Google Search Console clearly explained: data, strategies, and tips

Open Google Search Console and you’ll see graphs fluctuating, numbers rising and falling, reports full of acronyms and percentages. In short, you have a lot of data at your disposal and perhaps little clarity on how to turn it into concrete action.

This guide is designed to give you a practical approach. You won’t find academic definitions, but rather practical tips for reading the information, understanding priorities, and using Search Console as a strategic tool in your daily work. Today, this platform has become an indispensable reference point: it is much more than a collection of simple tools for webmasters, the literal translation of the name it has had for years, because it is the official source of data that Google uses to describe your site. It shows you what works, what factors limit visibility, and where there is room for growth.

With its reports, it measures the technical health of the site, tells you how Google intercepts your content, and how users find it in an increasingly crowded context, made up of AI Overviews, information boxes, and results that are constantly changing shape. For this reason, knowing how to read GSC information means having a solid reference point for every decision, from technical SEO to content optimization, to Search Everywhere Optimization, which today drives the visibility of a brand.

What is Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free tool that Google itself provides to give you a direct and transparent channel of communication between your website and the search engine.

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It is a platform that integrates different reports and tools with which you can connect to the search engine: it is the only place in the world where you can see your site exactly as Google sees it, without filters or third-party interpretations. In this sense, it works exactly like the Bing Webmasters Tool, which differs “only” because it obviously returns data from the Bing search engine.

Its usefulness is not limited to solving technical problems or checking indexing: it is a strategic tool for interpreting key data on site performance, such as clicks received, impressions generated, and search queries that attract organic traffic. It tells you which queries you are seen for, how often your content appears in SERPs, how many times it is clicked on, and what technical issues may limit its visibility. It is a free tool, but not a trivial one: the data you find here is official, and therefore carries more weight than any other analysis you can do with third-party software.

Often abbreviated to GSC, this tool provides a comprehensive overview of your website’s status from a search engine perspective, using exclusive data that helps you improve performance, fix technical issues, and optimize your SEO strategy.

It is important to note that using Google Search Console is not mandatory for your website to be included in Google search results. In fact, Google is able to automatically locate, scan, and index publicly accessible content without any action on your part. However, access to GSC offers exclusive and official benefits, including the ability to understand how Google “sees” your site and to take direct action to improve visibility by correcting technical issues or optimizing SEO performance.

The three strategic pillars

Before diving into the intricacies of the reports, it is worth highlighting the key information right away.

The usefulness of Search Console can be summarized in three strategic pillars, three macro areas of intervention that define the work of every SEO professional:

• Monitor. This is the best-known function. GSC allows you to check the organic performance of your site, answering fundamental questions such as: “How many people see my site on Google?”, “How many click on it?”, “For which keywords do I appear and in what position?”. You can read clicks, impressions, CTR, and average position in real time. These numbers are not an end in themselves: they tell you if you are gaining visibility, if your pages are generating clicks, or if there is a disconnect between how many times you appear and how much you are able to convert into traffic to your site.
• Diagnose. This is the “web doctor” function. GSC is your diagnostic tool for identifying technical issues that could limit your visibility, often before they become serious. It alerts you to indexing errors, usability issues on mobile devices, performance drops, and much more. In other words, you can immediately find out if there are any barriers preventing your site from standing out—duplicate pages, accidental blocks from robots.txt, 404 errors, infinite redirects, mobile usability or security issues: you have an accurate technical picture and know where to take action.
• Optimize. This is the most operational part. Once you’ve read the data, you can take action not only to “fix” problems, but also to make proactive strategic decisions, target new content opportunities, and constantly improve your organic presence. Work on refining snippets and content, strengthen internal links, fix pages excluded from the index, and check speed and stability. The logic is simple: reports are only valuable if you translate them into actions that make your pages stronger.

The complete list of GSC tools and reports

But let’s delve even deeper into the wide range of features available on the Google platform: reports and tools that, if you learn to read them properly, allow you to understand in detail how the search engine treats your site.

Looking at the left column, you will find these individual areas and features:

1. Introduction

When you open Google Search Console, the first screen you see is the Introduction: a sort of dashboard that gives you an immediate overview of the status of your site. Here you can see the essential data without having to go into the individual reports:

• Performance: the graph of total clicks and impressions, to immediately understand if organic traffic is stable or declining.
• Recommendations: automatic notifications with practical suggestions, for example on how to improve the visibility of products in Google Shopping.
• Indexing: the number of pages included and excluded from the index, with a focus on videos.
• Experience: a quick summary of Core Web Vitals and HTTPS status.
• Improvements: any data on active rich snippets such as breadcrumbs, FAQs, or videos.

This panel is designed to give you an overview of your site in a matter of seconds: from here, you can decide whether everything is under control or whether you need to open the detailed reports and dig deeper.

2. Performance

Here you will find the analytical heart of Search Console. This section allows you to understand how users arrive at your site from Google search. The main report is “Search Results,” with the most important metrics: clicks, impressions, average CTR, and average position.

