We haven’t talking about Google Search Console in a while, but it is still one of the best secret weapons most arts orgs aren’t using but should. Search Console works in tandem with Analytics and provides enhanced tools to measure search traffic and performance, find and fix issues, and maximize your rank in search results.
Toward the beginning of 2020, Search Console started sending out monthly performance reports that include a genuinely useful metrics dashboard. Here’s how Google describes the key numbers in the summary email:
Monthly performance numbers:
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- Web clicks:How many people clicked a link to your site in the general search results tab in Google Search. See more click details for your site on the Performance report.
- Impressions:How many people saw a link to your site in Google Search results. These results are only from the general search results tab. See more impression data for your site on the Performance report.
- Pages with first impressions:Pages that were seen by a user in Search Results for the first-time last month. (This may be omitted for very large sites.)
Top growing pages and Top performing pages: Which pages on your site are growing the fastest (by absolute value, not by percentage change), and which have the highest number of clicks. These values are “month over month” changes (how this month compared to the previous month).
Top growing queries and top performing queries: The fastest growing queries in Google Search that return a link to your site. (A query is the phrase that a user types in the Google Search box.) These values are “month over month” changes (how this month compared to the previous month).
Devices: What device type your users were searching on when they found your site.
Google Search surface: How many users clicked on your site, by search type: Web search (the default, or general, search results), image search, video search, and Discover.
Even if you’re someone who rarely touches analytics, you can get a good bit of useful top-level information from these reports. If you have a Search Console account but don’t receive messages (and haven’t inadvertently unsubscribed), you can get on the monthly mailing list by having your account admin add you as a user.
- Go to Settings > Users and permissions.
- Select “Add User.”
- Enter email address. Important: the user must have a valid google account connected to the email address used.
- Permissions: choose Full or Restricted. Both options will end up receiving reports.
- Select “Add.”
That’s all there is to it.
Moving forward, you’ll start getting monthly report emails:
