fetch as Google tool in the old GSC.
If you click Fetch, you’ll see the HTTP response that Google is receiving.
If you click Fetch and Render, you’ll see how your page looks in a particular browser.
How Do I Use the URL Inspection Tool /Fetch as Google Tool?
To use the new URL Inspection tool, add your URL to the top search bar in the new Google Search Console here: Then you should see a report like this: Google released a list of features for this new tool that you can read about here.
I still like to use the Fetch as Google tool to discover dynamically generated content that may be hidden. We all know how Gary Illyes feels about hidden dynamically generated content.
After you submit your URL to “fetch and render,” you’ll get a response like this:
This is not to be confused with static content. Content behind click-to-expand links won’t hurt your rankings, according to Google’s John Mueller.
Meaning, it’s OK to have this:
Other uses for Fetch as Google:
- Update an old webpage.
- Launch a new section of your website.
- Introduce a new mobile design.
- Updated robots.txt file.
- Implemented rel=canonical tags.
- The transition from HTTP to HTTPS.
Performance
Search Results
What Is the Search Results Report in Google Search Console?
In the old GSC, the Search Analytics report would display a 7, 28, or 90-day summary of how often your website appears in the search results.
On the dashboard, you’d see data that can be broken down into the following metrics:
- Queries
- Pages
- Countries
- Devices
- Search Type
- Search Appearance
- Date
In the new version of GSC, you’ll see the Search Results under the Performance section.
You will have the same metrics available, but you’ll have 16-months worth of data. Plus, you’ll the ability to filter results by:
- Job posting.
- Rich results.
- AMP pages.
- Non-rich AMP results.
- News
Google is continuing to add more search filters. I’ll update this article with more features as they are added.
Another cool new feature, Google released a new productivity feature that allows you to copy, open in a new tab, or inspect a URL when viewing in this report.
If you’re like me and your spreadsheets are filled with traffic and keyword positioning changes, then Search Performance is the ranch dip to your carrot.
If not for the content opportunities (what editorial calendar dreams are made of) then, at least, for the impressions and clicks data by country and device.
What Reports Can I Build with the Search Results Report in Google Search Console?
The 16-month data is an excellent way to get a quick overview of your website and content performance in the SERPs.
If you’re building spreadsheets, download this Google Chrome extension. Trust me; it’s a major time-saver.
Here’s an example of a spreadsheet I’m able to build:
You can use this data to identify:
- Top performing pages.
- Pages with low CTR.
- Number of clicks per keyword.
- Number of impressions per keyword.
For example, I use this data to determine what metadata I need to rewrite. If I have a page with high impressions and low clicks, this may mean my title or meta description needs to be improved.
You can also use this part of Google Search Console to dive deeper into keyword research.
Discover
What is the Discover report in Google Search Console?
The Discover report is new to Google Search Console. Google introduced the Discover report in April 2019 to give publishers more insight to how searchers are discovering their content.
How Do I Use the Discover Report?
If you’re a publisher, you can use this report to understand how searchers are interacting with your site on Google’s mobile Discover feed.
You can see what types of content perform well, how content is performing compared to other traditional search results, and how often users are visiting your site from Discover.
This report will also include data on AMP stories.
Index
Whether you’re looking for index bloat, trying to find if CSS is blocked, or remove URLs, the Index reports in Google Search Console can have you spinning in circles.
I’ve battled everything from low organic traffic to Panda hits because of thin content. The Google Index reports in Google Search Console provide data on how your content is performing in the Google search.
(Note: If you’re looking for the Content Keywords section, it was removed in November 2016.)
Coverage (the older version is Index Status and Crawl Errors)
How Do I Use the Coverage Report?
In the older version of GSC, the Index Status feature showed insights about your site’s URLs that Google has indexed over the past year.
In the new GSC, the Coverage report also displays all your indexed pages and all the pages that are not included in your sitemap.
It will also provide a list of errors, something like this:
The Coverage report is also the new Crawl Errors report. It tells you what pages are broken on your website. You used to see something like this:
Going forward, you’ll want to monitor this report to make sure there are no large increases or decreases in your indexed pages.
