How can Google Search Console help you AMPlify your site?
If you have recently implemented Accelerated Mobile Pages on your site, it’s a great time to check which of your AMP pages Google has found and indexed by using Search Console.
Search Console is a free service that helps you monitor and maintain your site’s presence in Google Search, including any Accelerated Mobile Pages. You don’t have to sign up for Search Console for your AMP pages to be included in Google Search results, but doing so can help you understand which of your AMP pages are eligible to show in search results.
To get started with Search Console, create a free account or sign in here and validate the ownership of your sites.
Once you have your site set up on Search Console, open the Accelerated Mobile Pages report under Search Appearance > Accelerated Mobile Pages to see which AMP pages Google has found and indexed on your site, as shown here:
The report lists AMP-related issues for AMP pages that are not indexed, so that you can identify and address them.
Search Console also lets you monitor the performance of your AMP pages on Google Search in the Search Analytics report. This report tells you which queries show your AMP pages in Search results, lets you compare how their metrics stack against your other results and see how the visibility of your AMP pages has changed over time.
To view your AMP page metrics, such as clicks or impressions, select Search Appearance > Search Analytics > Filter by AMP.
(Note: if you’ve only just created your Search Console account or set up your AMP pages and they have not been detected yet, remember that Google crawls pages only periodically. You can wait for the scheduled regular recrawl, or you can request a recrawl.)
Have you been using Search Console to monitor your AMP pages? Give us feedback in the comments below or on our Google Webmasters Google+ page. Or as usual, if you have any questions or need help, feel free to post in our Webmasters Help Forum.
Posted by Tom Taylor, AMP Community Manager
How can Google Search Console help you AMPlify your site?
If you have recently implemented Accelerated Mobile Pages on your site, it’s a great time to check which of your AMP pages Google has found and indexed by using Search Console.
Search Console is a free service that helps you monitor and maintain your site’s presence in Google Search, including any Accelerated Mobile Pages. You don’t have to sign up for Search Console for your AMP pages to be included in Google Search results, but doing so can help you understand which of your AMP pages are eligible to show in search results.
To get started with Search Console, create a free account or sign in here and validate the ownership of your sites.
Once you have your site set up on Search Console, open the Accelerated Mobile Pages report under Search Appearance > Accelerated Mobile Pages to see which AMP pages Google has found and indexed on your site, as shown here:
The report lists AMP-related issues for AMP pages that are not indexed, so that you can identify and address them.
Search Console also lets you monitor the performance of your AMP pages on Google Search in the Search Analytics report. This report tells you which queries show your AMP pages in Search results, lets you compare how their metrics stack against your other results and see how the visibility of your AMP pages has changed over time.
To view your AMP page metrics, such as clicks or impressions, select Search Appearance > Search Analytics > Filter by AMP.
(Note: if you’ve only just created your Search Console account or set up your AMP pages and they have not been detected yet, remember that Google crawls pages only periodically. You can wait for the scheduled regular recrawl, or you can request a recrawl.)
Have you been using Search Console to monitor your AMP pages? Give us feedback in the comments below or on our Google Webmasters Google+ page. Or as usual, if you have any questions or need help, feel free to post in our Webmasters Help Forum.
UPDATE: To help ensure that your AMP implementation is working as expected, Search Console now has an enhanced AMP testing tool.
Posted by Tom Taylor, AMP Community Manager
A reminder about widget links
Google has long taken a strong stance against links that manipulate a site’s PageRank. Today we would like to reiterate our policy on the creation of keyword-rich, hidden or low-quality links embedded in widgets that are distributed across various sites.
Widgets can help website owners enrich the experience of their site and engage users. However, some widgets add links to a site that a webmaster did not editorially place and contain anchor text that the webmaster does not control. Because these links are not naturally placed, they’re considered a violation of Google Webmaster Guidelines.
Below you can find the examples of widgets which contain links that violate Google Webmaster Guidelines:
Google’s webspam team may take manual actions on unnatural links. When a manual action is taken, Google will notify the site owners through Search Console. If you receive such a warning for unnatural links to your site and you use links in widgets to promote your site, we recommend resolving these issues and requesting reconsideration.
You can resolve issues with unnatural links by making sure they don’t pass PageRank. To do this, add a rel=”nofollow” attribute on the widget links or remove the links entirely. After fixing or removing widget links and any other unnatural links to your site, let Google know about your change by submitting a reconsideration request in Search Console. Once the request has been reviewed, you’ll get a notification about whether the reconsideration request was successful or not.
