Google Search Console.

Google Search Console (GSC) is Google's free tool for monitoring and maintaining a site's presence in Google Search results. It provides data on queries that drive impressions and clicks (with average position), index coverage (which pages are indexed and which have errors), Core Web Vitals field data, manual actions, and mobile usability issues.

Performance Report

The Performance report shows clicks, impressions, CTR, and average position for queries, pages, countries, and devices. The 16-month rolling window allows year-over-year comparison. Filtering by specific query clusters reveals keyword opportunity: pages with high impressions and low CTR benefit from title tag optimisation; pages with poor average position benefit from content improvement.

Index Coverage Report

The Coverage report categorises all URLs Google has attempted to crawl: Valid (indexed), Valid with warnings (indexed but has issues), Error (not indexed), and Excluded (not indexed, intentionally or otherwise). Excluded reasons include 'Crawled – currently not indexed' (crawled but Google chose not to index), 'Duplicate without user-selected canonical', and 'Blocked by robots.txt'. Each status requires different remediation.

URL Inspection Tool

The URL Inspection tool reveals how Google sees a specific URL: last crawl date, crawl status, rendered screenshot, structured data detected, and whether the page is indexed. It also allows requesting a fresh crawl for urgent indexing needs. This is the first tool to use when investigating why a specific page isn't ranking or indexing.