I like to use this report to determine if there is index bloat. By pairing the data from Google Search Console to Google Analytics, webmasters can find out if they are the unfortunate receivers of index bloat.
You want to see if the number of pages in the Coverage Report matches the number of landing pages receiving organic traffic in Google Analytics.
If they don’t match, it most likely means a small fraction of your indexed pages is receiving traffic.
How to Find Index Bloat in Google Search Console?
To find index bloat follow these steps:
- Go to the new Google Search Console > Index > Coverage. You may see something like this:
Go to Google and perform a site:[insert website url] search
Dig through each page of the search results to find a pattern in the parameters of each page.
- If you notice pages being indexed that you don’t want to be indexed, go back through and add the noindex tag to each page and disallow them in the robots.txt file.
How Do I Fix Crawl Errors?
Some standard Crawl Errors:
- DNS (Domain Name System) error: This error means something is happening on the server-side so contact wherever you’re hosting (GoDaddy, BlueHost, etc.).
- Server errors: Server errors usually happen when you’re site is being hit with too much traffic. You’ll want to dig deeper to see if it’s an issue related to the connection or timeout.
- Soft 404 errors: These errors indicate that your header HTTP response code does not return a 404 code. To fix, implement a 301 redirect if the page is dead or review the page for thin or duplicate content.
- 404 errors: These are the most common error you will get. 404 errors can happen when you unpublish a page, delete the page, etc. While 404 errors don’t impact your rankings necessarily, they can impact your links. If you have 20+ links pointing to a 404 page, you’ll want to 301 redirect that page immediately.
After a long month of page speed enhancements and keyword mapping, the easiest quick fixes you can do to your website are cleaning up your crawl errors.
With just one 301 redirect, you can transform a broken link to a magical nest of backlink unicorns.
Meaning: If you have a broken page that is generating a lot of backlinks, 301 redirecting it will make sure you’re still getting the credit (and authority) for those backlinks.
Sitemaps (Both in the Old and New Version)
What Is the Sitemaps Report?
Pay attention to the Sitemaps report warnings. You can view both of these in the old and new versions of Google Search Console. Here is a look at the new Sitemap.
The Sitemaps report in Google Search Console shares insights into what is happening on your website. Yes, these are errors found in your sitemap, but so much more can be discovered from this error report.
Fear not, your best defense to these sitemap errors is digging deep into the cause of why these errors occurred in the first place.
Here is a problem I’ve come across through my site audits:
A large website comes to me for an SEO audit. They have 100,000+ pages with multiple sitemaps. Awesome, right?
After taking 5 seconds to review their sitemap errors, I noticed only 1 URL was being indexed compared to 16,000 URLs from this sitemap. After more investigating, I saw an uppercase letter in the sitemap entry.
After fixing the entry, 83% of the pages were indexed in 2 weeks.
Enhancements
As an SEO professional, I use the Enhancements section in Google Search Console to do a lot.
You want it to tell you the secrets to getting your structured data working and if your AMP pages are active. You love it when they say you have no error codes.
Just tap the Enhancements tab in the left menu bar to view all the reports and tools. Let the nerding out begin!
Note: There is a dataset report coming to Google Search Console Enhancement reports soon. I will update this article once that’s live.
Core Web Vitals
What Is the Core Web Vitals Report?
In May 2020, Google rolled out a Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console. The Core Web Vitals report is meant to show you the quality of the experience a user has on your site.
The report is broken down by mobile and desktop.
The report is segmented by loading, interactivity, and visual stability of your site.
How to Use Core Web Vitals Report in Google Search Console?
If you have URLs that are listed as Poor status, you’ll want to tackle those first. When the issue is fixed, you can resubmit within Google Search Console to see if Google accepted the fix.
Marie Haynes discusses this Page Experience connection with Core Vitals in a detailed article here.
Speed (Replaced by Core Web Vitals)
What Is the Speed Report?
The Page Speed report launched in November 2019.
How to Use Page Speed Report in Google Search Console?
You can use this report to track changes over time. If you make an update to one URL, this Page Speed report will allow you to monitor and track if users experienced better performance.
The Page Speed report allows marketers to see all the page speed issues in the convenience of Google Search Console. You no longer need to use the PageSpeed Insights tool.