You can filter the data by query, page, country, device, or result type to find out which keywords are really working, which URLs attract the most visits, and which content has room for growth, but also the effectiveness of titles and descriptions in attracting clicks from users—or, conversely, which snippets are not convincing enough. In addition, there are two specific reports: “Discover,” which measures the performance of content in Google’s mobile feed, and “Google News,” which is useful for sites recognized as news sources.

3. URL Inspection (URL Inspection)

If you want to analyze a single page of your site in detail, this is the right tool. It tells you if the URL is present in Google’s index, allows you to test the live version, check mobile usability, and verify any issues with structured data. But you can also check factors such as Googlebot access statistics, technical data such as total number, byte size, load time, and HTTP status codes.

This is also where you can manually request the indexing of a new or updated page, speeding up its entry into search results.

4. Indexing (Indexing)

In this section, you can see how Google scans and interprets your site. The “Pages” report shows how many URLs have been indexed, how many have been excluded, with an explanation of the reasons (from 404s to robots.txt blocks), and the last crawl.

If you publish videos, you will also find a dedicated report for them, with the reasons for any problems. Then there is the “Sitemap” report, which confirms the structure of the site to Google and helps you understand if your XML sitemaps are being read correctly. Finally, the “Removals” tool allows you to temporarily hide a page from the results, which is useful in case of content that needs to be corrected or withdrawn.

5. Experience

Google rewards sites that offer a good user experience, and here you can verify this with concrete data. The “Core Web Vitals” report measures the actual performance of your pages in three key areas: speed, visual stability, and responsiveness, while “HTTPS” confirms whether all your pages are served securely.

6. Shopping

If you run an e-commerce business, this section is crucial. Through structured data, you can monitor the validity of your product listings and check how they appear in rich snippets. If you have also connected Merchant Center, you can see the performance of your free Google Shopping listings to understand which items are getting the most visibility.

7. Improvements

Here you will find reports dedicated to structured data and features that can activate rich results in SERP. GSC shows you how many URLs are valid, with warnings or errors, provides real examples, and allows you to start validating corrections after a fix. The entries change depending on the markup you use: for many sites, Breadcrumb, Video, and, if present, Product, Review snippet, or FAQ appear. (the latter now only shown by Google in limited cases; the report may remain but visibility in SERPs is not guaranteed). In practice, this section tells you if your pages are eligible for rich results and where to intervene when something is wrong — first with a test (Rich Results Test), then with validation to close the loop.

8. Security and Manual Actions (Security & Manual Actions)

This is the most sensitive part of Search Console, the one you should check regularly. Two key reports appear here: “Manual Actions,” which reports any penalties imposed by Google’s human reviewers for guideline violations, and “Security Issues,” which alerts you to malware, hacking, or other threats that may put users at risk.

9. Link

In this section, you can analyze both backlinks and the internal structure of the site. On the one hand, you have a list of the domains that link to you the most, the most linked pages, and the most frequent anchor text; on the other hand, you can see how you have distributed internal links among your pages, a key aspect in guiding Google in understanding the hierarchy of the content you publish and improving the distribution of PageRank within the site itself.

10. Settings

Finally, there is the administrative area of the property. Here you can manage site verification, assign user permissions, check Googlebot crawl statistics, and link Search Console to other Google services such as Analytics, Ads, or Merchant Center. This is the panel that regulates access and integrations, and it is important to configure it carefully to ensure security and data continuity.

The origins and evolution of the platform and tools for webmasters

If you started doing SEO more than ten years ago, you will remember it as Webmaster Tools: a spartan environment, useful for those who needed to check sitemaps, crawling errors, and little else. Even then, the goal was to provide site administrators with a set of tools to check the presence and performance of their site in Google search. However, the focus was mainly technical, aimed at an audience consisting mainly of webmasters.

The work of updating the GSC has been constant and continuous, and Google engineers frequently make changes, with reports being added, modified, or (in some cases) deprecated to keep the platform up to date and efficient. In fact, what you see and use today is the result of a long evolution that has seen gradual but substantial improvements and changes over the years.

The first official version of this platform dates back to 2006, when it was launched under the name Google Webmaster Tools. As Jennifer Slegg recounts, the name was practically imposed by the international community: as early as 2001, Google launched a portal with advice for webmasters (Google Information for Webmasters), which was revamped in 2006 under the name Google Webmaster Central (a name that the site retained until 2021, when it became Google Search Central).

It was at this stage that the diagnostic and usability tools introduced by Google to assist webmasters began to be called “Webmaster tools” or “Tools for Webmasters,” until the company decided to officially adopt this name for the platform, which it kept until May 20, 2015, when the name Google Search Console debuted.

The name change marked a turning point: it was no longer a tool intended only for webmasters, but a tool that could also be useful if you were involved in content, marketing, or e-commerce management.

