Optimizing News Sites Using Google Search Console Reports

In a new video tutorial, Google Search Advocates Daniel Waisberg and Cherry Prommawin explain how to leverage Google Search Console’s reports for managing and optimizing news websites.

The video provides comprehensive information about using Search Console data to achieve greater success on Google’s platforms.

Performance Report: The Key To Analyzing Search Presence

Waisberg begins by discussing the importance of Search Console Performance Reports, highlighting three key reports: Search, Discover, and News.

Each report offers distinct data sets to review your site’s performance.

“The best way to analyze your search presence is through the Search Console Performance Reports,” Wasiberg explains.

Search Console allows you to view data for the News tab and the main Google Search results. You can filter data to check the performance on various tabs in Google Search, including Web, Image, Video, and News.

Unlocking The Potential Of Data Analysis

Prommawin shares a few techniques for evaluating data from Search Console performance reports.

Notably, if you don’t see critical pages on a performance report, they aren’t receiving traffic from Google Search.

Use the URL Inspection tool to determine whether individual pages are indexed and can be crawled properly.

Further, Prommawin explains how to identify opportunities by analyzing search patterns:

“If you find out that the people searching for sports news always attach your brand name to their queries, it could be a sign that this content brings a loyal audience to your site.”

Another crucial metric in performance reports is the click-through rate (CTR).

If a page has a high number of impressions but a low number of clicks, it may indicate search snippets aren’t attracting attention.

Improving titles and descriptions can help make the snippets more appealing.

Insights Into Google News & Google Search

The Google News report is separate from the Search Performance report, offering data from news.google.com and the Google News app on Android and iOS.

This data doesn’t cover information from the News tab in Google Search results.

Despite the difference in data, the types of analyses performed with the Google News report are similar to those executed with the Search Performance report.

Prommawin suggests:

“One interesting analysis is to export both reports’ data and try to compare what is working on Google Search with what is working on Google News.”

Addressing the Variability of Time

Both advocates emphasized the significance of analyzing performance data over various time frames.

A more extended analysis period could highlight a site’s evergreen long-term content and main news categories, while a shorter period might show more information about currently trending news stories.

“Looking at a longer period of time should highlight your site’s more evergreen long-term content and the main news categories of your sites. Looking at a shorter period should show you more information about bigger news stories currently being searched,” Waisberg explained.

Taking Advantage of the Search Console

The tutorial concludes by urging news organizations to use Search Console, which offers many ways to optimize a site’s presence on Google Search and Google News.

Following the advice shared in the video, news sites can better optimize their performance, attract more traffic, and succeed on Google’s platforms.

Source: YouTube

Featured Image: Screenshot from YouTube.com/GoogleSearchCentral, May 2023.