The search console is a vital and a valuable tool for the SEOs. No SEO can neglect the data offered in this tool.
As of May 20, 2015, Google rebranded Google Webmaster Tools as Google Search Console.In January 2018, Google introduced a new version of the Search Console, with a refreshed user interface and improvements.
Google launched the new Search Console at the beginning of 2019. Since then Google has been upgrading the new search console and also responding to the feedback sent by the webmasters.
Google has reached another important milestone and has bid a farewell to many old Search Console reports, including the home and dashboard pages.
The old search console which was known as Webmaster Tools prior to 2015 helped site owners and webmasters to monitor and improve their performance on Google Search for over a decade.
Google says:
"From now on, if you try to access the old homepage or dashboard you’ll be redirected to the relevant Search Console pages. There are only a few reports that will still be available on the old interface for now - check the Legacy tools and reports in the Help Center. We're continuing to work on making the insights from these reports available in the new Search Console, so stay tuned!"
If you want to share any Search Console memories or stories, please use the hashtag #SCmemories on Twitter.
General changes
The new Search Console has the following improvements over the old version:
- Sixteen months of search traffic data, versus three months in the old product
- Detailed information about a specific page, including index coverage, canonical URL, mobile usability, and more
- Tracking flows to help you monitor, fix, and request a recrawl of pages affected by crawling issues.
- New and improved reports and tools, described next.
- Works on mobile devices.
Currently unsupported features by the new Search Console:
Here are some features that aren't yet supported in new Search Console. To use them you will have to use the old Search Console, for now.
- Crawl Stats data (pages crawled per day, KB downloaded per day, page download times)
- Robots.txt tester
- Managing URL parameters in Google Search
- Data highlighter tool
- Reading and managing your messages
- Change of address tool
- Setting preferred domain
- Associating your Search Console property with an Analytics property
- Disavow links
- Removing outdated content from the index