Since then, the evolution has been even faster. Since 2018, the interface has become more readable and decisive reports have appeared: Performance, which shows you real queries, clicks, and impressions; Core Web Vitals, which measure user experience and page stability; and data on Discover and Merchant Center, which are indispensable if you work with editorial content or product listings.

Why it’s more important than ever today

In short, in just a few years, the platform has gone from a technical panel to a central tool for understanding your organic presence on other search surfaces, such as Discover, Google News, and Video Search, officially recognizing that organic visibility is no longer a battle fought only on the ten blue links, but a complex orchestration across all channels where a brand can be discovered.

This confirms what we have known (and repeated) for some time: SERPs no longer work as they used to. Alongside traditional results, you have information boxes, videos, carousels, and, from 2024, AI Overview, which rewrite the rules of CTR and take away space from classic links. For you, this means that visibility is no longer enough: you need to understand when your pages get impressions without clicks, when they are excluded from the index, when user experience parameters are penalizing you.

And the only way to get these answers is to look at Search Console data. You need it if you want to improve your content, if you run an e-commerce site and need to know which product listings Google actually shows, or if you are an SEO specialist and need to understand which queries have room for growth. In short, this is where you measure the gap between what you publish and what Google decides to show.

Who needs to use GSC

In general, and rather intuitively, GSC can be useful to anyone who owns a website or works in this field, as well as digital marketing and SEO professionals, who can use the reports to monitor website traffic (their own or managed), optimize rankings, and make technical decisions in case of errors or issues that negatively affect performance, leveraging other Google tools such as Analytics, Google Trends, Google Ads, and the new Google Search Console Insights platform.

More specifically, Google itself explains that the platform offers support to:

• Those who own or manage small websites. Owners or managers of small websites who do not have much expertise should “start with simple things”: check organic traffic in the Performance Report, trying to understand which queries, pages, and countries are bringing in the most traffic.
• Those who own or manage large websites. For owners or managers of large websites (500 pages or more, according to the official GSC guide), the first essential step is to check in Search Console that all pages are indexed correctly and that there are no errors.
• SEO specialists. If you are an SEO specialist and focus on technical SEO, content production and optimization, strategies, or other fields, you will find important insights within the tool.

The official introductory guide adds other useful tips tailored to certain web-related professions, namely:

• Business owners. Even if they do not personally use the platform, those who run an eCommerce or business website should still be familiar with the service, the basics of search engine optimization, and know what features are available in Google Search.
• Marketing professionals or SEO experts. For those involved in online marketing, Search Console allows you to monitor your website’s traffic, optimize its ranking, and make informed decisions about the appearance of search results related to the site. You can use the information available in Search Console to make technical decisions about the site and perform sophisticated market analysis using other Google tools such as Analytics, Google Trends, and Google Ads.
• Site administrators. A site administrator is interested in ensuring that pages function properly: Search Console helps monitor activity and, in some cases, easily resolve server errors, loading issues, and security issues such as compromise and malware. You can also use this service to verify that any site maintenance or changes you make do not affect search performance.
• Web developers. Those who are creating the actual markup and/or code for the site can use GSC to check and resolve common markup issues, such as errors in structured data.

There are also professional entities that simply cannot do without Google Search Console! Thanks to its ability to offer official data on user behavior and site health, the platform encompasses a variety of sectors, from commercial entities to institutional projects to non-profit initiatives.

Its tools are therefore designed for multiple types of sites and professionals: webmasters, web developers, specialists, and experts, but also for SEO beginners and those who do not (yet) have specific skills, and even for institutional and government sites and non-profit organizations.

In particular, Google Search Console supports the specific needs of news sites, for which visibility and the speed of indexing new content are top priorities, thanks in part to reports that allow you to optimize interaction with Google News and ensure that readers find updated content in a timely manner.

E-commerce sites find Google Search Console to be a key partner for growing and improving their online presence. With the support of specific features for Google Shopping, it is also possible to interface directly with Merchant Center data for detailed control over the performance of shopping listings.

For institutional and government websites, ensuring a stable and accessible presence is essential for providing reliable information to citizens. With tools such as the security and manual actions panel, these sites can also identify attempts at compromise (malware or hacking) and resolve them promptly.

Non-profit organizations can use GSC to boost the visibility of their campaigns and ensure that content reaches the right audience, so that the organization’s mission is better aligned with user behavior on search engines.

The usefulness of integrating GSC with technical tools for web developers should not be underestimated. In addition to various basic reports, the management of critical elements is also facilitated by the ability to export technical data collectively for further analysis in environments outside the consoles, an option that is particularly useful in more complex web projects.

How to start using Search Console

If you’re starting from scratch, don’t worry.

The entire setup process is fairly straightforward and takes only a few minutes, partly because it doesn’t require any installation or software downloads.

The platform can be accessed from the official URL https://search.google.com/search-console. To use it, you need a Google account, which allows you to access the main dashboard and add the sites whose performance and technical health you want to monitor.

In short, setting up Search Console is a quick, guided process that can be completed in three simple steps.

