Google finishes migrating all Search Console properties to an updated system that simplifies how pages, items, and issues are classified.
An announcement that the migration is complete was published on Twitter today:
We completed the migration. Read more about all the changes related to Search Console's updated issue categorization, including new changes to the Coverage (Page indexing) report https://t.co/m2CakCmVoe https://t.co/FWHxLcoNfl
— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) August 15, 2022
Two months ago, Google began this effort to help Search Console users focus more on critical issues.
To accomplish that goal, Google Search Console no longer groups URLs or items at the top level by three or more status categories.
Previously, Search Console reports classified URLs with Valid, Warning, and Error labels.
You’ll see items in Search Console reported grouped into two broad statuses to indicate whether they’re valid or invalid.
Invalid means there’s a report-specific critical issue in the page or item, and valid means the item has no critical issues (but may still contain warnings).
Implications for the new valid and invalid identifiers vary by report type. Google breaks down what this means for each report affected.
Updates To Google Search Console Reports – What’s Changing?
Search Console still categorizes individual issues as error, warning, or good. What’s changing is these classifications are now implied through color and icons rather than a text label.
These are the changes rolling out to individual Search Console reports:
- Coverage (Page indexing): The Valid and Valid with warning pages are grouped into the Indexed status. The
- Error and Excluded issues have been grouped into the Not indexed status.
- Core Web Vitals: The report now groups pages into two tables: one table for Poor/Need improvement and one for Good pages.
- Mobile Usability: Categories are now Not usable and Usable.
- AMP report: The first table shows AMP pages that are affected by critical issues, while the second table shows non-critical issues.
- Rich result reports: The first table shows rich results that are affected by critical issues, while the second table shows non-critical issues.
- URL Inspection: The top-level verdict for a URL will be one of the following three categories:
- URL is on Google
- URL is on Google but has issues
- URL is not on Google
To be clear, Google Search Console isn’t adding or removing data from reports. This change only affects how issues are classified.
You have access to all the information available before this update rolled out.
For more details regarding changes to the above Search Console reports, see Google’s new help page.
Featured Image: YueStock/Shutterstock
