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.
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.
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.
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.