Google Search Console

Google Search Console (GSC) is a free tool provided by Google that lets site owners monitor how their site appears in Google Search. Unlike third-party SEO tools that infer data from crawls and estimates, Search Console reports what Google actually sees. This includes which pages it has indexed, what queries triggered impressions, and what errors it encountered.

Coming from Google does not make it infallible, and two separate faults have distorted its impression data inside the last two years (see when Search Console’s data was wrong below). It remains the best source available. It is not a source you should read without knowing where the joins are.

It is not optional. Every site should be verified in Search Console before launch and checked regularly throughout its life. For setup instructions and verification options, see the How to Use Google Search Console guide.

Which Search Console reports matter most?

Eight reports carry most of the day-to-day work. The How to Use Google Search Console guide walks through each one; this is what each is for.

• Performance: clicks, impressions, CTR and average position, filtered by query, page, country, device and search type. AI Overviews and AI Mode appearances are counted inside the Web search type.
• Search Generative AI Performance: impressions from AI Overviews, AI Mode and the generative AI features in Discover, by page and date, with no clicks and no queries.¹
• Page Indexing: which URLs Google has indexed and, grouped by reason, which it has not. The starting point for any indexing investigation.
• URL Inspection: one URL’s index status, last crawl, rendered HTML and the canonical Google chose, plus a live test of the current version.
• Sitemaps: whether Google could fetch and process the sitemaps you submitted.
• Core Web Vitals: real-user loading, responsiveness and stability data from Chrome, grouped by URL pattern so a template-wide problem shows as one issue.
• Links: the external domains and anchor text in Google’s own link index, which will not match a third-party tool’s counts.
• Manual Actions: whether a human reviewer at Google has penalised the site, and where to file the reconsideration request once it is fixed.

Search Console also takes platform properties, which report how posts on Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube perform on Google Search, Discover and Google News, with no website needed.²

When Search Console’s data was wrong

Two faults have distorted impression data, and both still affect what you see when you look back.

The logging error, 13 May 2025 to 27 April 2026. A logging fault caused Search Console to over-report impressions for roughly 50 weeks. Google fixed it going forward but confirmed the inflated window will not be backfilled.³ Clicks were not affected. The consequence is that any year-on-year impression comparison spanning that period measures corrected data against inflated data, and the correction reads as a decline that never happened.

The num=100 removal, September 2025. When Google stopped supporting the results-per-page URL parameter, the automated tools that had been pulling 100 results at a time stopped, on the SEO industry’s reading, generating impressions along the way; Google confirmed only that the parameter is unsupported.⁴ Reported impressions fell and average position appeared to improve, with nothing having changed on the sites themselves: across 319 properties analysed by Tyler Gargula of LOCOMOTIVE Agency, 87.7% lost impressions and 77.6% lost query count.⁵

Both events move impressions and average position while leaving clicks untouched. That asymmetry is the diagnostic: if impressions and position shifted sharply around September 2025 or April 2026 while clicks held steady, suspect the measurement before you suspect your rankings.

What does Search Console not show?

• Anonymised queries. Rare or sensitive search terms are withheld for privacy and never appear in the query table or the API, even though they count toward your totals (details).
• Ranking data beyond 1,000 queries. The Performance report caps at 1,000 rows by default (you can export more via the API).
• A complete list of affected URLs in Page Indexing. The example list for each status “is limited to 1,000 items, and isn’t guaranteed to show all URLs in a given status, even when less than 1,000 items”.⁶ The counts are the full figure; the URL list beneath them is a sample. Use URL Inspection to settle whether a specific page is affected.
• Historical data beyond 16 months. Data older than 16 months is not accessible in the interface.
• Competitor data. GSC is your data only.
• Conversion or revenue data. Link GA4 for that layer.
• A clean historical impression series. Two known faults distorted impressions between May 2025 and April 2026, and Google has not backfilled the corrections (details).

For full setup instructions, report walkthroughs, diagnostic workflows, and a weekly check routine, see the How to Use Google Search Console guide.

Footnotes

1. Introducing Search Generative AI performance reports in Search Console — Google Search Central Blog. Carries Google’s note: “As of August 31, 2026, we’ve rolled out these insights to all websites worldwide.” ↩

2. Search Console adds social and video platform properties — Google Search Central Blog ↩

3. Google fixes Search Console’s year-long data logging issue, well, kind of — Search Engine Land Barry Schwartz, 4 May 2026, with Google’s own dates on its Search Console data anomalies page. The “not backfilled” confirmation is John Mueller’s one-word reply to Schwartz on Bluesky, 3 May 2026, which the article links. ↩

4. Why Google Search Console impressions fell (and why that’s good) — Search Engine Land, a contributed column by Karen Bellin, 23 October 2025. The crawler-impression explanation is an inference by SEOs: Google said only that the parameter is “not something that we formally support” (Search Engine Land, 18 September 2025). ↩

5. Tyler Gargula (LOCOMOTIVE Agency) on LinkedIn, 18 September 2025: 319 Search Console properties, 25 August to 1 September against 8 to 15 September 2025, counting properties with any drop rather than its size; reported by Search Engine Land ↩

6. Page Indexing report — Search Console Help ↩