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 Mobile Usability & Structured Data Reports Feature Representative Sample of URLs
The Mobile Usability report and Structured Data reports in Search Console are based on a significant sample of the pages on your site and aren’t meant to be a comprehensive list.
Google Improving Warnings in GSC to Trigger Based on Stable Version of Site
Google are working on improving Search Console so that warnings are triggered based on the stable version of the website. John has seen instances where Google is temporarily unable to fetch resources, which trigger a warning in Search Console.
Google Will Deprecate Some Features From Old Version of GSC
Google will continue to migrate features from the old version of Search Console to the new version, however some features won’t be migrated and will be deprecated e.g. the Crawl Errors section.
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.
URL Inspection Tool Shows Google’s Real-time Rendering Process
If the ‘View Crawled Page’ feature in the URL Inspection Tool is only showing the static HTML content of a page, this suggests that Google hasn’t rendered the page yet and it is still awaiting the 2nd wave of indexing for rendered content.
Use URL Inspection Tool to Fetch Live HTML & Check if Site Has Been Hacked
If it isn’t visually apparent that a site has been hacked but it’s ranking for unusual terms, use the URL Inspection Tool in GSC to fetch the live HTML of the pages that are ranking to check for hacked content that Google may be seeing.
Disavowed Links Aren’t Removed From GSC Links Report
Links that have been disavowed will still show up in the links report in Google Search Console. This doesn’t mean that disavowing the links hasn’t worked, rather this is just how the links are reported.
Increase in Duplicate Content Could be Due to Changes in GSC Reporting
Increases in the number of duplicate pages reported in Search Console could be because the tool only started reporting on that in the second part of last year, not that Google is suddenly seeing these pages differently.
Structured Data Will Still be Supported in New Version of GSC
John can’t confirm how structured data will be reported in the new Search Console. However, structured data will continue to be supported and will likely be shown in a slightly different way compared to the old version of Search Console.
URL Inspection Tool Could Change to Include Desktop Rendered Screenshot
John cannot confirm that the URL Inspection tool will be changing to include a screenshot of the desktop rendered version of pages. However, John admitted that this is something that is missing and that he will put it on the Search Console team’s radar.