Google Search Console Tips

Google tries to apply parameters set in the URL Parameters section of Search Console, like "Doesn’t affect page content". Google also spot checks these URLs, stripping away the parameter and crawling the simplified URL to check that this setting is correct.

An influx of 403 Forbidden errors in Search Console could be due bot protection or denial of service protection built in by a site’s host or CMS. This might be triggered if Google fetches a lot of pages in a short space of time. John recommends checking server logs to get a better understanding of what is happening. Fetch & Render can be used to check if Googlebot is blocked from specific URLs.

Crawl error priority ranks errors based on how relevant they are for users e.g. URLs that users are more likely to find on the site.

GSC index status report mainly includes canonical pages e.g. html pages, pdfs and other pages included in desktop web search. Some pages won’t be the canonical version, like when a page has first been discovered by Googlebot and the rel canonical has not yet been followed.

The download time shown in GSC is the time taken to download the HTML page, not the rendered version that users see. If this time is =>2s this is probably too slow because more time will be needed for the page to be rendered by the browser.

GSC two day data latency will not be improved in the new version but Google have been looking to improve this and it is possible they can display data slightly data faster. There will likely always be at least a one day delay.

Uncommon downloads errors show in GSC for downloads that Google haven’t been checked and that are unique. In particular this can happen when downloads are tagged. You can request for these to be reviewed within GSC.

The mark as fixed feature in GSC is only for the user’s benefit so they don’t see an issue anymore. The feature doesn’t let Google know the issue has been fixed or indicate that they need to recheck the page in question.

Unlisted setting used in Search Console explicitly says to use geo-targeting on the site. John recommends using this setting if a domain was previously highly focused on a particular country and you want to change it to have an international or global focus.

Search Analytics in GSC filters out queries with very few impressions but can see the full numbers when you use the report on a page level basis.