Mobile Usability
What Is the Mobile Usability Report?
Google launched the Mobile Usability report in Google Search Console right before the big announcement of moving to a mobile-first index.
The Mobile Usability report gives you the opportunity to troubleshoot any design and development issues with mobile.
How Do I Fix Mobile Usability Report Issues?
What starts as a well-thought web design strategy, can quickly turn into a slow, unclickable, awkwardly scrolling mess of a website, sending you into a whirlwind of zero leads and increased bounce rate.
Here are some common errors in the Mobile Usability report and how to fix them:
- Content wider than the screen: Make sure your pages don’t require horizontal scrolling to view entirely.
- Clickable elements too close together: Make sure your links and buttons are far enough apart.
- Viewport not configured: Make sure your pages use the meta viewport tag to adjust the dimensions based on the device used by visitors.
Accelerated Mobile Pages (Both Old and New Version)
What Is the AMP Report?
And, it turns out AMP pages are like little SEO burritos with all of the mobile search result benefits I’m loving bundled into one easy-to-implement tactic.
Increases page load time? Boosts in mobile ranking? Improves server performance? Check, check, check.
Recently, Google announced that Google Search Console will now track images that interacted with the ‘swipe to visit’ feature. You can see this feature in the Performance reports above.
So when you’re ready to check for any errors in your AMP markup, the AMP report in Google Search Console is your best friend.
You can find the AMP report in both the old and new versions of Google Search Console.
How Do I use the AMP Report?
The AMP report in Google Search Console allows you to monitor your AMP pages.
You can watch for site templating and any other implementation issues that affect your AMP pages. You can also the AMP Test Tool if you’re making any big changes.
And, as we mentioned above, you can filter AMP results in the Performance report. Pretty cool, huh?
And, Google has been notifying site owners about issues related to their AMP report.
Breadcrumbs (Also Find Structured Data)
What Do Breadcrumbs in Google Search Console Tell Us?
The Breadcrumbs report in Google Search Console was rolled out in September 2019.
This Breadcrumbs report helps website owners fix any issues that may be preventing breadcrumbs from displaying in the SERPs.
And, any website owner can understand the woes of implementing structured data. You add the code to your site, but it’s still not showing in the SERPs.
After you’ve added the code to your website, pop into Google Search Console > Enhancements > Breadcrumbs to check for errors.
The report will include all the breadcrumb structured data errors and how many URLs are affected.
In the new Google Search Console, this is what you will see:
In the old Google Search Console version, you used to see something like this:
How Do I Fix Breadcrumbs in Google Search Console?
Breadcrumb structured data marks up your pages to tell search engines what information to display to your users.
It’s the hierarchy within your site.
This Breadcrumb report will tell you what to check if they aren’t displaying in the SERPs.
Breadcrumbs on your site have proven to help improve organic traffic.
A luxury real estate site saw a 33% increase in organic traffic in the first year. And, another local business boosted pageviews by 71% in only a year.
Even though structured data isn’t a ranking factor and your site won’t lose rankings if you leave these errors, it is better for the user experience if you fix these errors.
You can use the Structured Data Testing Tool to help work through these errors.
Let’s use the example above. This site has 899 pages with 1,772 hentry errors.
I know that hentry structured data must contain a title and author to avoid errors. These 899 pages with the 1,772 hentry errors are all from the category pages on the blog.
If you work with a developer, I’d suggest collaborating with them on a fast solution if you have a large number of pages like this.
And, if you’re using a WordPress website, you need to determine if it is your theme or a plugin where your breadcrumbs are being displayed from.
Then, browse support forums for advice. Here are a few common breadcrumb errors from Yoast users.
Rich Results (Now in Breadcrumbs Report)
What Are Rich results in Google Search Console?
When was the last time you searched for [bourbon maple jam recipe] on your smartphone? Or scanned Google search results for movie times?
And, if you’re the kind of SEO professional who likes to track errors and performance of your hard-earned rich results, then Google Search Console is the place to go.
The report will show you how many rich results are indexed and if there are any critical errors.
Google has started to report on more structured data like product markup, sitelink searchbox markup, and unparsable types.
