Google Search Console is a web service by Google which allows webmasters to check indexing status, search queries, crawling errors and optimize visibility of their websites.^[1]

Until 20 May 2015, the service was called Google Webmaster Tools.^[2] In January 2018, Google introduced a new version of the search console, with changes to the user interface. In September of 2019, old Search Console reports, including the home and dashboard pages, were removed.^[3]

Features

The service includes tools that let webmasters

• Monitor website's performance in Google search results. ^[4]
• Submit and check a sitemap.^[5]
• Check the crawl rate, and view statistics about when Googlebot accesses a particular site.^{[citation needed]}
• Write and check a robots.txt file to help discover pages that are blocked in robots.txt accidentally.^[6]
• List internal and external pages that link to the website.
• Get a list of links which Googlebot had difficulty in crawling, including the error that Googlebot received when accessing the URLs in question.
• Set a preferred domain (e.g. prefer example.com over www.example.com or vice versa), which determines how the site URL is displayed in SERPs.
• Highlight to Google Search elements of structured data which are used to enrich search hit entries (released in December 2012 as Google Data Highlighter).^[7]
• View site speed reports from the Chrome User Experience Report.
• Receive notifications from Google for manual penalties.^[8][9]
• Provide access to an API to add, change and delete listings and list crawl errors.^[10]
• Check the security issues if there are any with the website. (Hacked Site or Malware Attacks)
• Add or remove the property owners and associates of the web property.