SEO Guide to Google Search Console

Properties in Search Console can have a total of 100 full or restricted users. A full user has view rights, and can take some actions, while a restricted user has view rights for most data. See Permissions for Search Console Users for more information.

Adding a User to Your Property

Note: You can click on all screenshots below to view at a larger size.

Step 1: Log in to Search Console, click the gear icon and select Users and Property Owners

Step 2: Select Add a New User

Step 3: Type the email address of the user you want to add and select the user type

Permissions for Users

The below table includes the full list of permissions for different account roles to help you decide what type of access you should grant to new owners or users.

Deleting a User

Step 1: Click the gear icon and select Users and property owners

Step 2: Select the target email under the Users and Property Owners section and click Delete

What is Fetch and Render?

Search Console’s Fetch and Render will test how Google crawls and renders a page on your site. This can help you understand how Google sees a page, tell you about elements that might be hidden within the page, safely check hacked pages, or help debug crawl issues.

Fetch will return the page’s code (how Google sees the page), and Fetch and Render will return the page’s code along with two side-by-side images — one version that users see and one version that Google “sees”.

How to Fetch & Render

Note: You can click on all screenshots below to view at a larger size.

Step 1: Log in to Search Console and navigate to Crawl, then select Fetch as Google

Step 2: Add the relative path of the URL

The relative path of the URL is the portion that does not include the protocol (http, https) or domain (www.example.com). For example, the relative path of the URL https://www.example.com/fetch-this-url would be “fetch-this-url”.

The domain name is already provided in the Fetch and Render tool, so you only need what comes after the trailing slash of the domain name. Fetch and Render is case-sensitive.

Step 3: (Optional) Select what type of Googlebot to perform the fetch as — Desktop or Mobile: Smartphone

Step 4: Select Fetch or Fetch and Render

• Fetch: fetches the requested URL and displays the HTTP status
• Fetch and Render: fetches the requested URL, displays the HTTP status, and renders the page based on the specified platform (desktop or smartphone). This can be understand any visual differences between how a user would see your page compared to how Google would see your page.

Fetch Statuses

After you’ve made your fetch request, Google will use several different status to indicate the HTTP response along with any suggested actions to take based on responses.

• Complete: If your status is complete then Google was able to make contact with your site and its referenced resources.
• Partial: If your status is partial it means that Google was able to contact and fetch the site but the robots.txt file blocked a resource referenced by the page. Clicking on the status will show you exactly which resource was blocked and the severity of the blocked resource.
• Redirected: Search Console will only check the exact URL requested – any redirects to another page will receive a Redirect status. Clicking on the status will show you where the page points to.
• Not Found: Usually this status is from a 404 error, but can also occur when a site is hacked and Google does not want to index the page.
• Not Authorized: This could be caused by a 403 error or other type of restricted access.
• DNS Not Found: If your status is not found, it could be caused by a typo or instance of website downtime.
• Unreachable robots.txt: Google cannot reach the host of the resource for robots.txt — the robots.txt file may need to be tested and updated.
• Unreachable: This status is often due to a timeout error.
• Temporarily Unreachable: This status is also often due to a timeout error or too many fetch requests.
• Error: This status is uncommon and results from an unknown or unspecified error. If this status occurs multiple times, Google suggests posting to their help forum.

Submitting a URL to Index

If you’ve added new content or made any changes to your site, you can ask Google to recrawl the page by using the Fetch and Render tool.

Step 1: Log in to Search Console and Request a Fetch or Fetch and Render for the page

Step 2: If you have received a Complete, Partial, or Redirected status, a Request Indexing button will appear to the right of the status.

If the request feature does not appear, the fetch didn’t fulfill the status requirements, meaning that your Fetch status needs to be resolved. Your fetch must also be under 4 hours old in order to Request Indexing.

Step 3: Click Request Indexing

Step 4: Select whether to Crawl only this URL or Crawl this URL and its direct links

• Crawl only this URL submits only the selected URL to Google for re-crawling. You can submit up to 10 individual URLs per day.
• Crawl this URL and its direct links submits the URL as well as all the other pages that URL links to directly for re-crawling. You can submit up to 2 site recrawl requests per day.