1. Add a property: go to the Search Console home page and click on “Add property.” You will be faced with a choice: Domain Property or URL Prefix. Our recommendation is to always use “Domain Property.” It is a more comprehensive solution that tracks all subdomains (www, non-www, m, etc.) and protocols (http, https) in a single view.
2. Verify ownership: Google needs to make sure you are the real owner of the site. The most common and robust method for domain verification is via DNS records. You will need to copy a TXT record provided by Google and paste it into your domain provider’s DNS configuration (e.g., Aruba, GoDaddy, Cloudflare). Although this may seem technical, the providers’ guides make the process very simple.
3. Wait for data collection: once ownership has been verified, Search Console will start collecting data. You won’t see the history right away, but after a few days you’ll start to see the first graphs populate.

Adding and verifying your site serves two purposes: on the one hand, it confirms to Google that you are the legitimate owner of the property, and on the other, it activates the collection of complete data. This step is often underestimated, but it has a direct impact on the quality of the reports: if the configuration is partial or incorrect, you risk reading incomplete or even misleading numbers. For this reason, it is advisable to carefully choose the type of property, the verification method, and the level of access to be granted to different users.

When it comes to user and permission management, you can decide who has access to the data and with what privileges. GSC distinguishes between three main roles:

• Owner: has full control, including the ability to add or remove users.
• User with full access: can view data and perform operational actions (e.g., “indexing request”).
• User with limited access: can only view reports.

This distinction is useful for collaborating without compromising the security or integrity of the configuration.

We suggest three best practices for access security:

• Assign the lowest possible role compatible with the work to be done.
• Regularly remove accounts that are no longer needed.
• Use only professional addresses to maintain control even in the event of staff or supplier changes.

Analyze site performance: what you’ll find in GSC

The Performance report is the most consulted part of Search Console.

This is where you’ll find the answers to the most important questions you ask yourself every day: “What keywords do my customers use to find me?”, “Which pages generate the most traffic (and which ones don’t work)?”, “Why are my impressions high but no one is clicking on my results?”

This is a necessary step to understand how well your content is really performing, which queries are bringing you users, and where you are losing ground.

Key metrics (clicks, impressions, CTR, average position)

Each row of this report links a query or page to four key figures:

• Clicks: how many times users chose your result. These indicate the actual appeal of the snippet.
• Impressions: how many times your page was shown in SERPs. These measure actual visibility, regardless of traffic.
• CTR: the ratio of clicks to impressions. A low value, with many impressions, indicates that you appear but are not convincing.
• Average position: the arithmetic mean of the positions in which Google showed your page. It is not an accurate snapshot, but a useful indication for monitoring progress and declines.

Interpreting this data in combination is more important than reading it individually: only then can you understand if you have a problem with visibility, snippet attractiveness, or real competitiveness.

For example, a high number of impressions combined with few clicks often indicates that the ranking is far from the top results shown to users (e.g., in the top three positions) or that the snippet is not attractive enough. In such situations, you can focus on two main objectives: improve the content to push it towards a more visible position or optimize the title and description to maximize the click-through rate generated by impressions. You can adjust the language of the snippet or enrich the page content with more relevant answers to user queries, thus helping to integrate and refine coverage.

If you notice a low CTR, it may mean that the snippets are not aligned with expectations or search intent, or that the proposed content does not clearly answer the implicit questions asked by users. To improve the CTR, you can work on both the meta title and the meta description: titles that contain relevant and attractive keywords or meta descriptions that highlight practical benefits and include direct calls to action can significantly increase engagement. For example, test variations in language (such as “Discover…” or “Essential guide to…”) through A/B experiments to gain valuable data on what works best for your audience. Regular CTR analysis can also reveal opportunities for improvement in specific areas, such as queries with good visibility but not fully exploited, or URLs with high average position and impressions that do not translate into clicks.

Finally, a low number of clicks may be associated with issues related to the snippet itself. Titles or descriptions that are unappealing or do not accurately reflect user intent can discourage clicks, even if the page ranks well in the results. For example, if a page targets the keyword “SEO strategies 2025” but receives few clicks, it may be necessary to rewrite the title to make it more attractive, adding terms such as “complete guide” or “essential tools” that communicate immediate value. Similarly, a meta description that emphasizes the practical benefits of the content can make a difference, especially in a competitive environment. Analyzing the number of clicks must always be accompanied by a reflection on the quality of the queries detected, the relevance of the snippet, and the competition for that specific keyword.

How to find the “striking distance” keywords to target

One of the most strategic uses of the Performance report is to search for queries in striking distance, i.e., those ranked between 11th and 20th position—those that we at SEOZoom call “potential,” in short, and which are “within striking distance.” This is one of the highest ROI analyses you can do.

Google already considers you relevant, but not enough to bring you to the first page. With small interventions — improving the title and description, strengthening internal links, enriching the content with more complete answers — you can push these keywords into the top 10 and get an immediate increase in traffic.

Here’s a tip for leveraging this information.

