Launched as a free service, Search Console Insights aims to provide a better understanding of how a site’s content is found and what connects with their audiences.
What makes the service unique is that the data is combined from Google Search Console and Google Analytics, and then amalgamated to deliver insights into content performance.
The outputted data from both the tools that many marketers love promises an entirely different perspective on evaluating SEO and or content efforts.
How To Access the Search Console Insights Reporting Tool
The search console insights can be opened via three methods:
- Method 1: Go to Google Search Console first, and then from the overview tab, select “Search Console Insights.”
- Method 2: Directly navigate to this link, provided by Google.
- Method 3: Search in Google or other search engines to enter the tool.
How Can the Search Console Insights Be Useful?
When used appropriately, this new tool can help answer questions such as:
- What the best pieces of content are, performance-wise.
- Which articles or content posts are trending.
- What people search for in Google, before they landed on your post or page. In other words, an idea of which keywords brought the users to your site.
- Which articles refer users to your content pieces.
In fact, the tool has a few practical metrics such as average page view duration, page views, trending queries, and more.
Brief Overview of How the Search Console Insights Looks Like and How It Works
As soon as you log into the tool, so to speak, the first metric it diverts your attention to is the All-time page views. Right underneath, you’ll see an overview card of the past 28 days where the following data points are available:
- Page views in the last 28 days, along with the percentage change when compared to the previous 28 days.
- Average page view duration in the last 28 days, accompanied by the percent change from the preceding 28 days.
At this point, all the metrics are on the site level, as opposed to page by page/post by post level.
Search Console Insights Sections
Primarily, the tool is divided into two sections, with each having its own sub-sections. (Sub-sections are displayed as cards, as seen in the screenshot above).
The two sections are:
Section 1: Site Overview
This section starts with a general card of page views + avg. page view duration from the past 28 days, which we’ve already seen above.
Further, it also comprises of a card called “Your new content” — which essentially translates to content pieces that just about started to receive their first page views — again, in the past 28 days. On this card as well, page views and duration are displayed, except it’s for individual articles.
Note that your content piece needs to get a “minimum” number of page views to appear here,” according to Search Console Insights.
What makes this card stand out is that from here, you can click into the individual line items to get additional details about performance — for that page.
Lastly, the site overview section also stores details about “Your most popular content” by page view from the last 28 days. Inside of this card, you may have special labels, such as high avg. duration for content pieces that retain users for an extended time.
Section 2: How People Find You
This section contains more than a few sets of cards. They are:
- “Top traffic channels” card.
- A card for “Google Search” with page views, avg. page view duration, clicks, followed by a drop-down with two filters options of most searched queries and most trending queries. Both these filters will have the applicable click data, along with distinctive labels, such as Top 5 results.
- Next, is a card on “Referring links from other websites,” with a subsequent card on “Social media.”
Note: You may get fewer or more cards, and they may not necessarily be arranged in the same order. I haven’t operated the tool on multiple websites just yet, and considering it’s relatively new, this may be possible, or not.
Search Console Insights FAQ
Yes; however, it is recommended by Google to associate the two properties together for a robust analysis of your site performance.
At this point, no. But support for it may be coming soon down the line, as Google is already working on it.
My advice would be to follow the recommendations straight from Google.
At this junction, it doesn’t seem so. Nevertheless, what the tool is offering feels like that it’s only scratching the surface. I wouldn’t be surprised if more functions and features are introduced over time. Search Engine Journal reported that Google has been testing the tool for almost a year, which hints that the organization is taking this endeavor seriously.
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Summary
The new Search Console Insights by Google is undoubtedly a more visual type of reporting that can add extra context & relevancy (or the lack of) to your organic performance.
Any publisher or content creator looking to get more answers into their SEO efforts can leverage this free tool to measure how their strategy is faring in the real world.
Expert Sources and Citations