Google Search Console (former Google Webmaster Tools) is a suite of SEO tools straight from Google. Features include information about search appearance, search traffic, technical status updates, crawl data, indexed pages, sucurity issues and educational resources.

Google Search Console was formerly known as Google Webmaster Central and then Google Webmaster Tools until taking the current name in 2015. GSC helps to track a websites’ state and optimize its visibility in Google.

Tip: If you go to “Search Traffic”—>”Search Analytics” for the list of keywords that your site currently ranks for, sort by “Position” so that your #1 ranking in at the top and scroll down, you’ll see #10-#25 etc. ranks that you can often push to the 1st page of SERPs with a small extra SEO effort. For instance, point a few internal links to that pages.

Google Search Console 9 tools:

• Structured data testing tool
• Structured Data Markup Helper
• Email Markup Tester
• Google My Business
• Google Merchant Center
• PageSpeed Insights
• Custom Search
• Google Domains
• Webmaster Academy

Why use Google Search Console?

• Monitor your site’s performance in Google Search results
• Make sure that Google can access your content
• Receive notifications from Google for manual penalties
• Submit and check a sitemap
• Write and check a robots.txt file to help discover pages that are blocked in robots.txt accidentally
• Set a preferred domain (e.g. example.com over www.example.com)
• Get a list of links which Googlebot had difficulty crawling
• See and export Search Analytics (keyword searches on Google led to the site from SERP)
• Use Google Data Highlighter
• Provide access to an API to add, change and delete listings and list crawl errors
• Submit new content for crawling and remove content from search results
• Create and monitor content that delivers visually engaging search results
• Maintain your site with minimal disruption to search performance
• Monitor and resolve malware or spam issues so your site stays clean
• Discover how Google Search (and the world) sees your site:
• Which queries caused your site to appear in search results?
• Did some queries result in more traffic to your site than others?
• Are your product prices, company contact info, or events highlighted in rich search results?
• Which sites are linking to your website?
• Is your mobile site performing well for visitors searching on mobile?