Also, we would like to remind webmasters who use widgets on their sites to check those widgets for any unnatural links. Add a rel=”nofollow” attribute on those unnatural links or remove the links entirely from the widget.
For more information, please watch our video about widget links and refer to our Webmaster Guidelines on Link Schemes. Additionally, feel free to ask questions in our Webmaster Help Forums, where a community of webmasters can help with their experience.
Posted by Agnieszka Łata, Trust & Safety Search Team and Eric Kuan, Webmaster Relations Specialist
A reminder about widget links
Google has long taken a strong stance against links that manipulate a site’s PageRank. Today we would like to reiterate our policy on the creation of keyword-rich, hidden or low-quality links embedded in widgets that are distributed across various sites.
Widgets can help website owners enrich the experience of their site and engage users. However, some widgets add links to a site that a webmaster did not editorially place and contain anchor text that the webmaster does not control. Because these links are not naturally placed, they’re considered a violation of Google Webmaster Guidelines.
Below you can find the examples of widgets which contain links that violate Google Webmaster Guidelines:
Google’s webspam team may take manual actions on unnatural links. When a manual action is taken, Google will notify the site owners through Search Console. If you receive such a warning for unnatural links to your site and you use links in widgets to promote your site, we recommend resolving these issues and requesting reconsideration.
You can resolve issues with unnatural links by making sure they don’t pass PageRank. To do this, add a rel=”nofollow” attribute on the widget links or remove the links entirely. After fixing or removing widget links and any other unnatural links to your site, let Google know about your change by submitting a reconsideration request in Search Console. Once the request has been reviewed, you’ll get a notification about whether the reconsideration request was successful or not.
Also, we would like to remind webmasters who use widgets on their sites to check those widgets for any unnatural links. Add a rel=”nofollow” attribute on those unnatural links or remove the links entirely from the widget.
For more information, please watch our video about widget links and refer to our Webmaster Guidelines on Link Schemes. Additionally, feel free to ask questions in our Webmaster Help Forums, where a community of webmasters can help with their experience.
Posted by Agnieszka Łata, Trust & Safety Search Team and Eric Kuan, Webmaster Relations Specialist
More Safe Browsing Help for Webmasters
(Crossposted from the Google Security Blog.)
For more than nine years, Safe Browsing has helped webmasters via Search Console with information about how to fix security issues with their sites. This includes relevant Help Center articles, example URLs to assist in diagnosing the presence of harmful content, and a process for webmasters to request reviews of their site after security issues are addressed. Over time, Safe Browsing has expanded its protection to cover additional threats to user safety such as Deceptive Sites and Unwanted Software.
To help webmasters be even more successful in resolving issues, we’re happy to announce that we’ve updated the information available in Search Console in the Security Issues report.
The updated information provides more specific explanations of six different security issues detected by Safe Browsing, including malware, deceptive pages, harmful downloads, and uncommon downloads. These explanations give webmasters more context and detail about what Safe Browsing found. We also offer tailored recommendations for each type of issue, including sample URLs that webmasters can check to identify the source of the issue, as well as specific remediation actions webmasters can take to resolve the issue.
We on the Safe Browsing team definitely recommend registering your site in Search Console even if it is not currently experiencing a security issue. We send notifications through Search Console so webmasters can address any issues that appear as quickly as possible.
Our goal is to help webmasters provide a safe and secure browsing experience for their users. We welcome any questions or feedback about the new features on the Google Webmaster Help Forum, where Top Contributors and Google employees are available to help.
For more information about Safe Browsing’s ongoing work to shine light on the state of web security and encourage safer web security practices, check out our summary of trends and findings on the Safe Browsing Transparency Report. If you’re interested in the tools Google provides for webmasters and developers dealing with hacked sites, this video provides a great overview.
Posted by Kelly Hope Harrington, Safe Browsing Team
Five common website redesign and rebranding mistakes to avoid
There is a lot of pre-planning and execution needed from an SEO perspective to ensure a website retains the keyword rankings and organic traffic you have built up in the past.
Google’s Keyword Planner tool just became even more inaccurate
You’re probably familiar with the Keyword Planner tool, which is one of the best sources we have to spot opportunities and make the business case for an investment into paid or organic search campaigns.
