In a new video tutorial, Google Search Advocates Daniel Waisberg and Cherry Prommawin explain how you can use Google Search Console reports to manage and optimize news websites.

The video provides comprehensive information on using Search Console data for more success on Google’s platforms.

Performance Report: The key to analyzing search presence

Waisberg begins by discussing the importance of Search Console performance reports, emphasizing three important reports: Search, Discovery, and News.

Each report provides different sets of data to review your site’s performance.

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

You can use Search Console to view data for the News tab and top Google search results. You can filter data to review performance across different tabs in Google Search, including Web, Image, Video, and News.

Unlock the potential of data analysis

Prommawin introduces some techniques for evaluating data from Search Console performance reports.

Specifically, if you don’t see critical pages in a performance report, they’re not getting traffic from Google Search.

Use the URL inspection tool to determine if individual pages are indexed and crawlable properly.

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

“If you find that people searching for sports news are always appending your brand name to their searches, it could be a sign that that content is bringing a loyal audience to your site.”

Another important metric in performance reports is click through rate (CTR).

If a page has a high number of impressions but a low number of clicks, it can be an indication that search snippets aren’t attracting attention.

Improving titles and descriptions can make the snippets more engaging.

Insights into Google News and Google Search

The Google News report is separate from the search performance report and provides data from news.google.com and the Google News app on Android and iOS.

This data does not include information from the “News” tab in Google search results.

Despite the different data, the types of analysis performed with the Google News report are similar to those of the search performance report.

Prommawin suggests:

“An interesting analysis is to export the data from both reports and compare what works on Google Search versus what works on Google News.”

Dealing with the variability of time

Both proponents emphasized the importance of analyzing performance data over different time periods.

A longer analysis period might highlight a site’s always-up-to-date, long-term content and main news categories, while a shorter period might show more information about currently trending news stories.

“A view over time should highlight the increasingly fresh, long-term content of your site and the top news categories on your sites. If you look at a shorter timeframe, you’ll get more information about larger news stories that people are currently searching for,” Waisberg explained.

Take advantage of the Search Console

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

By following the advice in the video, news sites can better optimize their performance, attract more traffic, and thrive on Google’s platforms.

source: Youtube

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