You can configure URL parameters in Search Console to tell Google whether it should crawl or ignore specific parameters to prevent duplication.

What are URL Parameters?

URL Parameters are parameters with values that are set dynamically within a pages URL. This enables a single page to show an infinite number of different views.

Active parameters can change page content for users by transforming or sorting a page a certain way. The URLs below are examples of what active parameters could look like sorting a category page for dresses in different ways.

• http://www.example.com/products/dresses/?sort=price_high
• http://www.example.com/products/dresses/?sort=price_low
• http://www.example.com/products/dresses/search?color=red&size=8

Passive parameters don’t have any affect on how content appears to users, but can track visits or referrals. The below URLs are examples of what passive parameters could look like:

• http://www.example.com/products/dresses/?sessionid=12345
• http://www.example.com/products/dresses?utm_source=google&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=param
  

In either case, most parameters don’t actually affect the actual content on the page, meaning that in a search engine’s eyes, all of the below pages are duplicates:

• http://www.example.com/products/dresses/?sort=price_high
• http://www.example.com/products/dresses/?sort=price_low
• http://www.example.com/products/dresses/search?color=red&size=8
• http://www.example.com/products/dresses/?sessionid=12345
• http://www.example.com/products/dresses?utm_source=google&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=param

Click through to read a more in-depth post on common duplicate content issues, including parameterized URLs.

How to Configure URL Parameters

Search Console features a tool that will tell Google which parameters to ignore, which can prevent duplication from parameterized URLs.

This tool is also not all-powerful. If you have parameters in your sitemaps or used in internal linking, this could confuse Google and cause them to index the parameterized URLs anyway.

Step 1: Log in to Search Console and click on Crawl, then URL Parameters

Step 2: Click Configure URL Parameters

Note: You can click on all screenshots below to view at a larger size.

Step 3: Click the Add parameter button

Step 4: Enter your parameter

Step 5: Select whether or not the parameter changes how content is seen by the user

If you selected No: Doesn’t affect page content (ex. tracks usage), then you can click Save

The “No” option is for passive parameters – meaning that the page content stays the same with or without the parameter. Google will just pick the version of the URL it thinks is primary and index that version.

Step 6: If you selected Yes: Changes, reorders, or narrows page content, you must then select how the parameter affects content (sorts, narrows, specifies, translates, paginates, or other) and then tell Google which URLs with the parameter that Googlebot is allowed to crawl.

The “Yes” option is for active parameters – meaning that the page content is different with each parameter.You can then choose if Googlebot should decide which pages to crawl, if every URL should be crawled, if only URLs with specific values should be crawled, or if no URLs should be crawled.

Changes using the URL Parameter tool may not be reflected in the SERPs for several months, so it’s good practice to regularly use a site:query search to check every few weeks to verify.

Site Errors

Site Errors are issues that affect your entire website, and should be prioritized. Below is an example of what you want to see – no site errors.

Note: You can click on all screenshots below to view at a larger size.

Possible site errors include:

DNS Errors

DNS errors are a major problem – this means that Googlebot couldn’t connect with your domain due to a  DNS lookup or DNS timeout issue.

Server Connectivity Errors

Server errors usually mean that your site is taking too long to respond, so the request times out. This means that Googlebot can connect to your site but can’t load the page.

Robots.txt Fetch Errors

A Robots error means that the Googlebot cannot retrieve your robots.txt file from [example.com]/robots.txt. However, you only need a robots.txt file if you don’t want Google to crawl certain pages. If you don’t have a robots.txt file, the server will return a 404 and Googlebot will simply continue to crawl your site.

URL Errors

URL Errors affect individual pages of your site and are categorized by Desktop or Smartphone.

Types of URL errors include:

Server Errors

Server errors happen when Googlebot couldn’t access your URL, the request timed out, or your site was busy.

Soft 404s

A Soft 404 status happens when a page displays as 200 (found) when it should display as not found (404). For pages that don’t exist, they should either be 404d or 301 redirected to a relevant page. Any live pages that display as soft 404 should be audited to ensure that there isn’t thin content or content that might indicate a 404 page.

Not Found (404)

A 404 means that Google tried to crawl a page on your site that does not or no longer exists. Googlebot finds 404 pages when other sites or pages link to that non-existent page.

