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.
Use Multiple Search Console Verification Methods
Use 2 more unrelated verification methods so that if one fails, the other methods will still work.
Backlinks are reported in Search Console on the canonical domains
If you canonicalise domain variants (www/non-www/http/https), all of the backlinks will be reported in Search Console under the canonical domain.
Search Console Ranking Includes Personalised Searches
The rankings reported in Search Console include results for personalised search.
Use Sitemap Index Count to Measure Indexing
Site: is not an accurate measure of indexed pages, and could be off by ‘orders of magnitude’. The Sitemap Index count in Search Console is accurate for the specific URLs submitted.
Use Linking and Noindex to Control Sitelinks
Google has removed the Remove Sitelink option in Search Console, as they had demoted the power of it, so you cannot remove them directly in any way. But you can change your internal linking, a clean navigation in particular, to promote pages, and use a noindex to remove any pages from Google’s index completely.
Fetch as Googlebot Doesn’t Update Google’s Index Without Submit to Index
Using Fetch as Googlebot doesn’t update the Google index. You have to use the submit to Index function.
Sitemaps on Separate Domains Require Both Sites to be Verified in Search Console
You can submit Sitemaps with URLs on a different domain if both of the site are verified in the Search Console account.
Search Console Indexed URLs Counts Report Exact URLs in Sitemaps
Search Console indexed pages in Sitemaps uses exact URLs, so variations including www/non-www, trailing slash variations, etc, won’t be reported as indexed.
Add Your CDN to Search Console
If you are using a CDN, you can add this to Search Console.
Crawl Errors Priority Metric includes Mixture of Signals
The priority metric for crawl errors in search console is a mixture of pages being returned in search results, included in Sitemaps, and if it has internal links. The higher the priority are the ones Google thinks might have content which Google wants to index.