What Is Google Search Console, and What Should You Actually Look At?

Ask a Santa Barbara business owner which searches bring them customers and you usually get a guess. The thing is, Google keeps the real answer, search by search, and hands it over for free. As an SEO company in Santa Barbara, we think every owner should know where to find it, even if they never touch anything else.

It is called Google Search Console. Here is what it is, and the only parts most owners ever need to look at.

Google's own report card on your website

Search Console is not a third-party tool or somebody’s dashboard with a logo on it. It comes from Google itself, and Google describes it plainly.

In other words, you show up in Google whether you use it or not. Search Console is just the window that lets you see how.

If somebody built your website, there is a decent chance it is already set up and you were never told. Ask them. It is your data, about your business, and you are allowed to see it.

The only screen most owners need

Search Console has a lot of menus. Ignore almost all of them. The one that matters is called Performance, and it answers two questions: how often did people see me, and how often did they click? Google’s Performance report help page defines the two numbers itself. Clicks: “The number of times a user clicked your site from Google Search results.” Impressions: “How many times your site appeared in Search results.”

Under those two numbers sits the part that really matters: the list of searches themselves.

Three questions to ask that screen

You do not need to understand everything in it. You need to answer three things.

1. Am I only showing up for my own name?If the top of the list is your business name and little else, Google sees you as an address, not an answer. People who already know you can find you. Nobody else can.
2. Am I being seen and skipped?Plenty of impressions and very few clicks means you are on the page but losing the choice. That is a different problem from not showing up at all.
3. Is the list growing?Compare this quarter to last. A healthy site gets found for more searches over time. A list that never changes is a site nobody is working on.

If the second one sounds familiar, we went deep on it in why people see you on Google but never click.

What it will not tell you

Search Console is a scoreboard. It tells you the score, honestly and for free. It does not tell you how to play the game. It will not say which of those searches are worth going after, what pages to build for them, or why a competitor down the street keeps beating you.

That is the part a good SEO company is for. And it is why we think every owner should be able to open this screen: it is the easiest way to check whether the work you are paying for is actually happening. A real SEO report should line up with what you see here, and we covered what that report should contain in what your SEO report should actually show you.

For a local business, Search Console only shows half the picture, because the map listings are a world of their own. That side of things is what our local SEO work in Santa Barbara covers.

The searches your customers type are not a mystery. Google writes them down for you. Reading that list, and then going after the right lines on it, is what SEO done properly looks like.