This rich result report has been moved to the Breadcrumbs report.
How Do I Get Rich Results to Show up in Google Search Console?
Now, you can’t create rich results for everything – recipes, courses, movies, and jobs are only fair game for now.
The rich results report monitors rich snippets, schema, AMP, and App Indexing.
Once you’ve created your rich results, you can use this report to see what cards are being indexed and if there are any errors.
And, you can use the new URL inspection tool: https://search.google.com/search-console/inspect.
If you see errors in Google Search Console, most likely your rich results are not being displayed in the SERPs.
Review Snippets
What Is the Review Snippets Report in Google Search Console?
The Review Snippets in Google Search Console can be found under Enhancements.
If you’re marking up your reviews using schema, this is the report that will explain whether they are implemented correctly.
How Do I Use the Review Snippet Report?
The Review Snippet report will show you how the pages are performing, ensuring the snippets are activating, and more. You can read more about this in the official report here.
Logos
What Is the Logos Report in Google Search Console?
If you’re using logo markup, this Logo enhancement report will show you the performance and errors associated with that markup.
How Do I Fix Logo Report Issues?
Sitelinks Searchbox
What Is the Sitelinks Searchbox Report in Google Search Console?
If you’re using sitelinks searchbox markup, this sitelinks searchbox report will show you the performance and errors associated with that markup.
How Do I Fix Sitelinks Searchbox Report Issues?
With security becoming a growing issue, it comes as no surprise that Google revamped Google Search Console to have its own security and manual actions section.
Manual Actions
What Does the Manual Actions Report in Google Search Console Tell Us?
Let’s hope you never have to use this section. The “No issues detected” is a sigh of relief.
If you violate Google’s guidelines, you will receive a notification in the Manual Actions report. If you do, it might look something like this:
Here’s a complete list of Google Manual Actions.
How do I remove Manual Actions in Google Search Console?
If you receive a manual action notice, you’ll have to submit a reconsideration request. There is a ton of work that needs to go into a reconsideration request.
A reconsideration request takes time and quick actions from your team.
Here’s a quick overview of the steps I’ve taken in the past to recover a new client from unnatural links to the site:
- Created a link removal campaign to remove all spammy links.
- Used Google spreadsheet to document the link removal work. Google wants to see how many times you emailed a website to remove the links and the steps you’re taking to monitor backlinks in the future.
- Submitted disavow file to Google.
- Write a documented letter explaining why this happened and the steps you took to remove the links.
Security Issues
What Does the Security Issues Report in Google Search Console Tell Us?
The Security Issues section in Google Search Console will tell you if your site has been hacked or if you have malware on your site.
Google has launched a video series for Google Search Console. If you run into security issues, this video can help guide you.
Google will display warnings if they see any issues detected. Something like this:
If you see detected security issues in Google Search Console, Google will provide information on how to fix these problems.
I recommend you work closely with your developer to get these cleaned up.
Once you’ve taken action to remove these issues, you can request Google’s team to review the site again.
For now, let’s hope that you have the reassuring green note from Google stating, “No issues detected.”
Legacy Tools & Reports
There are a few legacy tools and reports that Google has not announced a replacement for yet. There’s no word on the street yet what will happen to these reports. They may stay or go.
Here’s a breakdown of the reports.
International Targeting
What Is the International Targeting Report?
If your website has multiple languages or targets a particular country, you’ll want to have hreflang tags.
How Do I Set up Country Preferences in Google Search Console?
If you’re targeting a particular country, make sure to review your traffic sources by country in Google Analytics before setting a country preference.
To set up country preferences, follow these steps:
- Go to Google Search Console > International Targeting > Country
- Once you click the checkbox, you’ll be able to choose which country to target.
If you don’t set up the targeting, Google will determine your location based on your website’s domain, IP addresses, links, and information from Google My Business.
Remove URLs
What Is the Remove URLs Tool?
The Remove URLs tool can be, in a word, complicated. It’s a universal truth that at some point every SEO professional will have a client suffering due to thin or duplicate content.
If you want to temporarily hide something from Google searches (like massive amounts of thin or duplicate content), you can add the URL to the Remove URLs tool in Google Search Console.
