Tag Archives: search console

AMP error report preview in Search Console

More and more sites are implementing Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) for news content, so we've decided to provide a preview of error reports in Search Console to help you get ready for the upcoming official AMP launch and get early feedback from you. You can find these reports under Search Appearance - Accelerated Mobile Pages. The goal here is to make it easier to spot issues in your AMP implementation across the whole website. In order to get started with AMP on Google Search, you'll need to create matching, valid AMP pages where relevant, ensure that they use the NewsArticle schema.org markup, and link them appropriately.

The AMP error report gives an overview of the overall situation on your site, and then lets you drill down to specific error types and URLs. This process helps you quickly find the most common issues, so that you can systematically address them in your site's AMP implementation (potentially just requiring tweaks in the templates or plugin used for these pages).

Curious about AMP and how it might fit in with your site? Here's a demo preview of AMP in search, more on how AMP works, and a guide to getting started with AMP. If you think AMP would be a good fit for your website, implementing it might ultimately be as easy as installing a plugin in your CMS, so check with your provider. AMP hasn't officially launched in Google Search, so there's still time to get set up -- feedback & patience will be appreciated by your CMS & plugin providers. Stay tuned for more updates on the AMP Project blog.

We're only getting started -- this is a first step at AMP error reporting. We'll be refining this report in the near future, and we'd love to get your feedback to help us. Let us know in the comments here how things work out for you.

Posted by John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst, Google Zurich

An update on CSV download scripts

With the new Search Analytics API, it's now time to gradually say goodbye to the old CSV download scripts for information on queries & rankings. We'll be turning off access to these downloads on October 20, 2015.

These download scripts have helped various sites & tools to get information on queries, impressions, clicks, and rankings over the years. However, they didn't use the new Search Analytics data, and relied on the deprecated Client Login API.

Farewell, CSV downloads, you've served us (and many webmasters!) well, but it's time to move on. We're already seeing lots of usage with the new API. Are you already doing something neat with the API? Let us know in the comments!

Posted by John Mueller, Webmaster Trends (and query, impression, & click trends) Analyst

Introducing the Search Analytics API

With the great feedback from the Search Analytics feature in Google Search Console, we've decided to make this data accessible for developers via API. We hope that the Search Analytics API will help you to bake search performance data into your apps and tools.

If you've used any of Google’s other APIs, or maybe one of the existing Search Console APIs, then getting started will be easy! The how-to page has examples in Python that you can use as recipes for your own programs. For example, you can use the API to:

What will you cook up with the new API? We're curious to see how new tools and apps that use this API will satisfy the hunger for even more information about your site's performance in Google Search! If you've integrated this API into a tool, we'd love to hear about it in the comments. If you've run into any questions about the API, feel free to drop by our webmaster help forum.


Posted by John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst, Google Switzerland

Rolling out the red carpet for app owners in Search Console

Wouldn’t it be nifty if you could track where your indexed app content shows up in search results, for which queries, which app pages are most popular, and which ones have errors? Yeah, we thought so too! So we’ve equipped our freshly renamed Search Console with new reports to show you how Google understands and treats your app content in search results.
Our goal is to make Search Console a comprehensive source of information for everyone who cares about search, regardless of the format of their content. So, if you own or develop an app, Search Console is your new go-to place for search stats.

Add your app to Search Console

Simply open Search Console and enter your app name: android-app://com.example. Of course, we’ll only show data to authorized app owners, so you need to use your Google Play account to let Search Console know you have access to the app. If you don’t have access to your app in Google Play, ask an owner to verify the app in Search Console and add you next.

Connect your site to your app

Associating your site with your app is necessary for App Indexing to work. Plus, it helps with understanding and ranking the app content better.

Track your app content’s performance in search

The new Search Analytics report provides detailed information on top queries, top app pages, and traffic by country. It also has a comprehensive set of filters, allowing you to narrow down to a specific query type or region, or sort by clicks, impressions, CTR, and positions.
Use the Search Analytics report to compare which app content you consider most important with the content that actually shows up in search and gets the most clicks. If they match, you’re on the right track! Your users are finding and liking what you want them to see. If there’s little overlap, you may need to restructure your navigation, or make the most important content easier to find. Also worth checking in this case: have you provided deep links to all the app content you want your users to find?

Make sure Google understands your app content

If we encounter errors while indexing your app content, we won’t be able to show deep links for those app pages in search results. The Crawl Errors report will show you the type and number of errors we’ve detected.

See your app content the way Google sees it

We’ve created an alpha version of the Fetch as Google tool for apps to help you check if an app URI works and see how Google renders it. It can also be useful for comparing the app content with the webpage content to debug errors such as content mismatch. In many cases, the mismatch errors are caused by blocked resources within the app or by pop-ups asking users to sign in or register. Now you can see and resolve these issues.
To get started on optimizing and troubleshooting your own app, add it to Search Console now. If you want to know more about App Indexing, read about it on our Developer Site. And, as always, you’re welcome to drop by the help forum with more questions.
Posted by:
Hillel Maoz, Engineering Lead, Search Console Team (favorite app: Flipboard) and
Mariya Moeva, Webmaster Trends Analyst (favorite app: Spotify)

Announcing Google Search Console – the new Webmaster Tools

For nearly ten years, Google Webmaster Tools has provided users with constantly evolving tools and metrics to help make fantastic websites that our systems love showing in Google Search. In the past year, we sought to learn more about you, the loyal users of Google Webmaster Tools: we wanted to understand your role and goals in order to make our product more useful to you.

It turns out that the traditional idea of the “webmaster” reflects only some of you. We have all kinds of Webmaster Tools fans: hobbyists, small business owners, SEO experts, marketers, programmers, designers, app developers, and, of course, webmasters as well. What you all share is a desire to make your work available online, and to make it findable through Google Search. So, to make sure that our product includes everyone who cares about Search, we've decided to rebrand Google Webmaster Tools as Google Search Console.

We're looking forward to an exciting future with Google Search Console, and hope to see users of all types—including webmasters—drop by and use our service to diagnose and improve the visibility of their content in search. We'll be rolling out the updated branding across the product over the coming weeks, so stay tuned.

Just come over to g.co/SearchConsole and get started!

Posted by Michael Fink, product manager Google Search Console