In the performance report, click on the “Position” filter and set a value “greater than 10.” Sort the results by impressions. The keywords you see at the top of the list are your gold nuggets: Google already considers you very relevant for these searches (otherwise it wouldn’t show you so often), but not enough to put you on the first page. Now, for each of these queries, analyze the associated page: can you enrich it with more information? Can you add a paragraph that better answers that specific question? Can you optimize the title or subtitles? A little effort on these pages can lead to a jump to the first page, with an almost immediate increase in traffic.

Diagnosing traffic spikes and drops

Panic over traffic drops is something we’ve all experienced. Search Console is your first aid tool for a rational diagnosis: by comparing time periods, you can understand whether a drop in clicks is due to a Google update, a technical problem, or seasonal factors. You can filter by query, page, or device and isolate the causes: discovering that the drop only affects mobile searches or a single section of the site means you can immediately narrow down the field of possible solutions.

Looking for a debugging methodology? Use the “Compare” function and set up a comparison between the current period and the period before the drop. Now, analyze the data systematically, moving from one tab to another:

• Queries: Is the drop related to a single important keyword or an entire cluster of keywords?
• Pages: Has a single page or an entire section of the site (e.g., the blog, product pages) crashed?
• Countries: Is the drop localized in a specific geographic area?
• Devices: has performance dropped only on mobile or also on desktop? This process allows you to isolate the cause of the problem (a Google update that affected a certain type of content, a technical problem in a section, or something else) and take action with surgical precision.

The impact of AI Overview on CTR

Search Console does not yet have a filter dedicated to AI Overview, but you can identify indirect signals.

Today, many sites see a “crocodile mouth” graph: a high number of impressions accompanied by a very low CTR, especially for more informative queries. The cause is often Google’s new AI feature. If you manually analyze the relevant SERPs or use SEOZoom’s AI Overview, you will almost always find an AI Overview or other information boxes that shift users’ attention.

In these cases, improving the snippet is not enough, nor can you eliminate AI. So you have to try to get in. Rework your content to be even clearer, more concise, and well-structured, perhaps using bulleted lists or tables—and refer to AI Engine for insights and guidance—to increase your chances of being cited as a source. You need to work on your content to become a source that Google considers useful to cite, or target less competitive related queries.

Focus on indexing: make sure Google sees (and understands) every page you have

Having quality content is not enough if Google cannot include it in its index.

You can write the Divine Comedy of your industry, but if Googlebot can’t find, scan, and index your pages correctly, you simply don’t exist to it and won’t be visible in Search.

The Indexing panel in Search Console is where you make sure your site is technically flawless, accessible, and ready to be evaluated by the algorithm.

It shows you the actual status of your pages: which URLs are valid, which have warnings, which are excluded, and which have critical errors. It’s a map of your presence in the index, essential for understanding whether the content you publish is actually available to users. Here you can catch the most common problems—duplicate pages, incorrect redirects, robots.txt blocks, or noindex tags—and take immediate action to correct them.

The report on pages

When you open the report, you will immediately see two counters: indexed pages and non-indexed pages. The graph shows you the trend over time and, if you activate the line, also the impressions of the indexed pages. It is a snapshot of the actual coverage of the site.

Below you will find two key tables:

• Why pages are not indexed. Here, GSC lists the reasons that prevent inclusion in the index (for example, “Page with redirect,” “Detected but not currently indexed,” “Blocked by robots.txt,” “404”). Click on the reason to see the URLs involved and the history of the problem for your site. This is the most useful tool for diagnosing technical and content issues that limit the visibility of your site.
• Improve the appearance of pages. These pages are indexed, but GSC flags issues that need to be fixed to help Google understand them better. Here, too, you have a list of the URLs involved and their progress over time.

Finally, with the link View data on indexed pages, you can access a history of the number of URLs actually present in the index, with a sample of up to 1000 addresses. This is valuable information for understanding how your site’s coverage is evolving and for checking whether updates have had an effect.

Other tools for checking index presence

To analyze a single page, you can use the URL Inspection tool, which immediately tells you if the address is already indexed and allows you to test the live version. You can see a screenshot of how Googlebot interprets it, check mobile usability and HTTPS, check the structured data detected, and, if necessary, submit a new indexing request.

The section dedicated to sitemaps completes the picture: here you can submit XML files and check whether Google has processed them correctly, how many URLs it has discovered, and whether there have been any errors. This is where anomalies often emerge—URLs present in the sitemap but excluded from the index, conflicts with redirects, or structure errors—allowing you to quickly correct the configuration. For complex projects, you can also manage sitemaps dedicated to images or videos to ensure that all multimedia content is scanned correctly.

Finally, the Removals tool allows you to remove content from Google, or more precisely, temporarily hide a URL from search results for about six months. This is useful if you publish content by mistake, need to update sensitive information, or want to buy time before making structural changes.

Reports on user experience and quality signals

Google is obsessed with the user experience. And rightly so. A happy user is a returning user. That’s why the algorithm rewards sites that are fast, secure, stable, and easy to navigate, especially on mobile.