Five most interesting search marketing news stories of the week
Welcome to our weekly round-up of all the latest news and research from around the world of search marketing and beyond.
How to improve your CTR using Google Search Console
Here’s a quick guide to show you how to use some of the data at your disposal in Search Console to help improve your site’s click-through rate.
Search at I/O 16 Recap: Eight things you don’t want to miss
Cross-posted from the Google Developers Blog
Two weeks ago, over 7,000 developers descended upon Mountain View for this year’s Google I/O, with a takeaway that it’s truly an exciting time for Search. People come to Google billions of times per day to fulfill their daily information needs. We’re focused on creating features and tools that we believe will help users and publishers make the most of Search in today’s world. As Google continues to evolve and expand to new interfaces, such as the Google assistant and Google Home, we want to make it easy for publishers to integrate and grow with Google.
In case you didn’t have a chance to attend all our sessions, we put together a recap of all the Search happenings at I/O.
1: Introducing rich cards
We announced rich cards, a new Search result format building on rich snippets, that uses schema.org markup to display content in an even more engaging and visual format. Rich cards are available in English for recipes and movies and we’re excited to roll out for more content categories soon. To learn more, browse the new gallery with screenshots and code samples of each markup type or watch our rich cards devByte.
2: New Search Console reports
We want to make it easy for webmasters and developers to track and measure their performance in search results. We launched a new report in Search Console to help developers confirm that their rich card markup is valid. In the report we highlight “enhanceable cards,” which are cards that can benefit from marking up more fields. The new Search Appearance filter also makes it easy for webmasters to filter their traffic by AMP and rich cards.
3: Real-time indexing
Users are searching for more than recipes and movies: they’re often coming to Search to find fresh information about what’s happening right now. This insight kickstarted our efforts to use real-time indexing to connect users searching for real-time events with fresh content. Instead of waiting for content to be crawled and indexed, publishers will be able to use the Google Indexing API to trigger the indexing of their content in real time. It’s still in its early days, but we’re excited to launch a pilot later this summer.
3: Getting up to speed with Accelerated Mobile Pages
We provided an update on our use of AMP, an open source effort to speed up the mobile web. Google Search uses AMP to enable instant-loading content. Speed is important—over 40% of users abandon a page that takes more than three seconds to load. We announced that we’re bringing AMPed news carousels to the iOS and Android Google apps, as well as experimenting with combining AMP and rich cards. Stay tuned for more via our blog and github page.
In addition to the sessions, attendees could talk directly with Googlers at the Search & AMP sandbox.
5: A new and improved Structured Data Testing Tool
We updated the popular Structured Data Testing tool. The tool is now tightly integrated with the DevSite Search Gallery and the new Search Preview service, which lets you preview how your rich cards will look on the search results page.
6: App Indexing got a new home (and new features)
We announced App Indexing’s migration to Firebase, Google’s unified developer platform. Watch the session to learn how to grow your app with Firebase App Indexing.
7: App streaming
App streaming is a new way for Android users to try out games without having to download and install the app — and it’s already available in Google Search. Check out the session to learn more.
8. Revamped documentation
We also revamped our developer documentation, organizing our docs around topical guides to make it easier to follow.
Thanks to all who came to I/O — it’s always great to talk directly with developers and hear about experiences first-hand. And whether you came in person or tuned in from afar, let’s continue the conversation on the webmaster forum or during our office hours, hosted weekly via hangouts-on-air.
Posted by Posted by Fabian Schlup, Software Engineer
Five most interesting search marketing news stories of the week
Welcome to our weekly round-up of all the latest news and research from around the world of search marketing and beyond.
Tie your sites together with property sets in Search Console
Mobile app, mobile website, desktop website — how do you track their combined visibility in search? Until now, you’ve had to track all of these statistics separately. Search Console is introducing the concept of “property sets,” which let you combine …
Six most interesting search marketing news stories of the week
Welcome to our weekly round-up of all the latest news and research from around the world of search marketing and beyond.
A new mobile friendly testing tool
Mobile is close to our heart – we love seeing more and more sites make their content available in useful & accessible ways for mobile users. To help keep the ball rolling, we’ve now launched a new Mobile Friendly Test. The new tool is linked from …
Deeper Integration of Search Console in Google Analytics
(Cross-posted from the Google Analytics Blog.)
