What is Google Search Console?
Google Search Console (GSC, formerly Webmaster Tools) is an essential SEO tool directly from Google. It shows how Google sees and indexes your website. Main functions: Performance report (clicks, impressions, CTR, position for keywords), Index coverage (which pages are indexed and which aren't), Core Web Vitals, Mobile Usability, Security issues, manual actions (penalties), and backlinks. Through GSC you can also submit sitemaps, request indexing for individual URLs, and test structured data. The performance report is gold for SEO - it shows real data for which keywords you rank.
Key Points
- Shows real Google data about your website
- Performance report: keywords, clicks, impressions, CTR, position
- Index coverage reveals crawling problems
- URL inspection tool for quick indexing
- Core Web Vitals performance data
- Backlink data from Google itself
Practical Example
“Search Console shows we rank position 4 for "SEO agency Vienna" with an 8% CTR.”