Search Console dedicates an entire section to this, providing us with objective and measurable data to understand whether we are meeting these quality standards, which are increasingly important for ranking.

There are two reports available here, both of which are central to understanding whether the site offers standards in line with Google’s expectations and those of real users. This is not a marginal detail: performance and security directly affect the ability of pages to remain competitive in SERPs.

Analyzing the thresholds for Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals are a set of three metrics that measure a page’s loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability.

In the report, don’t be intimidated by acronyms such as LCP (Largest Contentful Paint), INP (Interaction to Next Paint), and CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift). The important thing is to look at the graph: Google groups your URLs into three categories (“Good URLs,” “URLs that need improvement,” “Poor quality URLs”).

Your goal is to have as many URLs as possible in the “Good” category. Search Console groups URLs with similar issues so you can prioritize your actions: heavy images to compress, scripts to optimize, graphics to stabilize. If you see groups of URLs with issues, the report tells you exactly what the metric deficiency is, allowing you to pass the information on to your development team for targeted action.

HTTPS and transmission security

The second report confirms whether pages are served securely.

Having a valid SSL certificate and serving all pages on your site via the secure HTTPS protocol is a sign of trust for both users (who see the padlock in their browser) and Google, which has been pushing for the widespread adoption of the new standard for years.

The HTTPS report helps you monitor that everything is working correctly and alerts you to any URLs that are still being served via HTTP by mistake or if technical issues related to the certificate arise. Even a small number of insecure pages can be a negative sign, especially for sites that handle sensitive data.

Beyond reports: how to integrate Search Console into your SEO strategy

As you have seen, obtaining data is easy. The real challenge, which distinguishes a professional from a beginner, is transforming this information into a winning strategy.

A common mistake is to consider Search Console as an isolated panel, useful only for diagnosing technical problems or checking indexing. In reality, what it shows becomes valuable when it is related to other sources: it is in this dialogue that a complete SEO strategy is built.

GSC metrics, read alongside behavioral and predictive data from tools such as SEOZoom (and others), become the basis for more informed decisions. In practice, you stop looking at data in “silos” and build a continuous cycle: read → hypothesize → intervene → measure → consolidate.

Integration with Google Analytics and Search Console Insights

Let’s start with Google-branded products.

Combining Search Console with Google Analytics 4 allows you to follow the user’s path from SERP impression to internal navigation. Combine “before the click” with “after the click.” While GSC shows clicks, queries, and rankings, Analytics tells you what happens next: session duration, conversions, exit paths. This is the most effective way to understand whether the traffic intercepted has real value for the business, whether the queries that bring in the most impressions generate quality traffic or just passing visits.

Start with landing pages with lots of impressions and low CTR: open them in GA4, check mobile behavior, actual scroll, micro-conversions, and, if necessary, rewrite the snippet and the beginning of the article to align it with the real intent.

An interesting extension is Search Console Insights, a tool developed by Google to simplify data reading. In a single dashboard, it highlights which content is growing, how it is found, and which articles maintain attention over time. It does not replace comprehensive reports, but it offers marketers and editors quick access to concrete signals about content performance. It’s perfect after an update: within a few days, you can see if the article is gaining discovery and engagement, without having to navigate through dozens of reports.

Combined use with SEOZoom: from diagnosis to strategy

Integration with SEOZoom adds a decisive piece to the puzzle, because you can combine the real data from GSC with the potential of a tool that continuously analyzes SERPs and tells you what you’re missing to occupy the space that Google grants to your topic. Cross-reference real queries with competitive analysis, expand the semantic field, and line up interventions that bring impact, not just volume.

In GSC, you read observed data: impressions, clicks, CTR, and position on actual searches. In SEOZoom, you work with models and estimates: keyword universe, difficulty, traffic potential, SERP features, gaps compared to competitors.

Where GSC shows the exact behavior of users that has already occurred, SEOZoom opens your eyes (also) to unexplored opportunities, suggesting keywords, content, and areas for growth—the potential you have not yet tapped into—and defining measurable editorial and technical priorities.

For example, with GSC you can see exactly which keywords you are already visible for, but above all how visible you are; our platform reveals the myriad of related keywords and user questions for which you could still rank, helping you create an editorial plan that covers every facet of a topic.

Furthermore, GSC shows you the CTR of your pages, and our SERP analysis shows you why that CTR is low, allowing you to see all the snippets, videos, “People Also Ask” boxes, and AI Overviews that compete with you for user clicks on a single screen, in addition to the competitors battling it out in the same arena.

Combine diagnosis and vision

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If you strategically read queries related to your URLs, you can then pass the information to the SEOZoom Editorial Assistant to write (or rewrite) semantically rich content that responds to all related search intents and is optimized to win in that specific SERP.

It’s not about choosing one approach over another. Use GSC to validate what’s really happening and SEOZoom to plan where you can grow, with which clusters, and with what level of competition.

Remember: GSC data is the “official snapshot” of organic presence—actual queries, real clicks, recorded impressions.