Google Analytics helps brands optimize their websites and marketing efforts for all sources of traffic, and Search Console is where website owners manage how they appear in Google organic search results. Today, we are introducing the ability to display Search Console metrics alongside Google Analytics metrics, in the same reports, side by side – giving you a full view of how your site shows up and performs in organic search results.
For years, users of both Search Console and Google Analytics have been able to link the two properties (instructions) and see Search Console statistics in Google Analytics, in isolation. But to gain a fuller picture of your website’s performance in organic search, it’s beneficial to see how visitors reached your site and what they did once they got there.
With this update, you’ll be able to see your Search Console metrics and your Google Analytics metrics in the same reports, in parallel. By combining data from both sources at the landing page level, we’re able to show you a full range of Acquisition, Behavior and Conversion metrics for your organic search traffic. This feature out is rolling out over the coming few weeks, so not everyone will see it immediately.
 New Search Console reports combine Search Console and Google Analytics metrics
New Insights
The new reports allow you to examine your organic search data end-to-end and discover unique and actionable insights. Your Acquisition metrics from Search Console, such as impressions and average position, are now available in relation to your Behavior and Conversion metrics from Google Analytics, like bounce rate and pages per session.
Below are some new capabilities resulting from this improved integration:
• Find landing pages that are attracting many users through Google organic search (e.g., high impressions and high click through rate) but where users are not engaging with the website. In this case, you should consider improving your landing pages.
• Find landing pages that have high site engagement but are not successfully attracting users from Google organic search (e.g., have low click through rate). In this case, you might benefit from improving titles and descriptions shown in search.
• Learn which queries are ranking well for each organic landing page.
• Segment organic performance by device category (desktop, tablet, mobile) in the new Devices report.

New Landing Page report showing Search Console and Google Analytics metrics
Additional Information
Each of these new reports will display how your organic search traffic performs. As data is joined at the landing page level, Landing Pages, Countries and Devices will show both Search Console and Google Analytics data, while the Queries report will only show Search Console data for individual queries. The same search queries will display in Google Analytics as you see in Search Console today.
As mentioned in our Search Console Help Center, some data may not be displayed, to protect user privacy. For example, Search Console may not track some infrequent queries, and will not display those that include personal or sensitive information.
Also, while the data is displayed in parallel, not all Google Analytics features are available for Search Console data – including segmentation. Any segment that is applied to the new combined reports will only apply to Google Analytics data. You may also see that clicks from Search Console may differ from total sessions in Google Analytics.
To experience the new combined reports from Search Console and Google Analytics, make sure your properties are linked, and then navigate to the new section “Search Console”, which should appear under “Acquisition” in the left-hand navigation in Google Analytics.
Posted by Joan Arensman, Product Manager, and Daniel Waisberg, Analytics Advocate
Google Search Console: a complete overview
The Search Console (or Google Webmaster Tools as it used to be known) is a completely free and indispensably useful service offered by Google to all webmasters to help optimise their sites for search.
AMP error report preview in Search Console
More and more sites are implementing Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) for news content, so we’ve decided to provide a preview of error reports in Search Console to help you get ready for the upcoming official AMP launch and get early feedback from you. Y…
An update on CSV download scripts
With the new Search Analytics API, it’s now time to gradually say goodbye to the old CSV download scripts for information on queries & rankings. We’ll be turning off access to these downloads on October 20, 2015. These download scripts have helpe…
Introducing the Search Analytics API
With the great feedback from the Search Analytics feature in Google Search Console, we’ve decided to make this data accessible for developers via API. We hope that the Search Analytics API will help you to bake search performance data into your apps and tools.
If you’ve used any of Google’s other APIs, or maybe one of the existing Search Console APIs, then getting started will be easy! The how-to page has examples in Python that you can use as recipes for your own programs. For example, you can use the API to:
- Verify the presence of data (what’s the most recent date you can request?)
- Top 10 queries by click count
- Top 10 pages
- Top 10 queries in India
- Top 10 mobile queries in India
What will you cook up with the new API? We’re curious to see how new tools and apps that use this API will satisfy the hunger for even more information about your site’s performance in Google Search! If you’ve integrated this API into a tool, we’d love to hear about it in the comments. If you’ve run into any questions about the API, feel free to drop by our webmaster help forum.
Posted by John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst, Google Switzerland
