Area
Search Console
What Search Console launched in 2025 and 2026, and how practitioners work with its data.
Topics in this area 2
68 claims · 7 sessions
What's new in Search Console
Google presented five Search Console launches. Query groups cluster queries with the same intent (computed with AI, shown in Insights, with no effect on ranking). An AI-powered configuration turns a natural-language request into Performance report filters and applies them only after the user approves. The generative AI control lets owners decide whether content may be used in AI results, and a generative AI report counts impressions in AI surfaces by page, country and device, while the regular Performance report still includes AI traffic. Platform properties let owners verify Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube accounts through a pop-up from the platform and see the traffic Google Search, Discover and News send to them. Multimodal search reporting, announced on 24 September 2026, covers Lens, Circle to Search and image searches. The generative AI control and report repeat Day 1, where Google's launch post dated the report 3 June 2026, rolled out to all sites by 31 August 2026. Query groups (announced 27 October 2025) are available only to properties with a large volume of queries, the AI-powered configuration is experimental and visible to a small percentage of users with 20 requests a day, and a claimed Search profile adds its verified accounts as platform properties automatically. Day 1 and Day 2 added existing tools to that picture: Google points to the Crawl Stats report (Settings, Crawl stats) as the most valuable tool for debugging crawl errors alongside server logs, showing how much Google crawls, the errors it received, the content types fetched and the split between discovery and refresh crawling, and Google's site move guide and a community migration both use the Change of Address tool. In the Day 1 Q&A John Mueller said that if Crawl Stats shows about half of a site's crawling going to discovering new pages, crawling of new pages is not the problem, and Google said soft 404s are looked up in the page indexing report rather than in Crawl Stats. An audio recording of Day 1's robots.txt talk added the robots.txt report: it shows the file as Google last fetched it, with a version history and the errors and successes of each fetch, and Google said it uses Google's open-source parser and helps catch CDNs that change robots.txt without the owner knowing and hosts that cloak the file (the last two points are not in Google's docs). A community speaker said publishers can verify their social accounts in Search Console to track repurposed content, which fits the platform properties launched on Day 3.
Day 1Day 2Day 3
47 claims · 5 sessions
Working with Search Console data
A community talk showed an agency workflow that exports Search Console data to BigQuery and lets an LLM agent query it. Google's docs confirm the limits behind it: the interface exports only 1,000 rows, the API and the Looker Studio connector up to 50,000 rows per day per site per search type, and only the bulk export avoids the daily cap. The branded versus non-branded filter is made by an AI-assisted system and works only on top-level properties with enough data, and anonymized queries are left out whenever a filter is applied, so filtered rows do not add up to the chart totals. The agency's use cases included reporting content refreshes, finding bad cannibalization and running SEO experiments that start from a hypothesis. Author’s view: tell the LLM about these gaps and spot-check the branded split before trusting its sums. The agency also combines Search Console data, LLM referral traffic from GA4 and the generative AI report in one prompt to compare classic and AI performance, although that report, launched in June 2026 as Day 1 noted, has no click or query data. Day 1's first lightning session, captured by a second recording, showed the same risks from the practitioner side: a chatbot called an average position moving from 8 to 9 an improvement, although position 1 is the top (as Search Console Help defines it), so a community speaker advised giving an LLM fixed metric definitions; another automated monthly reports through the Search Console API, which needs a Google Cloud project and OAuth2 credentials and is free of charge but subject to usage limits. Day 1 also showed the Crawl Stats report's split of crawl requests by response, file type and purpose (discovery versus refresh), with drill-down to the problem URLs. In the Day 1 Q&A a Google panelist expected more AI reporting to launch, without a timeline or a promise, and Google said it should not simply mirror classic results and that AI query data is hard to provide because AI questions do not map back to keywords and the data would have to be grouped to protect privacy while staying useful; it knew of no plans to add crawl stats to the API, a completely new part, whereas a variation of the Performance report would be easier, and said the Search Relations team talks with the Search Console team about the API more than before, partly because with so many vibe-coded systems around it is very easy to say 'use the Search Console API', and annoying when Search Console has no API for that. On Day 2 a community speaker noted that publishers can verify their social accounts in Search Console to track content repurposed for social platforms. Author’s view: since the API itself costs nothing, the cost check before automating is about usage limits and the paid parts of the pipeline, such as storage and model calls.
Day 1Day 2Day 3
Across days 14
- Stage D2-C884 Day 2 · Lightning session E: Managing Duplicates and Site Moves
The technical steps of a community speaker's domain consolidation included submitting new sitemaps, filing a change of address in Search Console and updating internal links so the new pages did not rely on redirects alone.
extendsStage D1-C540 Day 1 · Q&AAsked how to plan a migration that does not leave many URLs unindexed, a Google panelist said the answer is probably not sitemaps: decide what matters from the business's perspective (for example whether to consolidate languages); listing the new URLs in a sitemap is probably a good idea and cannot hurt, but it is not the main tool.
