Search Console: the report that tells you what to fix
Photo: Avila Ops Tecnologia
Search Console has dozens of screens, but four reports answer almost everything a small business needs to know: “Pages” (what is missing from the index and why), “Performance” (what appears but gets no clicks), “Experience” (what is slow on mobile), and “Links” (who links to you). Read in that order once a month, they tell you what to fix and in what sequence.
The most common mistake is not ignoring the dashboard; it is opening it, seeing a chart, not knowing what it means, and closing it. If you have not activated the dashboard, start with the guide what is Search Console.
Where do I start: what is missing from Google?
Open “Indexing,” then “Pages.” The screen divides pages into indexed and not indexed. Ignore the total and go straight to the list of reasons pages are not indexed. Each reason is a clickable row showing affected URLs.
Reasons requiring immediate action: “URL marked ‘noindex’” on a page that should appear; “Blocked by robots.txt” on a public page; “Server error (5xx)”; “Not found (404)” on a page that still has incoming links. Reasons requiring analysis rather than panic: “Crawled - currently not indexed” and “Discovered - currently not indexed,” which generally mean weak or repetitive content. Reasons you can ignore: “Page with redirect” and “Alternate page with proper canonical tag,” which mean the website is working as intended. The five most common causes are detailed in the guide your page is not being indexed.
After fixing the issue, click “Validate fix” in the reason’s row. Google reexamines the pages over the following weeks and notifies you by email.
What appears often but gets no clicks?
Open “Performance,” then “Search results.” Select the four numbers at the top: clicks, impressions, click-through rate (CTR), and average position. Select the last three months. Then click the “Pages” tab and sort by impressions.
Look for pages with many impressions and CTR below 2%. They are being shown but losing clicks to their neighbors. The culprit is usually a generic title or blank description. Rewriting the title and description is the fastest SEO fix: the effect appears as soon as Google revisits the page.
Second search: in the “Queries” tab, find searches with an average position between 8 and 20. These are searches where you already appear on the first or second page, but low down. Strengthening those pages’ content with the answer the query seeks usually delivers more than creating a new page. Write down the three queries with the most impressions in that range; they are your content agenda for the month.
What is slow on mobile?
Open “Experience” and “Core Web Vitals,” Google’s experience metrics. The report shows how many URLs are good, need improvement, or are poor, separately for mobile and desktop. Data comes from real visitors, so low-traffic websites show “no data”; this is not an error.
If there are poor URLs, click to see which metric fails. The three are: time until the largest element appears (LCP, good up to 2.5 seconds), response delay after an interaction (INP, good up to 200 milliseconds), and content shifting during loading (CLS, good up to 0.1). Heavy images or third-party scripts are almost always the cause. We explain this in the mobile speed guide.
Who links to you?
Finally, “Links.” The top linking sites list shows the domains linking to yours. For a local business, expect a short list: directories, a business association, suppliers, perhaps a regional newspaper. What matters is noticing when a relevant link disappears (for example, a partner redesigned their website) and when large numbers of links from strange websites appear, which may signal a problem.
A monthly routine:
- Pages: fix noindex, robots, and 5xx errors. Validate.
- Performance by page: rewrite titles and descriptions for the three pages with the most impressions and lowest CTR.
- Performance by query: choose three searches ranking 8 to 20 and strengthen their pages.
- Experience: fix the worst mobile URL.
- Links: just look.
What to do now
Set aside 20 minutes today, open Search Console, and follow the five steps above, recording what you find. If you see an error you do not know how to fix, or prefer us to run this routine and report what changed each month: avilaops.com/presenca-digital-para-pequenas-empresas or contact us on WhatsApp: wa.me/5517997811471.
Frequently asked questions
How often should I check Search Console?
Once a month for the routine above, and whenever an alert email arrives. Checking daily does not help: data lags two to three days, and SEO changes take weeks.
Is “Crawled - currently not indexed” an error?
It is not a technical error. Google read the page and decided not to retain it, almost always because the content is short, duplicated, or similar to another of your pages. The fix is improving or combining the content, not requesting indexing again.
Is an average position of 12 good or bad?
It means you are near the bottom of the first page or the start of the second, on average. This is the range where improving a page usually delivers the most because Google already considers you relevant to that search.
Turn what you learned into your next step.
Tell us about your company and what you want to improve. We can explore the right tools, integrations or custom project together.