Google Search Console Releases New & Revamped Reports

SEO NZ wide is in for another big change. Google has been in the process of creating a new version of Search Console that will eventually replace the old one. Now, after implementing another wave of scheduled changes, Search Console is almost unrecognisable after several tools and reports were removed or “revamped.”

Here’s the official Twitter announcement:

Google insists that these changes have been made to address several inefficiencies and inaccuracies, with these changes announced back in January.

Before we dive in to the nitty-gritty of the Search Console report updates, let’s look at the big picture.

General Search Console changes

According to Google, the new Search Console has the following improvements over the old version:

• There are now sixteen months of search traffic data, versus three months in the old product
• We now have access to detailed information about a specific page, including index coverage, canonical URL, mobile usability, and more
• Tracking flows – these help monitor, fix, and request a recrawl of pages affected by crawling issues.
• Search Console now works on mobile devices.
• New and improved reports and tools, described below.

Updates to Search Console Tools and Reports

Some reports on Search Console are being discontinued, including Android Apps, HTML Improvements, and Property Sets. Meanwhile, another thirteen reports have been either replaced or revamped. Google sure is getting busy!

Below, we’ve curated a list of changes to Search Console reports to help you navigate the huge wave of updates. We’ll continue to update this list as Google adds new reports.

1. The AMP Status report is an expansion of Accelerated Mobile Pages, with more error types included and a fix flow feature allowing fixed pages to be re-indexed by request.
2. The Index Coverage report, along with the URL Inspection tool, have combined to replace the Crawl Errors report. Index Coverage allows webmasters to export Google Search Console data and identify how many pages of a site are not being indexed due to errors.
3. The Index Coverage Status report replaces Index Status, adding more detailed crawl status information from Google’s Index to the information previously included.
4. The Individual Enhancement reports replace Rich Cards, providing greater detail on debugging information, and allowing webmasters to request the re-crawling of corrected SEO issues with a single click.
5. The Links report combines the best of the Links to Your Site and Internal Links reports.
6. The Manual Actions report has been expanded to include review requests and review results in your manual action history.
7. The Mobile Usability report has been redesigned with a more accessible format, allowing pages with fixed mobile usability issues to be re-indexed via fix flow request.
8. The Performance report replaces Search Analytics, and now displays 16 months of data compared to the previous three.
9. The Rich Results report replaces Structured Data and also includes a Rich Reports test to identify and monitor your site’s rich results and track the success of your search optimisation efforts.
10. The Security Issues report has been revamped to a more comprehensive catalog of previous security issues.
11. The Sitemaps report has been updated with a more accessible design, and now allows report tests only after a sitemap has been submitted.
12. The URL Inspection tool replaces Fetch as Google and Blocked Resources, providing greater insight into how Google indexes specific versions of a single URL, including the canonical page and noindex and nocrawl blocks, as well as providing a list of blocked resources for individual URLs.

Alternatively, you can use Google’s Search Console migration guide that has an easy-to-read old-versus-new comparison table of tools and reports.

What do changes in Search Console mean for you?

As we mentioned earlier, these changes are part of a comprehensive migration from an old version of Search Console to a new one. Eventually, Google will sunset their old Search Console, and any features that haven’t been incorporated into the new version will sunset with it. It’s important that you keep abreast of any changes to Search Console so that you can adapt your reporting as necessary.

Let the experts track your search performance

SEO is easy to learn but difficult to master. Fortunately, you don’t need to go it alone. The SEO specialists at Pure SEO know how to read the tea leaves in your Search Console reports. For the best search engine performance, contact Pure SEO today.