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For most businesses, Google is the only search engine that matters. The information that Google has about your business are often the first impressions that potential customers get. Understanding and controlling the information that gets sucked into Google’s massive search index is an important part of marketing your goods and services.
At the center of this admirable goal is a paradox. Google makes several tools available to users, while at the same time being very tight lipped about how their service actually works. But we can only work with the tools we have, and one of the most useful is the Google Search Console. The following is from the About Search Console page:
Google Search Console is a free service offered by Google that helps you monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site's presence in Google Search results.
Search Console offers tools and reports for the following actions:
- Confirm that Google can find and crawl your site.
- Fix indexing problems and request re-indexing of new or updated content.
- View Google Search traffic data for your site: how often your site appears in Google Search, which search queries show your site, how often searchers click through for those queries, and more.
- Receive alerts when Google encounters indexing, spam, or other issues on your site. Show you which sites link to your website.
- Troubleshoot issues for AMP, mobile usability, and other Search features.
To use Search Console, you must first prove that you are the site owner by adding a special file to the site (there are other validation methods available too). The site owner can then give other users access to Search Console.
Before diving in, it will be helpful to understand a little bit about managing your search engine presence. Google provides the following guides especially for website owners:
How does Google Search work? - Read this short guide to understand how Google works.
Get on Google - See the different ways to get your business or identity on various Google products, including Maps, Search, and YouTube.
Optimize your site for search engines - Read this six-point guide about making your website more findable and useful to readers.
Measuring your performance on Google - Is your site on Google? How many people found your site on Google? What is your ranking in search results? What were people searching for when they found your site? Learn how to answer these questions.
Read our guide to basic Search Console usage - A basic user typically needs only a quick site check-up once a month, unless we alert you that we've found a problem.
Honestly, that’s a lot of information to cover, so don’t try to absorb it all in one sitting. But as you apply what you’ve learned to your website, some of Google’s methods will become more clear and messages coming from Search Console will make more sense.
Until next week.
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