Google Search Console Insights: Analysing Your Content to Rank Higher

You are probably already familiar with the Google Search Console, a free service from Google allowing website operators to optimise and measure their website’s traffic and performance in the Google search. In 2020, Google extended this service. The US company launched the new “Search Console Insights” tool in beta. Keep reading to learn all about this tool and how to get the most out of it.

Google Search Console: What is it?

The Google Search Console (in short: GSC) is a free tool used to check and analyse the traffic of a website within the Google search. It provides information on, for example, the number of clicks or impressions and the pages indexed by Google, as well as the mobile usability, general problems with the URL and security issues.

In other words: the Search Console supports website owners in terms of SEO, thus offers insights on the search analysis. The collected data then serves as a basis for the optimisation of a website (or online shop).

With the help of the Google Search Console, website operators like you can get an impression of how Google sees your website. Among other things, the tool offers the following features:

Check if Google finds and indexes your website
Identify indexing issues with notifications on fixing them
Check external sites that link to your website
Access data such as how often your website appeared in search results and which keywords were used

In order to register for the GSC, you only need a Google account. Also, the tool will make you verify your website's URL.

Search Console Insights: What is it?

The Google Search Console Insights tool gives content creators access to new extensive data within the GSC platform.

On August 17 2020, the Google Search Central team officially announced the rollout of the beta version of the new Insights tool on Twitter:

Source: Google Search Central on Twitter

What does the Insights feature have to offer? The interface combines data from the Search Console with data from Google Analytics. As a content creator or editor using the GSC, you can therefore easily access insights from Analytics within the Search Console interface.

The automated report will then provide you with a better overview of the performance of the content on your website, e.g. on your blog.

This is particularly helpful as it supports webmasters in measuring and analysing data more efficiently.

The report has many purposes, all of which aim to help website operators in making the best decision when it comes to their content.

Creators and publishers can, for example, use this data to better understand how users discover their site's content and what sparked their interest. This way, it becomes easier for them to prioritise and optimise their content in order to improve their ranking in Google.

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According to the Search Console Insights overview page, the tool helps to answer, among others, the following questions:

What are your best performing pieces of content?
How are your new pieces of content performing?
How do people discover your content across the web?
What do people search for on Google before they visit your content?
Which article refers users to your website and content?

Who can use Google Search Console Insights?

Source: shutterstock/LookerStudio

As Search Console Insights is a feature within the Google Search Console service, anyone with a verified GSC property can use it.

“We highly recommend that you also associate (link) your site's Google Search Console property with your site's Google Analytics property in order to get much more and much better insights about your content. For now, Search Console Insights only supports Google Analytics UA properties. We are also working on supporting Google Analytics four properties to allow any Google Analytics user to benefit from Search Console Insights”, Google clarifies on the overview page of GSC Insights.

For now, the Insights feature is only accessible via the iOS Google app. However, Google said they were also working on offering the feature to Android users as well.

Source: Google Search Console Insights

Search Console users using the beta version of the Insights feature also have the opportunity to add more than one domain to their account.

💡 For now, we don’t know when the beta test phase will be completed and when the feature will “officially” be launched . Google regularly posts about updates and new features on its website and social media channels, such as the Google Search Central account on Twitter.

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After having tested the Insights feature, it’s possible to give some feedback to Google. The Internet giant is curious to find out if users like Search Console Insights or if they have some criticism to share.

This way, Google can improve the new service in the best way possible, aiming for the best user experience within the new feature.

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