Why you should add all properties in Google Search Console
As someone focused on improving your site’s performance, Google Search Console (GSC) is one of the most important free tools that you can use.
Google Search Console (formerly known as Google Webmaster Tools) is a free service provided by Google. It lets you monitor your website and optimize its performance in Google’s search results. It also gives you valuable information about how Google sees your website and how people are finding it.
One of the most common issues that gets webmasters and marketers in trouble is adding all the properties in Google Search Console.
The frequent debate is whether to add just your main property in Search Console, or to add them all? And how many is all of them?
Let’s start by considering the official documentation: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/34592?hl=en. According to Google, the best practice for adding sites/properties to Search Console is to add them all: “If your site supports multiple protocols (http:// and https://), you must add each as a separate site. […] Similarly, if you support multiple domains (for example example.com, m.example.com, and www.example.com) you must add each one as a separate site.”
What happens most of the times is that someone adds just 1 property in GSC. In some cases or for a while, it works. In others … it leaves you with partial/inaccurate data that doesn’t make sense.
This is a real example from one of my client’s website:
Background
The client’s website has a daily organic traffic of about 1400 sessions / day. For the analyzed period of 3 months Google Analytics shows a steady traffic pattern (organic), increasing like in the screenshot below:
The problem
For the same period of time, Google Search Console was displaying an increase of about 4000% on clicks and impressions, which was not reflected in Google Analytics.
Sometimes data from Google Analytics will vary from Google Search Console. Here you can find some possible reasons: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1120006?hl=en. But in this case, the differences were way too big to be explained by the reasons above.
Solution
After some research, the only possible explanation was that we were looking at partial data in Search Console. We received access to the other properties of the website. The missing data was in the other Search Console property, the HTTP one.
The migration from HTTP to HTTPS URLs was done almost a year before. Although the new URLs were indexed, Google Search Console did not completed the transition from one property to another, showing us a false ~ 4000% increase in clicks and impressions.
Conclusion
The huge increase in clicks and impressions was not real. The new clicks and impressions were actually “migrated” from the old property to the new one.
It’s important to add all your properties in Google Search Console, especially when you’re working on an existing project and you don’t know the complete and accurate history of the project. The case described above shows how you can miss important data about your site, because it’s reported in the other properties that you didn’t add in Search Console (or didn’t have access to). The main drawback here is that you will rely on partial and inaccurate data when making decisions and probably you won’t even know it.
So, to summarize:
- yes, you need to add multiple sites (all your properties) in Google Search Console. Usually, this means adding http://example.com, https://example.com, http://www.example.com, https://www.example.com
- set your preferred domain; do this setting for all of your properties
- tie your properties together using property sets, so you’ll have Search Analytics data aggregated: https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/05/tie-your-sites-together-with-property.html
Just some final quick tips for speeding up the transition of data in Search Console, when migrating from HTTP to HTTPS:
- if you moved from HTTP to HTTPS, make sure that your old pages are redirected correctly (301, of course)
- check all your online profile that may be using the old HTTP URL (especially Google Plus, since it gives Google a strong hint that you’re still using the old URL)
- confirm the new version by adding a rel=canonical on the HTTPS page, pointing to itself
Also, if you’re new to this, I recommend reading the official Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide: https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en//webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf.
Do you have a question? Share it in the comments below!
Originally published at mihaelagordon.com on November 28, 2016.
