Google Webmaster Tools (also known as Google Search Console), is a powerful platform that website owners can use to monitor how their site interacts with Google.
GWT gives you a detailed insight into the health of your website, reporting technical issues such as crawl errors, mobile optimization problems, and security concerns. It’s also packed with a bunch of trackable metrics that are invaluable for SEO, providing you with the data you need to improve your website’s organic performance.
Google Search Console is a web service by Google which allows webmasters to check indexing status and optimize visibility of their websites.
Until 20 May 2015, the service was called Google Webmaster Tools. In January 2018, Google introduced a new version of the search console, with changes to the user interface. In September of 2019, old Search Console reports, including the home and dashboard pages, were removed.
The service includes tools that let webmasters
- Submit and check a sitemap.
- Check the crawl rate, and view statistics about when Googlebot accesses a particular site.
- Write and check a robots.txt file to help discover pages that are blocked in robots.txt accidentally.
- List internal and external pages that link to the website.
- Get a list of links which Googlebot had difficulty in crawling, including the error that Googlebot received when accessing the URLs in question.
- See what keyword searches on Google led to the site being listed in the SERPs, and the total clicks, total impressions, and the average click through rates of such listings. (Previously named ‘Search Queries’; rebranded May 20, 2015 to ‘Search Analytics’ with extended filter possibilities for devices, search types and date periods).
- Set a preferred domain (e.g. prefer example.com over http://www.example.com or vice versa), which determines how the site URL is displayed in SERPs.
- Highlight to Google Search elements of structured data which are used to enrich search hit entries (released in December 2012 as Google Data Highlighter).
- View site speed reports from the Chrome User Experience Report.
- Receive notifications from Google for manual penalties.
- Provide access to an API to add, change and delete listings and list crawl errors.
- Rich Cards a new section added, for better mobile user experience.
- Check the security issues if there are any with the website. (Hacked Site or Malware Attacks)
- Add or remove the property owners and associates of the web property.
- Google Search console brought an advance featured breadcrumbs and AMP to provide ultimate help to the users.
- As of July 2020, you can analyze on-site structured data schema in the Google search console’s dashboard or use one of Google’s tools: Rich Results Test or Schema Markup Validator.
- Search Console provides information on how Google crawls, indexes, and serves websites. This can help website owners to monitor and optimize Search performance.
- Google Search Console also has a feature called the URL Inspection Tool.
Importance
Links
The second extremely helpful section of Google Webmaster Tools is the Links to Your Site section.
Here, you can see where your backlinks (internal and external) originate from, and also the pages they are linking to. Likewise, with other link checking tools, don’t expect that each and every link to your site is shown. However, all things considered, this list of backlinks is helpful to check occasionally.
The Search Queries section demonstrates the keywords that led users to your site.
This list demonstrates which keywords clients hunt down when they visit your site. It is ideal if this list coordinates the keywords you are optimizing, but very frequently, this list contains good keywords you were unaware of. For this situation, pick these great keywords and begin streamlining for them as well.
Crawl Errors
The Crawl Errors section demonstrates the mistakes Googlebot experienced on your site. The information you get is like what you get when you utilize the Spider Simulator and it indicates out of reach pages, missing pages, server blunders, and a wide range of issues that kept Google from accurately crawling your site. You likewise get some other crawl stats, (for example, the quantity of pages crept multi day) that are valuable to know.
Keywords
Similarly, to the Search Queries section that also deals with keywords (yet it is the ones clients type to get to your site), the Keywords section likewise shows keywords. Notwithstanding, the thing that matters is that here, you see what keywords (and their criticalness) Google has found on your site. The two records (of keywords clients type and the keywords Google finds on your site) could be altogether different, which implies you are not improving on what your clients are looking for.