This temporary removal will hold for 90 days, and it takes about a day to process.
How Do I Use the Remove URLs Tool?
In the past, I’ve used this tool to not only quickly clean-up thin or duplicate content before Panda comes rolling in, but I’ve used it to spruce up URLs will multiple case sensitive issues.
Here’s an example:
annaleacrowe.com/meet-anna
annaleacrowe.com/Meet-Anna
www.annaleacrowe.com/meet-anna
Before submitting pages to GSC to remove, follow these steps:
- Add noindex meta tag to each page
- Insert the rel=canonical tag to each page
- Disallow the pages in the robots.txt file
- Submit to Remove URLs
Think of this tool as a secret weapon to call out of retirement only when needed.
Crawl Stats
What Is the Crawl Stats Report?
The Crawl Stats section in Google Search Console can often look like a hot mess of red, blue, and green lines. But, this data actually measures your crawl rate.
The Crawl Stats report tells you how often and when Google is crawling your site.
How Do I Use the Crawl Stats Report?
A fast crawl rate means that the Googlebot is indexing your site quickly. And, as Google crawls your site more, you should see better search performance.
If you see major dips and spikes, there may be an issue with your site.
Crawl Stats comes with three reports:
1. Pages Crawled Per Day
Bad pages crawled per day:
Good pages crawled per day:
If you see a lot of spikes and dips, you may want to investigate. If you recently added new content to the site or unblocked a section in your robots.txt file, this is why you may see a significant spike.
Next, let’s look at the other two charts:
2. Kilobytes Downloaded Per Day
3. Time Spent Downloading a Page
I look at how these two charts compare to each other. If both graphs are pretty high, then you want to double-check your HTTP requests to make sure you’re not hitting 20+. You can use a tool such as SEO Site Checkup to check for multiple HTTP requests happening.
Messages
What Is the Messages Report in Google Search Console?
I highly doubt Google will replace the Messages section in Google Search Console.
This is your main communication channel with Google. It’s like your email inbox to Google Search Console.
URL Parameters
What Is the URL Parameters Tool?
There’s nothing worse than discovering your website is flooded with duplicate content. And, it always seems to happen at the worst times – launching a new product, holiday season, the first day of your vacation.
So, how do you quickly fix duplicate content issues?
The URL Parameters tool.
This tool displays all the parameters used on your site.
For example, you might see something like this:
How Do I Use the URL Parameters Tool?
With the Parameter URL tool, you can set preferences for Google on how you want them to treat each of the parameter types.
While SEO pros know that using canonical tags can protect you from duplicate content, it doesn’t prevent you from wasting your crawl budget which could lead to index bloat.
Web Tools
What Is the Web Tools Report in Google Search Console?
The Web Tools report includes the following:
- Ad Experience Report
- Abusive Experiences
- Testing Tools
- Structured Data Testing Tool
- Structured Data Markup Helper
- Email Markup Tester
- Other Resources
- Google My Business
- Google Merchant Center
- Pagespeed Insights
- Custom Search
- Google Domains
- Webmaster Academy
- Google Ads
- Google Analytics
- Links
What Is the Links Report?
In a perfect world, all websites would have plenty of high-quality links to every page.
That’s just not the case.
The Links report in Google Search Console shows you what websites are linking to you.
How Do I Monitor Backlinks in Google Search Console? and, How Do I Disavow?
We have to be picky about where our backlinks are coming from. And with the ongoing Google algorithm changes, knowing when to disavow backlinks can be tricky.
To monitor backlinks in Google Search Console, follow these steps:
- Go to Links dashboard
- Click “Top Linking Sites”
- Click the arrow to export the report
- Identify any abnormal patterns of links coming in from one day. Looking for these patterns will help you discover potential link spam issues for a negative SEO attack.
Reports From Old Version of Google Search Console
Here are the details of specific reports missing from the new version of Google Search Console.
Data Highlighter (Old Version)
What Is the Data Highlighter Tool?
Although Google hasn’t announced a new report for the Data Highlighter tool, it does still exist. You can find it here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/data-highlighter.
And, while there is no news on if there will be a replacement report, there is still a good use for it.
