Google Search Console Tips
Google Search Console (previously called Webmaster Tools) is a free tool provided by Google for website owners to monitor performance and traffic. GSC also offers search engine optimization recommendations and fixes. Our SEO Office Hours recaps below cover a range of advice from Google to help you better understand and get the most out of this fundamental SEO tool.
GSC Incorrectly Flags Pages as Not Mobile-friendly if it Doesn’t Have Capacity to Fetch CSS
Search Console can incorrectly flag pages as not being mobile-friendly if the site’s server is too slow for Google to fetch the CSS files for these pages. John said that you may see individual pages that flag this error and they may fluctuate over time, but it isn’t an issue if you can see that the page is mobile-friendly.
Encourage Google to Crawl Pages Faster Using URL Inspection Tool
It is normal for Google to take a couple of months to reprocess changes to a page that isn’t a homepage, as these pages might not be crawled frequently. You can encourage Google to crawl a page a bit faster by testing the live URL and then requesting indexing in the URL Inspection tool.
The Performance Report in the New GSC Only Shows Errors That Impact Websites
The performance report in GSC won’t include all 404 errors like the old one as John explained that it is more useful to show errors that actually impact a website in terms of what users will land on.
A Spike in GSC Impressions but Not Clicks Suggests Move from Page 2 to the Bottom of Page 1
If there is a significant increase in impressions for a keyword in GSC but clicks remain consistent, this suggests that a page that was previously ranking on page 2 has moved up to the bottom of page 1. The impressions shoot up for page 1 but the clicks don’t increase as much for the bottom results of page 1.
Submit Subdirectories to URL Removal Tool to Get Around Individual URL Limits
The URL Removal Tool limits the number of individual URLs that can be submitted to be removed per day. To get around this, you can submit subdirectories to get entire sections of content removed from Google’s index.
Reduce Number of Unique Downloads if Seeing ‘Uncommon Downloads’ Issue in GSC
The ‘uncommon downloads’ warning in the Security Issues section of GSC can be caused by sites that generate unique downloads for each user. Reduce the number of downloads so Googlebot is able to check them easily before a user accesses them.
Discovered – Currently not indexed’ GSC Report Pages Have No Value for Crawling & Indexing
Google knows about pages in the ‘Discovered – currently not indexed’ report in Google Search Console but hasn’t prioritised them for crawling and indexing. This is usually due to internal linking and content duplication issues.
WebSpam Report Limits Word Count to Keep Submissions Concise
Google limit the text field in the Spam report so the WebSpam Team can quickly understand the problems you’re seeing.
The Search Console Update was Around Filtering Out Very Specific Queries for User Privacy
The reason why there appears to be a decrease in performance data in Search Console is because it was updated to filter out very specific user queries and the performance data associated with them.
When Users Set Up Google Analytics Account, Google Will Automatically Set Up Search Console Account
Google will automatically add a Search Console account for you when you set up a Google Analytics account.