Google Search Console guide
Google Search Console is the main operating system for diagnosis. It shows what Google is indexing, where impressions and clicks are rising or falling, and which technical issues are disrupting search visibility. This guide now absorbs the useful analytics layer too, focusing on how to connect Search Console findings back to traffic, landing pages, and conversion relevance.
Indexing, crawl, and validation
Use the Pages, Sitemaps, and URL Inspection reports to understand which URLs are indexed, excluded, or broken. This is where you confirm whether the site has an indexing problem, a crawl problem, or only a ranking problem. Validate fixes after rollout and track whether important templates are being reprocessed correctly.
- Review Pages and Sitemaps reports
- Use URL Inspection on representative URLs
- Validate fixes after rollout
Performance, clicks, and diagnosis
Use the Performance report to compare impressions, clicks, CTR, and landing pages before and after changes. Search Console becomes more useful when you read it diagnostically: which page groups lost visibility, which queries shifted, and whether the change was indexation, ranking, or SERP-feature related. Pair it with analytics only to understand downstream business impact, not as a substitute for search diagnostics.
- Compare page-group performance over time
- Separate indexing issues from ranking issues
- Use analytics to confirm business impact