What is the Google Search Console?
The Google Search Console is a free web service provided by Google. It allows website owners and web admins to monitor and maintain their website's presence in Google search results.
Formerly known as Google Webmaster Tools, it was rebranded as the Google Search Console in 2015.
How is it useful?
Using the Google Search Console, website owners can optimize their site's visibility and performance in Google Search, diagnose and fix issues that may affect their search rankings, and gain insights into their website's overall performance.
Key features:
The Search Console provides various tools and reports to help website owners understand how their site performs in Google searches. Some key features of the Google Search Console include:
- Site Performance: It provides information about how often your website appears in search results, the search queries that drive traffic to your site, and the average position of your website in search results.
- URL Inspection: This tool allows you to check the indexing status of individual web pages on your site, submit URLs for crawling, and view any indexing or crawling errors.
- Sitemap Submission: You can submit XML sitemaps to Google through the Search Console, helping search engines understand the structure and content of your website.
- Mobile Usability: The Search Console helps identify any mobile usability issues on your site, such as pages that are not mobile-friendly or have mobile-specific errors.
- Security Issues: It alerts you to any security issues detected on your websites, such as malware infections or hacked content.
- Links and Backlinks: You can view the external websites that link to your site and the internal links within your site, helping you analyze your site's link profile and identify potential issues.
- Manual Actions: If Google has taken manual action against your website for violating its webmaster guidelines, the Search Console will notify you and provide information on how to resolve the issues.
