As always, Google has helped us as consumers and business owners by rolling out the new version of the search console since January 2018.
Previously Google has been testing the new Search Console since 2017 and has select a group of users to test the beta version of the search console. Most have commented that the search console has a clean and better interface with some notable additions, such as up to 16 months of historical search data available to SEO’s purpose.
Also to note that this new search console has port features from the previous version to the new one over the course of this year which made it more convenient and familiar to webmasters and SEOs.
Compared to the previous versions, this new search console has several new functions that enhance user’s experience to make their search easier and also help to boost the SEO for business owners for their SEO and SEM campaign.
Number One – Search performance report
It is a brand new version of Search Analytics Report that user can easily click and view the overlay of the total clicks, impressions, average CTR (Click through Rate) plus the average position data. Not only that, the webmasters can filter the multiple variables straight away with one option instead of having to choose the variables one by one.
Although there are still limitations which the users cannot lay multiple comparisons on top of each other, such as comparing data of the different countries and desktops versus mobile together. Users are still able to get the very detail and specific performance data for their website.
Also to note that users can now get the historical search data over a longer range to analyze long-term trends and yearly comparisons in the search analytics report instead of the 3 month’s limitation previously.
Number Two – Index coverage report
It is the modified version of the Index Coverage in the Google’s new Search Console that combines the old Index Status and the Crawl Errors reports which allow the site owners to see how Google is indexing their website and to identify plus fixing errors if necessary.
The user can also view the data that consists of error pages, valid pages with warnings or indexed, and also excluded pages including the overlay impression data. The report will give the user more details such as the types of issues detected by Google so the webmasters can click through to check the affected URLs and resolve it.
Another useful feature that is new to users is the ability to inform Google to update its index after the issue is resolved (For example Error code 500) which the user will be able to get Google to crawl back and reprocess the affected URLs with a higher priority, thus helping the site to get back on track in the page ranking faster than before.
Number Three – Accelerated Mobile Pages and Job Postings
Google has also updated their version of the AMP status report that allows the website owners to validate the new AMP URLs that is fixed. This is done after Google has scanned and provide a list of the AMP URLs with errors and user can request that New Search Console to validate a fix across multiple pages and Google will reprocess those fixed AMP URLs with a higher priority.
One additional report inside AMP is the Job postings which the webmasters that have job listings on their site can mark up in the Job Posting structured data to be qualified for Google Jobs which is Google’s new foray into the job listings around the world as announced in 2017 Google’s I/O.
Also to note that the Job Posting report in the new Search Console will display stats around the user’s job listing results and will pinpoint any indexing issues to allow the user to fix and validate them.
Other than the new functions stated above, the Search performance report still features the basic same functions as before.
As there will still more enhance features to add to the Google new search console due to the migration of data from the old search console to the new one. Users and webmasters can expect better improvement from the New search console such as Internal Links report, international targeting, mobile usability and so on.
