There are many benefits when you register a domain with Google Search Console, such as being able to request a re-crawl on a specific page, fix error files, and get daily reports on domain search results on search engines.
In this article, we will discuss the benefits of Google Search Console and some common troubleshooting. Here is more information.
What is Google Search Console?
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| How to fix Google Search Console Errors? |
Google Search Console is a free tool from Google that can be used to monitor search results, request article indexing, and troubleshoot websites on search engines.
There are 4 main menus offered by Google Search Console, namely reporting, index, page experience, and improvements. The report menu contains information on your website's performance on Google. The Index menu contains coverage, sitemaps, and removal of your website URL on search engines. The experience menu contains information on core web vitals data and website experience reports on mobile and desktop versions.
While the last menu is improvements, which contains schema and rich snippets on your website. You can learn a guide on schema and rich snippets through the following article: What are Schema and Rich Snippets.
What is the function of the Google Search Console?
The functions of Google Search Console include:
- Making it easier for website owners to make observations through the statistics provided. The information presented is quite complete, such as the number of website visitors, visitor access locations based on country, city and even more specific locations. So that website owners can explore according to the market and interests of website visitors.
- Can see popular search keywords and pages that are frequently visited by visitors. Website owners can use this function to find out popular keywords and implement them into website content and add content categories according to visitor interests from statistics on pages that are frequently accessed and visited.
- Checking website problems, sometimes in searches by Google Bot, obstacles related to website problems are found. Therefore, an evaluation is needed according to the notification given.
Troubleshooting in Google Search Console
Here are some obstacles that are often encountered in Google Search Console reporting.
1. Blocked by robot.txt
This obstacle appears because robots.txt prevents Google from crawling your website. So that the indexing process on the website is disrupted and eventually fails. The solution, you can re-check the robots.txt file used.
There are several reasons why this can happen, such as the contents of the robots.txt script that intentionally blocks or permissions on the folder that are not appropriate. For WordPress users, you can use the following robots.txt script.
User-agent: *Disallow: /wp-admin/Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.phpSitemap: https://domainname/sitemap.xml
2. Indexing error
This problem is usually caused by not finding an index such as a meta tag or http header on your website. This error can also be caused by your website failing to access or having an error.
For solutions related to meta tags, you can learn through the following article: Meta Tags: What They Are & How to Use Them for SEO
As for other possible errors such as error 500 or failed access to the website, you can try checking the website script. Make sure that the website and pages can be accessed properly, so that index problems like this do not appear.
3. Submitted URL Seems to Be a Soft (404)
This problem is caused because the URL on your website is not found by Google crawl. This often happens when an article or image is deleted, but the website data is still found in search queries on Google.
The solution is, please check the URL that gets a 404 not found report and then make sure the article on the website can still be accessed. If it turns out that the article that gets a 404 error report can still be accessed properly, then you simply request a re-crawl via the Google Search console in the URL Inspection menu. Then do a 'live test' and 'request index'.
However, if the URL is not found or is intentionally deleted, then you can request the URL to be deleted via the Index > Delete menu.
4. Submitted URL Not Found (404)
In this problem, Google informs that the page being searched for is no longer available. Different from the previous problem which can still be accessed but the page or content is not available, this problem has informed that the page or URL is no longer available so that the website owner is required to re-check via the URL provided.
5. Server Error (5xx)
This problem is caused because Google Bot cannot reach the requested website URL. One of the issues that can cause this to happen is from the destination server side which is down, so that the crawling process will stop.
The solution is, you can access the URL that is considered a 5xx error. After that, make sure that the URL can be accessed from your connection properly. Next, you can use the 'URL Inspection' feature to request a recrawl to Google.
6. Redirect Error
Redirect Error is caused by a change in the indexed page. This can be caused by you intentionally changing the page URL, or the redirect process to the new page fails. We recommend that if you change the URL, use a 301 redirect which functions to permanently change the URL.
The solution, please check the indexing error results reported by the Google search console. Checking can be done by accessing the error URL. If the redirect fails, please fix the redirect URL. If the redirect is successful, then make sure that you use a 301 Redirect which functions to permanently change the URL.
Conclusion
Addressing indexing issues in Google Search Console can affect your site’s visibility in search results. However, with the right steps such as checking robots.txt, removing noindex tags, fixing broken URLs, and resubmitting your sitemap, you can effectively resolve this issue. Also, make sure to monitor your indexing status regularly to ensure that all important pages on your site are properly indexed by Google.
