Google Search Console or formerly known as Google Webmaster Tool was launched in 2006 with an aim to help various website owners in creating seo-friendly websites. It is a free service that is vastly used by owners all across the world to understand in achieving higher search results and monitor many essential functions for your website. Not impressed? Well, here are few illustrations that would help you understand better the relevance of getting your website verified by the Google Search Console:
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Google Search Rankings:
Yes, this is what the console is primarily made for. It essentially tells you about the page title, meta description, sitelinks, site search option, URL, etc.
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Extremely Relevant Data Collection
This tool is designed to collect and save relevant data about the website – around 10,000 pages in this section of Search Console. From having detailed graphs about the amount of structured data elements found on the website to any subsequent markup errors. You can also download the error reports for sharing or offline review.
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HTML Improvisations
If you need to know that exactly how many of your landing pages have 404 errors showing, through this console you can have the data in no time since it collects reports on errors discovered during its regular crawls of the website.
While common errors ike missing title tags, duplicate titles are identified and flagged, other errors are taken severe steps against.
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Search Analytics
One of the most crucial roles of the console is to delivering insights to perform better in the rankings as well as getting organic traffic from the same. With enhanced CTRs, most linked domains, anchor texts, this console basically takes care of all-round search analytics at one place.
2. Mobile Usability:
On April 21, 2015 Google declared that mobile-friendly websites would be preferred over non-mobile friendly and will be taken as a signal as a Google Search Ranking results. The various issues that can be identified through this console are:
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Flash content
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Small Font
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Fixed-Width Viewport
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Viewport Not Configured
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Content not Sized to Viewport
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Tap Targets too Close
3. Google Index:
From giving insights about exactly how many pages are included in the Google Indexing results as well as removing any unwanted URLs. A quick look at it gives you the clear idea of the increase or decrease in the indexed pages and help you understand exactly which part of the website needs working.
4. Crawl and Fetch as Google:
These features are helpful in finding errors during the crawling like 404, 500 etc that are kept in separate segments for the ease of fixing them. Also, if you’re toggling between various interfaces like desktop, mobile smartphone, mobile XHTML, and mobile cHTML to have an idea about the look and feel of the same on various devices, this console gives you previews of everything all at once.
5. Sitemaps and Site Messages:
Sitemaps are exactly as they sound – maps to your website, guiding the Googlebots throughout the same. Now, Googlebots know the exact location of all the pages. Here you can see how many pages have been submitted and how many pages are actually indexed. GSC also alerts you of many important messages like crawling errors, security issues etc in terms of notifications.
Overall, the Google Search Console helps in tracking every little detail of your website that can prove to be hugely important for achieving better search rankings.