- Stage D3-C440 Day 3 · Inside Search Console: What’s New & How to Use It
Google called AI reporting in Search Console an evolving space and expects the generative AI report to get richer, with more information in the future.
extends - Stage D3-C442 Day 3 · Inside Search Console: What’s New & How to Use It
Search Console launched platform properties, which bring social platforms into Search Console, about three or four months before the October 2026 event.
extendsStage D2-C960 Day 2 · Lightning session F: MediaA community speaker said publishers can also verify their social accounts in Search Console, which makes it easier to track the performance of content repurposed for social platforms.
- Docs D3-C468 Day 3 · Inside Search Console: What’s New & How to Use It
Google's social and video performance guide says that if you already claimed your Search profile, all of its verified accounts are added automatically as platform properties in Search Console.
extendsD1-C025 Day 1 · What's new in the world of SearchPublishers and creators can claim a dedicated Search profile with a name, profile photo, cover image, bio, connected social and website accounts, pinned posts and links, and users can follow it.
- Docs D3-C468 Day 3 · Inside Search Console: What’s New & How to Use It
Google's social and video performance guide says that if you already claimed your Search profile, all of its verified accounts are added automatically as platform properties in Search Console.
extendsStage D2-C960 Day 2 · Lightning session F: MediaA community speaker said publishers can also verify their social accounts in Search Console, which makes it easier to track the performance of content repurposed for social platforms.
- Stage D3-C469 Day 3 · Lightning session L: Understanding SERPs and your users
In a community lightning talk, agency founder Nik Vujic presented how his agency feeds Search Console and GA4 data to an LLM agent to support decisions for its clients.
extendsStage D1-C255 Day 1 · Lightning session A: Automation and AIA community speaker who is not a developer automated monthly SEO reports with Python in Visual Studio Code, using Claude and ChatGPT as coding partners and Google Cloud for access to the Search Console API.
- D3-C477 Day 3 · Lightning session L: Understanding SERPs and your users
The community workflow's third step feeds the exported Search Console dataset into the agency's LLM agent, which queries the dataset and returns the evidence rather than a sample.
extendsStage D1-C256 Day 1 · Lightning session A: Automation and AIAn agency's automated monthly SEO report follows four simple steps: the data comes in, a script processes it, AI summarises it and the result goes onto a dashboard.
- D3-C478 Day 3 · Lightning session L: Understanding SERPs and your users
Nik Vujic's slide said no agent is needed to start: pull the Search Console data, import it into any LLM and query it in conversation; his agency built its agent to have everything in one place.
extendsStage D1-C256 Day 1 · Lightning session A: Automation and AIAn agency's automated monthly SEO report follows four simple steps: the data comes in, a script processes it, AI summarises it and the result goes onto a dashboard.
- Docs D3-C667 Day 3 · How long does it take to..?
Google's robots.txt guide says its crawlers update their cached copy of a site's robots.txt every 24 hours, and that the Request a recrawl option in Search Console's robots.txt report refreshes it faster.
extendsStage D1-C528 Day 1 · How Google interprets robots.txtSearch Console's robots.txt report shows the robots.txt file as Google last fetched it, with a version history and the errors and successes of each fetch.
- Analysis D3-C435 Day 3 · Inside Search Console: What’s New & How to Use It
Review the filters and regexes that Search Console's AI-powered configuration proposes before trusting the numbers: Google's launch post calls the feature experimental, warns that AI can misinterpret requests, and limits it to the Search results Performance report (not Discover or News) and to configuration, not sorting or exporting.
repeatsStage D1-C243 Day 1 · Lightning session A: Automation and AIThe first rule for using LLMs on search data, according to a community speaker, is never to let the model check its own output.
- Stage D3-C436 Day 3 · Inside Search Console: What’s New & How to Use It
Search Console has a tool with which every property owner can tell Google whether the site's content may be used in AI search results, because Google wants content owners to control their content.
repeatsD1-C029 Day 1 · What's new in the world of SearchSearch Console has a property setting called Search generative AI that gives direct control over AI Overviews and AI Mode without affecting web rankings. Its states are inherit from parent, include and exclude.
- Stage D3-C437 Day 3 · Inside Search Console: What’s New & How to Use It
Search Console added reporting of the impressions a site's content gets in the AI surfaces of Google Search, found in the left navigation nested under Search results.
repeatsDocs D1-C124 Day 1 · How Search works and where's AI?Google's launch post for the Generative AI performance reports in Search Console (3 June 2026; rolled out to all sites worldwide by 31 August 2026) lists impressions, pages, countries, devices (Search only) and dates, and no click or query metrics.
- Stage D3-C439 Day 3 · Inside Search Console: What’s New & How to Use It
Search Console's generative AI report shows impressions broken down by pages, countries and devices.
repeatsDocs D1-C124 Day 1 · How Search works and where's AI?Google's launch post for the Generative AI performance reports in Search Console (3 June 2026; rolled out to all sites worldwide by 31 August 2026) lists impressions, pages, countries, devices (Search only) and dates, and no click or query metrics.
- Stage D3-C440 Day 3 · Inside Search Console: What’s New & How to Use It
Google called AI reporting in Search Console an evolving space and expects the generative AI report to get richer, with more information in the future.
repeatsStage D1-C196 Day 1 · What's new in the world of SearchGoogle said Search Console's generative AI reporting launched alongside the generative AI control, starting with impressions only, and may expand later.