Google Releases Search Console Insights for Publishers and Content Creators

Google has started its close beta phase for a new feature in Google SearchConsole – Insights. GSC Insights is Google’s way of helping content creators and publishers have a more in-depth understanding of their content’s performance in search and how it is discovered by audiences. So, what exactly does this new feature entail for publishers and content creators?

Search Console Insights

Search Console Insights is a feature that will give new data sources for publishers and contentcreators so they can understand how their content works in search, how users discover it in search and through the use of different queries/keywords, the links it acquires over time, and how it performs on social media channels. 

 As Google says it:

“Search Console Insights is a new experience tailored for content creators and publishers and can help them understand how audiences discover their site’s content and what resonates with their audiences. This new experience is powered by data from both Search Console and Google Analytics.”

 

The Benefits of Search Console Insights

Aside from the benefits I’ve already mentioned above, Search Console Insights Aims to answer these questions for publishers and content creators:

• • What are your best performing pieces of content?
  • How are your new pieces of content performing?
  • How do people discover your content across the web?
  • What are your site’s top and trending queries on Google Search?
  • What other sites and articles link to your site’s content and did you get any new links?

Most of these questions are answered using a specific page’s number of Pageviews and the Avg. Page View Duration that users generate during visits to your pages. 

They’re also able to show you the channel that the users came through to find your pages (organic, direct, and referral) and which top queries are used to find your website on Google.

Lastly, they show data on how well links from other websites performed (pageviews and avg. page view duration that was generated from users clicking on links pointing to your website). This also applies to Social Media channels, which I’ve mentioned earlier. 

How to Use Search Console Insights

It’s currently on closed beta, which means only a select few publishers and content creators are testing it out as of the moment. 

You can check the emails that you use for your Google Analytics and Google Search Console accounts to see if you’re one of the few that can test it out. 

We experienced something interesting regarding Search Console Insight though. Since we have clients that share their GA and GSC access to us since SEO Hacker is their SEO provider, we have one client that’s currently invited for the closed beta testing, but the problem is, we only have minimal access to their Google Analytics account. So, if this happens to you, this is what you’ll be seeing:

We had trouble finding which specific website we’re handling had access to the closed beta feature since we didn’t receive the email invitation for closed beta testing. If you’re experiencing the same situation, just click on Learn how to get access and click on see your existing properties in the Search Console part and a new tab will open with the specific GSC property showing up. 

Key Takeaway

This seems like a cool new feature that will help us understand our audience more and hopefully help us create better content that they can enjoy. Since it’s still in its closed beta phase, the testers need to provide genuine, useful feedback so Google can create a much better version of it. Right now, it looks okay, but it’s nothing special since most of the data they use can already be viewed in both Google Analytics and Google Search Console. 

However, if Google can put in more valuable and granular data that will make audience and performance analysis more in-depth, then they’ll make a worthwhile feature. What do you think about this new feature? Will it help you or not? Let me know in the comments below!