If the page is an important page, you should address the issue immediately.

Access Denied

This error often indicates that the URL requires a login or your hosting provider is blocking Google from accessing your site.

Not Followed

Not Followed errors can often indicate crawling issues from JavaScript, Flash or other forms of active content or improper redirects.

DNS Error

DNS errors indicate that Googlebot couldn’t connect with the URL due to a  DNS lookup or DNS timeout issue.

How to Fix 404 Errors in Webmaster Tools

If you find a 404 error, there are a few ways to resolve it using Google Search Console.

Step 1: Log in to Search Console, click on Crawl, then click Crawl Errors

Step 2: Click on the Not Found tab to view 404 errors

Step 3: Click on the first URL to show a popup with two tabs: Error Details and Linked from

Step 4: In the Linked from tab, you can see what internal and external links are pointing to the 404 pages.

If the URL was a previously existing page, you could 301 redirect the old URL to a relevant page. If there is a misspelling or error, you can reach out to the supplier of the incorrect URL asking them to update their link to the correct URL.

Step 5: If a page is properly 404d, you can either ignore it or select Mark as Fixed to remove the 404 from your Search Console error report.

However, if Google is still finding the URL (through links, in your sitemap, etc…) it may recrawl this page at a later date and will reappear in the Crawl Error report.

Structured data markup can provide additional data to search engines so they can serve up better, more accurate search results. Structured data can also provide enhanced presentations within the search results pages themselves, making results more visible or helpful to users. However, structured data can also be tricky to use – luckily, Search Console features a tool to quickly identify structured data errors.

Data Errors

Note: You can click on all screenshots below to view at a larger size.

Step 1: Log in to Search Console and click on Search Appearance, click Structured Data

Step 2: Check to see if any Errors are called out at the top of the report

Step 3: If you have errors, click on the error number to view the pages with errors for that specific type of schema

Step 4: Click on a page URL to expand the Page details and click the Test live data button to open the Structured Data Testing Tool

Step 5: In the Structured Data Testing Tool, you can click on the individual markup to expand to view its elements and any errors or warnings

Here we can see that the value “Open” is causing an error in startDate. Event schema requires a startDate. To fix this issue we would add the proper start dates to each Event with an error.

We can also see there is an error within the location schema. It doesn’t have a value for the address field.

Here is an example of the current schema markup:

<script type='application/ld+json'>
{
  "@context": "http://schema.org/",
  "@type": "Event",
   "name": "Example",
  "startDate": "2018-06-10",
"location": {
    "@type": "PostalAddress",
    "streetAddress": "1234 Example Street",
    "addressLocality": "Philadelphia",
    "postalCode": "19123",
    "addressRegion": "PA",
    "addressCountry": "US"
  }
 }
</script>sentences = text.split( '. ' );

Here is an example of the recommended schema for the fix:

<script type='application/ld+json'>
{
  "@context": "http://schema.org/",
  "@type": "Event",
   "name": "Example",
  "startDate": "2018-06-10",
"location": {
  "@type": "Place",
  "Address":{
    "@type": "PostalAddress",
    "streetAddress": "1234 Example Street",
    "addressLocality": "Philadelphia",
    "postalCode": "19123",
    "addressRegion": "PA",
    "addressCountry": "US"
  }
 }
}
</script>

Step 6: Once you’ve fixed your structured data errors, resubmit your page for indexing!

You can better understand the relationship between your paid and organic data by linking your Search Console account with Google Ads.

How to Connect to Google Ads

Note: You can click on all screenshots below to view at a larger size.

Step 1: Log in and click the Tool icon in the top right corner, then select Linked Accounts under Setup

Step 2: Scroll to the bottom of the list and click Details under the Search Console section

Step 3: In the popup box, click Link

Step 4: Enter the URL of the website you want to link and click Continue. You don’t need to specify http vs https but you do need to specify www vs non-www.

Step 5: If your Ads account was listed as an owner website in Search Console, you’ll see Linked in the status column.

If your Ads account was not listed as an owner, you’ll see Access Requested in status.

If there is no Search Console account set up for the website you’re trying to link to, you’ll see Not claimed in the status column.