Google introduces new Search Console

Google's new Search Console has gone public.

Released in July 2017 to a selected group of large advertisers and agencies, the new Search Console will comprise the same 16 months of data that was made available in the private beta. Advertisers and agencies will be able to make use of the data in order to analyze trends and tabulate year-on-year comparisons.

Users will be notified as and when they are granted access, and will be able to toggle between the new and old navigation menus of the Search Analytics report and the Search Performance report.

Rebuilt from the ground up, the new Search Console includes a focus to help users identify and fix issues with their web properties, a common theme with Google's tools.

Users will be able to use the new Search Console to optimize the presence of their digital properties in search results, assisted by features such as Index Coverage, Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) status, and Job posting reports.

Index Coverage reports offer insight into the indexing of URLs onto Google based on the submission of sitemap files. Users will be able to view the URLs that were correctly indexed, be notified of potential issues, and review the reasons behind URLs failing to index. Advertisers and agencies can simply use the Index Coverage reports to help them detect, monitor, and respond to issues with URL indexing.

AMP status offers users similar data on the issues that have arisen from attempts to create AMP versions of web pages. The new Search Console will offer users several reports for instantaneous reports following the validation of a recommended fix. This will be followed by a validation log, listing URLs that have been marked as fixed, including those that failed.

Given that the new Search Console lacks all the features of its predecessor, both versions will be accessible until the beta is complete.

The new Search Console grows the expanding suite of free Google tools aimed at helping advertisers and agencies improve their digital presence and conform with guidelines for being understood by Google's properties.