Google Replacing ‘Warning’ Labels In Search Console

Google is simplifying Search Console reports so you can focus more on issues that affect how your website appears in search results.

The upcoming changes will affect the ‘warning‘ label for URLs and items. There’s confusion around whether this status means a page or item can’t appear in Google.

To alleviate that confusion, top-level items will be labeled as either valid or invalid.

‘Valid’ refers pages or items without critical issues, while ‘invalid’ to pages or items with critical issues.

In a blog post, Google sums up how this will benefit Search Console users:

“We think this new grouping will make it easier to see quickly which issues affect your site’s appearance on Google, in order to help you prioritize your fixes.”

You’ll also see ‘valid’ and ‘invalid’ labels when looking at reports rendered by Google’s URL inspection tool.

Individual issues are still classified as error, warning, or good, which is communicated through use of color and icon rather than a text label.

The following reports are affected by this update:

• Core Web Vitals: Poor/Need improvement/Good categories are retained, while pages are grouped into good and not-good tables.
• Mobile Usability: Categories are labeled as either ‘Not usable’ and ‘Usable.’
• AMP report: Warnings are replaced with ‘valid’ and ‘invalid’ labels.
• Rich result reports: New labels will apply to Events, Fact checks, Logos, and other types of report.
• URL Inspection: The top level verdict for a URL will be either:
  • URL is on Google
  • URL is on Google, but has issues
  • URL is not on Google

You may not see any changes today, as this update is rolling out gradually over the next few months.

This is only a reporting change in Search Console. There are no changes to how your website is crawled, indexed, or served in search results.

Sources: Google Search Central, Search Console Help

Featured Image: Screenshot from developers.google.com/search/blog/, June 2022.