Item: Google Search Console
Rating: 8
Author: Bailey Witt, MBA

Overall Satisfaction with Google Search Console

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Google Search Console is used by our agency to asses organic search performance for our clients and identify issues with indexing or core web vitals.
Our agency primarily manages paid media - Google & Meta Ads - but using Google Search Console we can understand how people organically find our clients' websites based on the keywords they search and what pages they land on most. It also helps us get a gauge for how many people search for their brand name.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Query and page metrics are very easy to navigate and visualize, and compare periods.
Uploading a sitemap is very easy.
Viewing indexed pages vs non-indexed pages, and the reasons for not being indexed, is very helpful.

Cons

Only being able to go back 16 months is a big letdown. We know this data is captured and available, so it's a shame that this data can't be shown to us.
There is no way to have multiple filters in the Performance report, which makes it difficult to see performance trends for specific use cases, such as searching for performance for brand terms that contain one phrase but not another.
While the indexing reports are helpful for identifying where potential issues are, there is no system in place to help prioritize or grade these issues, or even tips for how to fix certain issues. In other words, you're kinda left to fend for yourself and hope you know what to do.

Return on Investment

For our agency, it directly helps us prove the value of our SEO help to clients with charts showing growth in traffic.
Google Search Console provides simple reports for easy screenshots that make our SEO auditing process simpler, saving time and resources.

Usability

The performance reporting is easy to use, and the indexing reports bubble up key issues, but again, there's no real hand-holding or direction on how to use these insights. There also is limited data history, which can hurt historical context.

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

Likelihood to Recommend

If you just want to understand how much traffic you're getting from Google organic search results, and study the queries and landing pages that make up this traffic, this is a great tool. If you also want to figure out where you may be missing opportunities or making it hard for people to find your site, this can help with that. However, GSC is not going to give you step by step instructions for how to fix SEO issues, and won't help prioritize anything either. It's essentially like a car dashboard, but doesn't do any driving or tell you how to drive.

Google Search Console Feature Ratings

Comments

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Good data for insights, but no specific direction for improvement