In a new video tutorial, Google search advocates Daniel Waisberg and Cherry Prommawin explain how to leverage Google Search Console reports to manage and optimize news websites.
The video provides comprehensive information on using Search Console data to achieve greater success on Google 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 provides different sets of data to review your site’s performance.
“The best way to analyze your search presence is through Search Console performance reports,” explains Wasiberg.
Search Console lets you see data from the News tab and top Google Search results. You can filter data to check performance on various Google Search tabs, including Web, Image, Video, and News.
Unlock the potential of data analytics
Prommawin shares some techniques for evaluating data from Search Console performance reports.
In particular, if you don’t see critical pages in a performance report, they aren’t getting traffic from Google Search.
Use the URL Inspection Tool to determine if individual pages are indexed and crawlable correctly.
In addition, Prommawin explains how to identify opportunities by analyzing search patterns:
“If you find that people searching for sports news are always attaching your brand to their queries, it could be a sign that that content is attracting a loyal audience to your site.”
Another crucial metric in performance reporting is click-through rate (CTR).
If a page has a high number of impressions but a low number of clicks, it may indicate that the search snippets are not attracting attention.
Improving your titles and descriptions can help make your snippets more engaging.
Statistics about 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 cover information in the News tab of Google Search results.
Despite the difference in data, the types of analysis performed with the Google News report are similar to those performed with the Search Performance report.
Prommawin suggests:
“An interesting analysis is to export the data from both reports and try to compare what works in Google Search with what works in Google News.”
Addressing weather variability
Both proponents emphasized the importance of analyzing performance data over multiple time periods.
A longer analysis period could highlight a site’s long-term content and top news categories, while a shorter period could show more information about current news.
“Looking at a longer time frame should highlight your site’s most perennial long-term content and your sites top news categories. Looking at a shorter time frame should show you more information about bigger news stories that are breaking currently looking for,” Waisberg explained.
Using the Search Console
The tutorial concludes by urging news organizations to use Search Console, which offers many ways to optimize a site’s presence in Google Search and Google News.
By following the tips shared in the video, news sites can better optimize their performance, drive more traffic, and be successful on Google’s platforms.
source: YouTube
Featured Image: Screenshot from YouTube.com/GoogleSearchCentral, May 2023.
