As the much lesser-known sibling of Google Analytics, Google Search Console is the only tool that reports directly on the keyword phrases that drive people to your site directly from the source. Search Console also allows you to optimize the visibility of your site and has become significantly more robust and useful over the years.
Known as Google Webmaster Tools until 2015, Google Search Console is used by far more than just webmasters and developers. Marketers, agencies and SEO experts can all benefit from its use because the more you resolve problems reported by Google Search Console and adhere to its best practices, the higher your will rank for keywords – thereby increasing inbound lead generation and, ultimately, sales.
Understanding Core Web Vitals
Fixing indexing problems and monitoring issues as they arise will strengthen any web strategy and Search Console makes this easier, especially with the recent addition of the Core Web Vitals feature.
In May 2020, Google announced that page experience signals will be included in search rankings in an effort to provide the best website user experiences, especially on mobile. At the same time, the Google team announced the coming rollout of Core Web Vitals in Google Search Console to help site owners measure their on-site user experience. The Core Web Vitals tab began appearing in our dashboards in May 2021.
“These signals measure how users perceive the experience of interacting with a web page and contribute to our ongoing work to ensure people get the most helpful and enjoyable experiences from the web.” - Google
There are three main components evaluated in Google’s new Core Web Vitals:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): the time it takes to load the largest page element above the fold (often this is your banner or hero image)
- First Input Delay (FID): the time it takes your website to respond to a user taking an action on your site (clicking a button, watching a video, etc.)
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): this score measures the degree of unexpected page element shift while loading or while a user is interacting with the webpage
These components are evaluated by the following metrics:
| Good | Needs Improvement | Poor | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Largest Contentful Paint | <=2.5s | <=4s | >4s |
| First Input Delay | <=100ms | <=300ms | >300ms |
| Cumulative Layout Shift | <=0.1 | <=0.25 | >0.25 |
Source: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9205520?hl=en
And they now factor into page experience rankings, along with a few other well-known factors like mobile friendliness and SSL:
Source: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2020/11/timing-for-page-experience
In Google Search Console, the Core Web Vitals report provides an overview of the URLs that are good, poor or need improvement on both desktop and mobile, based on the metrics listed above. If you have URLs that are poor or need improvement, Search Console categorizes them by issue type (CLS, LCP or FID) to facilitate your diagnosis of the problems you face.
After fixing an issue, you can validate your fixes by clicking “Start Validation.” This begins a 28-day monitoring period during which Google will check for any instances of that specific issue across your entire site. The issue will only be considered fixed if no instance of the issue is found in your site URLs during the four-week period.
The Core Web Vitals report sources its data from the Chrome User Experience (or CrUX) database, which records the page experience of Chrome users on your website. Because the CrUX database gives you real data from actual site users, it’s considered one of the most accurate methods of measuring your website’s Core Web Vitals. The only downside of this method is that you only receive data from past user experiences and, therefore, cannot see worsening or improvement in your web vitals in real-time. Instead, Google PageSpeed Insights can be helpful for seeing your scores in real-time and fixing issues with specific URLs.
In our experience, smaller sites have been slower to gather data on Core Web Vitals. Because the CrUX database only gathers data from Chrome users, the information can be limited, especially if you have a site with a smaller number of monthly visitors.
Why Is Core Vitals Important?
User experience has become an increasingly important part of what makes a successful site. Your site needs to be fast, easy to navigate, and mobile-friendly so that your visitors are encouraged to continue engaging.
Because page experience is now a factor in Google’s search ranking algorithm, your site performance based on real user experience now affects how your site ranks in organic search, which affects lead generation and sales. If you want to either maintain or improve your current search rankings, you will need to start looking at your Core Web Vitals and find opportunities to improve your user experience.
Managing Index & Other Errors with the Coverage Report
Prior to the Search Console we know today, legacy Search Console had a single tab that listed all the URL errors Google had found without specifying the type of error. This gave webmasters a limited view into indexing errors and only scratched the surface of managing a site’s overall search performance.
In the last few years, Google rolled out a revamped Search Console that included significantly more information on which links are broken, which pages are indexed, and which pages have errors, painting a much more detailed picture of how we can optimize a site to maximize views via Google search. When the crawl error report evolved into the coverage report, we received better insights that helped drive positive change on our websites.