You opened Search Console. Now what should you look at?

Google Search Console is a free Google tool that shows how your website appears in Google search, which queries it shows up for and where it has technical problems. The difference from Google Analytics, which shows what visitors do on your site, is this: Search Console describes the moment before the visitor arrives, meaning the search result.

In this article we cover the reports you should check regularly in Search Console and the questions to ask when reading an SEO report. Our goal isn't to turn you into an expert, but to make sure you can interpret the reports you are given correctly.

The performance report: four numbers and one trap

The performance report has four core metrics:

The trap is average position. If your site starts appearing at position 50 for hundreds of new, unrelated queries, average position gets worse, but your visibility has actually increased. Conversely, if you drop out of some queries completely, the average may appear to improve. So look at average position not on its own but query by query.

One more note: Google has stated that impressions and clicks in new search features such as AI Overviews are included in web search data and are not shown as a separate line. So you can't isolate the effect of these features in Search Console.

Query and page tabs: the real information is here

The tabs below the chart are the most valuable part of the report. In the Queries tab you see which phrases people use to find you, and in the Pages tab which pages get traffic. Three situations to look for:

• High impressions, low CTR: The page appears but doesn't get clicked. The title and description should be rewritten, or the page may not match the search intent.
• Queries at positions 8-20: These queries, on the edge of page two, are the opportunities where strengthening the content gets results fastest.
• Non-brand queries: Filter out searches for your company name. Real SEO success shows up in searches made by people who don't know you yet.

We explained how B2B companies can draw content ideas from these lists in our article on B2B content strategy.

Be careful when comparing

Search Console keeps about 16 months of data, and its data usually arrives a few days late. When comparing:

• Compare this month not with last month but, if possible, with the same month last year. If your industry is seasonal, month-over-month comparisons mislead.
• Note public holidays, long vacation periods and trade fair seasons.
• Write down the dates of site redesigns, migrations or major content changes. When you see a break in traffic, that is the first place to look. We covered how to avoid losing traffic after a migration in our article on traffic loss during a site redesign.

Indexing and experience reports

The performance report answers the question "how visible am I?"; the indexing report answers "which of my pages can't appear at all?" In the Page indexing report you see the reasons pages weren't indexed. Not every reason is a problem; it is normal for redirected old addresses or pages you deliberately excluded to be missing from the index. The problem is when an important service or product page appears on this list.

By entering a single page's address in the URL inspection tool, you can see when Google last crawled that page and whether it is in the index. The Core Web Vitals report shows the speed and experience status of your pages in groups; we explained what these measurements mean in our Core Web Vitals guide. The Manual actions and Security issues sections should be empty; if there is an entry here, it is the priority.

How to read the SEO report you are given

If you receive a monthly report from your agency or team, ask these questions:

1. Did clicks from non-brand queries increase?
2. Is the increase on pages that matter to the business, or on an unrelated blog post?
3. Did these clicks turn into quote requests, calls or sales?
4. Have any important pages dropped out of the index?
5. Is there a reasonable link between last month's work and this month's change?

A report that highlights only rising impressions or average position is an incomplete report.

Practical checklist

• Weekly: Is there a sudden drop in the performance chart?
• Monthly: Changes in clicks for non-brand queries, and opportunity queries at positions 8-20.
• Monthly: Loss of important pages in the Page indexing report.
• Quarterly: The Core Web Vitals report and sitemap status.
• Always: Are the Manual actions and Security issues sections empty?

How we do it at Globya

In our SEO and GEO work, we prepare the report not as a pile of charts but as a short text that answers "what happened, why did it happen, and what will we do next?" We read search data together with form and phone inquiries, and if ads are running, we show the paid and organic channels separately. Ownership of your Search Console account always stays with you; we are added only as an authorized user.