Item: Google Search Console
Rating: 7
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Google Search Console to identify potential search engine crawl issues and track keyword searches with Google for our website. The tool gives us some insight into how Google and its users see and access our website.

Pros and Cons

Allows you to directly submit a sitemap to Google for crawling.
Shows common search queries used to access site.

Recrawling of pages that have suggested improvements is very slow
Disavowing non-existent URLS doesn't remove them from the error report

Return on Investment

I have used search console to identify search terms that are performing well for us.
I have also used a search console to identify search terms that are not performing well for us.

Alternatives Considered

SEMRush

We use both SEMRush and Google Search Console. Google Search Console and SEMRush share some similar features, but they're two very different software suites. SEMRush is a more robust platform for SEO and SEM. It offers a lot more features than Google Search Console, including social media tracking, but it's also not free. You can also connect SEMRush to Google Analytics to get more accurate data into their reporting. Google Search Console is a free tool that's designed to give you a moderate understanding of how people are getting to your site and what needs to be fixed to get more people there.

Support Rating

As with all Google software, your primary source of help is their forums, their knowledge base articles, or whatever tutorials you can find on the web. Often answers on their forums are not straightforward and may not address the actual issue you're experiencing. The KB articles are typically written like instruction manuals - for better or for worse. Tutorials on the web may vary, but the odds are good someone out there had the same questions as you and was kind enough to document their experience.

Key Insights

Do you think Google Search Console delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Google Search Console's feature set?

Yes

Did Google Search Console live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Google Search Console go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Google Search Console again?

Yes

Other Software Used

SEMRush, Cloudflare

Likelihood to Recommend

Google Search Console is useful for gaining some insights into how your website is perceived by Google and interacted with by those using their search engine. You can get an idea of what keywords are being searched, who links to your site, and the pages that are receiving traffic. If you're using Google Analytics, you can connect the two to get more detailed information.

Google Search Console - Not bad for free

Overall Satisfaction with Google Search Console