For example: Did you know that you could write your structured data right in GSC? Or, that you don’t need a web developer to add structured data to your site?
How to Use the Data Highlighter
Rich snippets have proven to boost click-through rates in search results, so it’s essential to websites with articles, book reviews, events, local businesses, and products to use the data highlighter.
- Head to Google Search Console > Search Appearance > Structured Data
- Select “Start highlighting”
Select which option you’d like to start highlighting
Use your mouse to highlight elements on the page and pairing them with the required elements
When you’re completed, you should see this listed in your Data Highlighter section
HTML Improvements (old version)
What is the HTML Improvement report?
Are you obsessed with improving your click-through-rates from organic search? Have you spent many nights lying awake wondering how to improve your meta descriptions?
If so (raises hand ), your on-page SEO dreams have come true with HTML Improvements report.
How Can I fix HTML Improvement Reports?
This tool is useful for identifying duplicate URL issues caused by uppercase variations, duplicate pages, etc.
To fix these issues in the HTML improvement report, follow these steps:
- Duplicate meta: Manually review each page list to confirm you have unique descriptions for each. You may discover that it’s the same page being indexed twice because of parameter URL issues (discussed further down) or discover pages without pagination.
Long and short meta: Again, manually review each page listed and reduce the length of your meta title or description. Try to stick to 120-150 characters for descriptions and under 70 characters for titles.
- Missing: You may have only forgotten to add a meta title or meta description so just pop back over to add in content.
Once you make the changes to your website, use the Fetch as Google section to ensure Google is acknowledging your changes.
Internal Links
What Is the Internal Links Report?
The importance of internal linking has been drilled into our brains since we started to learn how to write meta titles. What our SEO masters didn’t tell us? How to internally link based on our site architecture.
Just like not all backlinks are created equal, internal links can tell an entirely different story. The Internal Links report tells Google what you believe necessary on your website.
How Do I Use the Internal Links Report?
If you’re an A/C company and your web page about A/C repair is the most important page to you, but you’re linking to your About page the most then you’ll want to revamp your internal linking map.
What Is the Blocked Resources Report?
The Blocked Resources report tells Google what is blocked by your website’s robots.txt directives.
The most common items you’ll see blocked are JavaScript and CSS. Here’s an example:
They are blocking AJAX. This means Googlebot can’t render the pages using JavaScript and may affect your rankings.
To unblock URLs follow these steps:
- Remove them from the disallow section of your robots.txt.
- Test the updated robots.txt file in the robots.txt tester tool in Google Search Console.
- Check pages to make sure they are not using the noindex, nofollow tag.
- Run the URLs through the Fetch As Google tool to make sure they are being rendered correctly.
Here’s a look at two blocked resources from a client site:
The first blocked resource https://scontent-ort2-1.xx.fbcdn.net is from Facebook. There’s nothing I can do about this from my end.
Robots.txt Tester
What Is the Robots.txt Tester Tool?
Robots.txt files can be disastrous if implemented incorrectly. Many SEO professionals have horror stories about those clients who don’t understand why their website isn’t getting any organic traffic.
Well, the robots.txt tester tool lets you know exactly what is blocking Googlebot from URLs on your site.
How to Make Sure Your Website Isn’t Blocking Google
To make sure your website isn’t blocking important pages to Google, head over to the robots.txt Tester and enter a main page URL in the text field. Click “Test” to see if it will be allowed or disallowed.
If the page is blocked, you should see a red “blocked.”
Settings
Change of Address
What Is the Change of Address Feature in Google Search Console?
Migrating a website to a new address? Welp, now you can tell Google that your site is moving to a new domain with the Change of Address in Settings (including your 301 redirects!).
Email Notifications
What Email Notifications Do I Have in Google Search Console?
Google Search Console rolled out options for site owners to enabled or modify email notifications.
What’s Next for Google Search Console?
Now you know why Google Search Console is an essential tool for SEO professionals.
But what’s next?
Based on the changes Google Search Console has been making, we can expect to see more:
- More insights from Core Web Vitals
- New content reporting for publishers
- Combining Google Analytics data with Google Search Console data
- Image Credits:
All screenshots taken by author, August 2019, August 2020, October 2019, October 2020.
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