Google Search Console: Tips and best practices
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Understanding data freshness and validation
The Include fresh data (not finalized yet) setting in the Search Analytics report allows you to access the most recent data from the last 2 days. However, this data is not yet finalized and may change, which can lead to discrepancies when comparing with the Search Console UI.
To ensure accurate validation, use data older than 2 days, as it is considered finalized.
If Include fresh data is not enabled, no data will be retrieved for the most recent 2 days. If the data is not finalized then it is not available.
Understanding search types
Select the appropriate search type for your analysis:
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Web: Default type — shows performance in regular Google search results. See how your blog, product pages, or service pages rank
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Image: Shows how your images appear in Google Images. Track image SEO performance (e.g., alt text, file names)
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Video: Tracks how your content appears in Google Video search results. Monitor video content like YouTube embeds or on-site videos
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News: Shows your performance in Google News and the News tab. Great for publishers or media websites
Understanding aggregation types
Controls how GSC aggregates data for URLs in reports. The default is Auto (let the service decide) where Google chooses how to aggregate data intelligently, often combining AMP/non AMP URLs (AMP=Accelerated Mobile Pages).
Aggregate by page (URI) groups performance by page while the last option groups it by property.
Report type comparison
Different Google Search Console report types serve different analysis purposes:
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Search Analytics - Tracks performance: Yes - Covers entire site: Yes - Focuses on crawling: No - Level of detail: High (for queries/pages) - Ideal for: SEO & keyword analysis
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Sitemaps Report - Tracks performance: No - Covers entire site: Yes - Focuses on crawling: Yes - Level of detail: Medium (overview by sitemap) - Ideal for: Crawl/index coverage
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URL Inspection Tool - Tracks performance: No - Covers entire site: No (one URL at a time) - Focuses on crawling: Yes - Level of detail: Very high (single URL) - Ideal for: Debugging a specific page
Recommended datastream configurations
Page Performance Report
Retrieves Page performance metrics such as clicks, impressions, ctr, position.
The following dimensions can be included: page, country, date, device
Query/Keyword Performance Report
Retrieves Query performance metrics such as clicks, impressions, ctr, position.
The following dimensions can be included: query, page, country, date, device
Search Appearance Report
Retrieves Search Appearance performance metrics such as clicks, impressions, ctr, position.
The only field required is Search Appearance (not compatible with other granularities/breakdowns).
Site Map Report
Checks your page and whether it’s been crawled. Includes site map submission, warnings, errors etc.
Requires the Sitemaps report type.
Connector limitations
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2-3 day delay in finalized data
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Search Appearance is not compatible with other dimensions. Therefore it requires its own datastream
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If you fetch ALL search types in one report, search type is not an included field
Levels of granularity
Available dimensions include: Query, Page, Country, Device, Date, Search Appearance, URL Inspection
Discrepancies between totals
When you specify dimensions in your data collection from Google Search Console and later aggregate the values, the totals might be different from the totals you would see if you collected data without specifying dimensions. For more information, see the Google Search Console API documentation.