SEOZoom works on a complementary level: it models potential traffic and estimates the yield of keywords that have not yet been intercepted. The difference is not hierarchical but functional: one describes, the other projects.

Validate E-E-A-T through GSC data

Authority is also measured here, as are the other concepts that form Google’s EEAT framework.

If users search for brand variants associated with reviews, opinions, or guides, it means there is interest in the brand’s reputation. Look at the trend of branded queries and searches associated with reviews, opinions, and “about us” pages: if they are growing and getting a good CTR, the brand is gaining trust.

Check how author pages and thematic hubs are performing: when users search for and click on them, you are consolidating your identity and expertise. If you publish editorial content, monitor Discover: recurrence on key topics signals reputation as a source. Complete the picture with architecture: in Internal Links, the pages you want to accredit must be well linked by the cluster’s content.

On an operational level, ensure transparency and verifiability: bios with real credentials, stated methods, authoritative sources, dates, and explicit revisions for sensitive topics. Then go back to GSC: if queries related to brands, authors, and hubs are growing and CTR is improving, your work on E-E-A-T is producing measurable effects.

Best practices and final operational tips

Search Console provides you with data every day, but the risk is leaving it there, as inert numbers. For it to be useful, you need to incorporate it into a constant work process: a simple flow that allows you to seize opportunities, understand signals, and react immediately when something changes.

Here are three practical approaches to transform it from a report archive into a daily decision-making tool.

1. Daily and weekly workflow

If you only open Search Console when there is a drop in traffic, you are too late. It is better to create a routine: every day, take a quick look at any notifications and anomalies; every week, spend time analyzing performance, segmenting by query and by page. This way, you can immediately distinguish a normal statistical bounce from a real problem and know whether the optimizations you have made are bringing results. All you need is half an hour regularly, not endless sessions once in a while.

2. Common misinterpretations

It’s easy to misread the numbers. A low CTR doesn’t always mean that the page isn’t working: it may simply be ranking for many informational queries, where users are looking for quick answers without clicking. Even declining impressions aren’t always a red flag: they may reflect algorithmic updates or seasonal variations. The rule is simple: never isolate a single piece of data. Compare similar periods, cross-reference multiple metrics, and look at the page within its actual SERP.

3. How to turn data into action

Every signal you find in GSC is an invitation to take action. If a query generates many impressions but few clicks, review the title and description to make them more relevant. If a group of URLs has Core Web Vitals issues, work on images and code to speed up loading times. If the report indicates pages excluded from the index, immediately check for duplications, redirects, or blocks from robots.txt. The key is this: don’t leave the numbers sitting in the dashboard, but turn them into a list of concrete, prioritized, and measurable tasks.

FAQs about Google Search Console: let’s clear up any remaining doubts

At this point, it should be clear that Search Console is not just a technical tool, but a direct channel to Google that you can use to understand how the search engine perceives your site and how users encounter it in SERPs.

Learning to master Search Console means no longer being at the mercy of the algorithm and starting to communicate with it. It means basing your decisions not on opinions or feelings, but on real data, provided by the most authoritative source of all. And when this data is integrated with the strategic and competitive vision of a suite such as SEOZoom, the possibilities for growth become endless.

The following FAQs address the most common questions, intercept the People Also Ask queries you’ve seen in SERPs, and help you turn consulting GSC into a concrete and productive habit.

1. What is Google Search Console?

It is the free platform that Google provides to monitor your site’s performance, coverage, and technical reports in organic search. It shows you how the search engine sees your site: queries that drive traffic, page coverage, and any technical errors.

2. What is Google Search Console for?

It allows you to see how Google scans and indexes pages, which queries drive traffic, and what issues might limit visibility.

3. Is Search Console free?

Yes, it is a completely free tool. You just need to have a Google account and verify ownership of the site. The only investment required is the time you decide to devote to it.

4. Do I have to use Search Console to appear on Google?

No, public content is scanned anyway. But without GSC, you would not have access to official data and direct reports from the search engine.

5. How do I connect a site to Google Search Console?

Log in with your Google account, click on “Add property” and choose between domain or URL prefix. Then complete the verification using one of the available methods.

6. What is the difference between domain property and URL prefix?

Domain property covers all versions of the site (http/https, www/non-www, subdomains), while URL prefix only applies to a specific address.

7. What verification methods are available (DNS, HTML file, Tag Manager, GA)?

You can use a DNS record, upload an HTML file, insert a meta tag, or verify via Google Tag Manager or Analytics.

8. How do I add users or manage permissions in Search Console?

Go to “Settings > Users and permissions,” enter the email address, and choose the level: owner, full access, or limited access.

9. Can I link multiple sites or subdomains to the same Search Console?

Yes. Each site or subdomain can be added and verified as a separate property.

10. What is the difference between Google Search Console and Google Analytics?

Search Console measures what happens in SERP (before the click). Analytics measures what happens on the site and tells you what users do on your pages (after the click).

