Google Webmaster Tools, rebranded as Google Search Console in 2015, is a free service offered by Google that helps website owners, webmasters, and SEO professionals monitor and maintain their site’s presence in Google Search results. It provides valuable insights into how Google views a site and enables the tweaking of the technical aspects of a site’s SEO efforts.
Functions and reporting:
This web service offers various functions important for technical SEO, including the ability to submit sitemaps to facilitate the indexing of web pages, view crawl error reports to fix issues that prevent Google from correctly accessing content, and check for security issues like malware or hacking, which could negatively affect search rankings.
Search Analytics:
One of the primary features of Google Webmaster Tools is the Search Analytics report, which provides detailed reports on the most significant data regarding how users find a website through Google. This includes information such as search queries leading to the site, click-through rates, impressions, and the average position of keywords in search results.
Index Coverage:
The Index Coverage report within Google Webmaster Tools offers insights into the pages that have been indexed by Google, as well as those that have not, accompanied by explanations. This allows for pinpointing and troubleshooting any issues that could be impairing a website’s visibility in search results.
Enhancements:
The Enhancements section focuses on user experience and content richness elements such as AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages), mobile usability, and structured data. Google Webmaster Tools provides feedback and reports on such enhancements to ensure optimal performance and presentation in search engine result pages (SERPs).
URL Inspection Tool:
A crucial tool within Google Webmaster Tools is the URL Inspection tool, which allows the analysis of specific URLs to ensure they are indexed and retrieved correctly by Google. This tool provides information about the last crawl date, any detected issues, and the ability to request a re-crawl of updated content.
Messages:
Google Webmaster Tools also contains a messaging feature that relays important notifications and alerts from Google regarding manual penalties, access issues, and other critical matters that need immediate attention from webmasters or SEO specialists to maintain the health and search performance of a website.
In essence, Google Webmaster Tools serves as an essential diagnostic platform for ensuring that a website communicates effectively with Google’s search engine, thus playing a significant role in successful search engine optimization strategies.