The Four Search Console Reports You Actually Use
4 min read
Search Console is free, and it is the only official place you can see which phrases people used to find you. The problem is how many reports it puts on screen. Most people install it, verify the site, open it twice and never come back. A small business only needs four of them, and fifteen minutes a month is enough to know whether the site is improving.
1. Performance: the phrases people used to find you
This is the one Search Console report worth your time. It shows how often your site appeared in search results, how often it was clicked, and the average position. The value is not in those totals. It is in the list of queries underneath them.
Two numbers need separating. Impressions are how often your pages appeared in results. Clicks are how often somebody came through. High impressions with low clicks is usually not a ranking problem, it means the title and description are giving nobody a reason to click. Average position is a weighted average, dragged down by a long tail of phrases sitting far back, so on its own it means very little. Read it alongside the queries.
In practice: set the date range to the last three months, switch to the Queries tab, and sort by impressions. A batch of phrases you never thought of will appear. The ones worth acting on are not the ones at the top, they are the phrases with a few dozen impressions and a position on the second page. That position is the closest to producing something, and strengthening the matching page is usually the most effective move available.
Then switch to the Pages tab and see which page brings the most impressions. However that page is written is the pattern to copy. Writing the next piece to the same structure beats picking topics by instinct.
2. Page Indexing: how many pages actually got in
This report tells you how many pages are indexed, how many are not, and why. It matters most on a new site or after a redesign, because configuration mistakes show up here directly. The first thing to check is simple: compare the indexed count against how many pages you actually have. One or two out is normal. Half missing needs investigating.
The not-indexed section groups pages by reason. The category names read like officialese, but each one points at a specific fix, and the fixes are nowhere near comparable in effort. A settings problem is finished the moment you change the line. A content problem means rewriting.
| Category in the report | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Blocked by robots.txt | Your own settings are keeping crawlers out | A settings problem: change the line and it is done |
| Excluded by noindex tag | The page explicitly asks not to be indexed | Usually a switch left on in the CMS, so turn it off |
| Crawled - currently not indexed | Read, but judged not to have earned a slot | This one is about content. Pressing Request Indexing again does nothing |
| Duplicate page | The same content is reachable at several addresses | Pick one canonical version and point the others at it |
3. URL Inspection: the single-page tool
The first two reports cover the whole site. This tool covers one page. Paste a full address into the search box at the top and it tells you whether the page is indexed, when it was last fetched, and whether any structured data was detected.
Three moments call for it. After publishing a new page, paste it in to confirm nothing is blocking it, and press Request Indexing while you are there. After editing a page, use "Test live URL" to see whether the version Google reads now matches the version you think you published, which is the fastest way to confirm a change took effect. And if the page carries structured data, this lists what was detected, which is far quicker than reading the source yourself.
4. Sitemaps: confirming what you submitted is right
Submitting once and assuming it is handled is a common mistake. This report shows when the file was last read and how many addresses were found in it. Status success, plus a discovered-pages count matching your real page count, is what normal looks like.
When the count is wrong, open the sitemap file in a browser and read it. Usually a batch of pages was missed when the file was generated. If a redesign changed your addresses, submit the new file and remove the old one, or search engines keep reading pages that no longer exist.
5. A fifteen-minute routine, once a month
None of this needs daily attention. Once a month, in the order below, reading trends rather than single days. The whole pass takes about fifteen minutes and ends with a list of topics you can write from, which is the reason it is worth doing at all.
Once a month, in this order
- Open Performance at three months. Note which way impressions and clicks are going, and write down five queries you have not seen before.
- Check the indexed count in Page Indexing. If it has dropped, read the reason categories it lists.
- Check the last read date on your sitemap. If it has been a long time, submit it again.
- Match those five queries against your site. Any question no page of yours answers is the next thing to write.
The value of Search Console is not in how the charts look. It is that no other tool tells you which phrases people actually used to find you. That query list usually beats any keyword tool's suggestions, because those searches really happened.
Common questions
- What is the difference between Search Console and Google Analytics?
- Search Console covers what happens before the visit: what people searched, how often you appeared, where you ranked. Analytics covers what happens after: how many arrived, which pages they read, how long they stayed. Use Search Console to see whether SEO is working and Analytics to see whether the site works. Both are free and both are worth installing.
- Impressions are up but no enquiries are coming in. What is wrong?
- Look at the click-through rate first. Plenty of impressions with almost no clicks usually means the title and description are not answering what the searcher is trying to solve. Clicks with no enquiries is a problem with the page itself: the scope of the service is unclear, there is no price range, or the contact details are hard to find. Those are two different repairs, so work out which one you have before changing anything.
- How long before data appears?
- Performance data usually lags by two to three days, so today's numbers tell you nothing. Index status updates more slowly still, and a settings change often takes one to two weeks to show in the report. That is the reason for a monthly trend review rather than daily watching.