11. What is Search Console Insights and when should I use it?

It is a simplified version that combines data from GSC and Google Analytics. You should use it to quickly see which content is growing or maintaining interest, but also which is most searched for and how users find it.

12. What was Webmaster Tools and why has it changed?

Until 2015, the platform was called Webmaster Tools, with a more technical focus. The change to Search Console expanded the target audience to SEOs, marketers, and site owners.

13. How do I submit an XML sitemap to Google with GSC?

Go to the “Sitemap” section, enter the URL of the file (e.g., yourwebsite.com/sitemap.xml), and submit it. Google will report indexed URLs and any errors.

14. What does “Page found but not indexed” mean?

Google knows the URL but has not included it in its index. This may be due to duplicate content, poor value, or an algorithmic choice.

15. What is the URL Inspection tool?

This feature allows you to analyze the status of a single page: whether it is indexed, has mobile usability issues, or requires corrections to structured data.

16. How do I use the URL Inspection tool for a single page?

Enter the address: you will see if it is indexed, any errors, mobile usability, and structured data. You can also request re-indexing.

17. How do I know if content has been indexed correctly?

Use URL Inspection in GSC or search Google with the command site:yourdomain.com/url.

18. How do I know if the content I update is being picked up by Google?

After making changes, use URL Inspection and request indexing. Then monitor impressions and clicks in GSC by comparing similar time periods.

19. What does “Page found but not indexed” mean?

Google knows the URL but has chosen not to include it in the index, often due to weak content, duplication, or lack of relevance signals.

20. Why are some pages excluded from the coverage report?

The most common causes are redirects, noindex tags, duplicate content, or blocks from robots.txt.

21. How long does it take Google to index new content?

It depends on the crawl frequency of your site. With an updated sitemap and manual indexing request, it usually takes a few hours to a few days.

22. What are the main metrics in the performance report (clicks, impressions, CTR, average position)?

• Clicks: how many times a user has chosen your site in SERP.
• Impressions: how many times you have appeared in the results.
• CTR: ratio between clicks and impressions.
• Average position: average ranking of your pages.

23. How can you find keywords within “striking distance” with Search Console?

Filter queries in positions 11 to 20. These are keywords close to the first page, for which it is worth optimizing titles and content.

24. How should you interpret a drop in impressions or clicks in reports?

Compare similar periods and segment by page, query, and device. It may depend on Google updates, seasonality, or competition.

25. How to analyze Discover and Google News data?

In the dedicated reports, you can see impressions and clicks. You need them to understand which editorial content best captures users’ interest.

26. Can I segment data by device, country, or time period?

Yes. GSC filters allow you to analyze desktop vs. mobile traffic, different geographic markets, and comparisons between dates.

27. Can I use Search Console to improve local SEO?

Yes. Filter data by country or city and analyze queries with geographic references. Then optimize content and snippets to better capture them.

28. How should I interpret a drop in CTR in Search Console?

Before assuming a decline, check if the SERP has changed: perhaps an AI Overview, a video box, or a new snippet has appeared that captures more attention.

29. What are Core Web Vitals and how do I read them in GSC?

They are metrics that measure speed, responsiveness, and stability (LCP, INP, CLS). Google uses them as signals of user experience quality. The report in GSC shows which URLs have problems and what to do about them.

30. What kind of mobile usability errors can I find in GSC?

Indications of problems such as text that is too small, clickable elements that are too close together, or layouts that are not responsive.

31. How important is HTTPS security?

Having a valid SSL certificate is a minimum requirement. GSC will notify you if any pages are not served in HTTPS.

32. What are manual actions and how can I resolve them?

These are penalties imposed by the Google team for unfair practices (spam, unnatural links). You must correct the issues and request a review.

33. How can I tell if my site has penalties?

Check the “Manual Actions” report: if Google has applied restrictions, you will find guidance and instructions on how to resolve them.

34. What do the security issues detected by GSC indicate?

They indicate malware, hacking, or compromised content. They must be resolved immediately to avoid losing trust and traffic.

35. How long does it take Google to acknowledge a correction and update the reports?

The review process can take a few days or weeks after the validation request, because the corrections made must be verified.

36. Can I use Search Console to do keyword research?

You can start with actual queries that already generate impressions and broaden the field with tools such as SEOZoom.

37. How can I use GSC data to improve titles and meta descriptions?

If a query generates many impressions but few clicks, review the title and description to make them more relevant and attractive.

38. What are rich results and how can I monitor them?

They are enriched snippets (FAQs, reviews, breadcrumbs). In GSC, you have a dedicated report that flags errors and valid implementations.

39. How can I validate the authority of my site with GSC?

Monitor brand-related queries, “about” pages, and authorial content: growth in their impressions and CTR is a sign that the site is perceived as reliable.

40. What is the difference between actual GSC data and estimates from SEO tools such as SEOZoom?

GSC reports actual Google data. SEOZoom provides statistical, predictive, and competitive analysis to help you understand where you can grow and which keywords to target.