Google Search Console: the reports worth checking every week

Google Search Console has many reports, and it is easy to look at all of them occasionally and none of them properly. A short weekly routine catches most problems early.

1. Performance

Search results shows clicks, impressions, average click-through rate and average position, by query, page, country, device and date.

Each week:

• Compare the last 7 days with the previous period. Look for sudden changes, not small wobbles.
• Check your most important pages and queries.
• Look for queries with many impressions and few clicks: candidates for better titles and descriptions.

Data is usually delayed by a couple of days, and the report keeps 16 months of history.

2. Page indexing

Shows how many pages are indexed and why others are not, with reasons such as "Excluded by 'noindex' tag", "Crawled - currently not indexed" or "Not found (404)".

• Watch for sudden jumps in a reason, which usually follow a site change.
• Check that your important pages are indexed, using the URL Inspection tool for individual pages.
• Not every unindexed URL is a problem: duplicates, redirects and pages you excluded on purpose are expected.

3. Sitemaps

Confirm your sitemaps were read recently and that the number of discovered URLs looks right.

4. Core Web Vitals

Groups pages as good, needing improvement or poor for mobile and desktop, based on real visitors. Look for new "poor" groups, usually caused by a template change. See Core Web Vitals explained.

5. Security and manual actions

Manual actions and Security issues should be empty. If anything appears, it explains the problem and what to fix, and it comes first.

6. Links (monthly is enough)

Shows your most linked pages, top linking sites and top internal link targets. Useful for spotting new links, and for checking that your most important pages get internal links.

Turn it into a habit

• Set aside 15 minutes on the same day each week.
• Write down anything unusual with the date, and any site changes released that week.
• Make sure the right people get Search Console's email alerts: add colleagues or clients as users.

For reporting the results to others, see How to report SEO results to clients. If something drops suddenly, work through Diagnosing a sudden drop in organic traffic.