How To Do A Comprehensive Google Search Console Audit

Roughly 90% of all searches still happen on Google. Google Search Console is Google’s official tool that you can use to check your site’s performance in Google Search. You can audit Google Search Console to see which pages are indexed, which queries users are generally interested in, which pages perform best, and much more.

We conduct monthly full Google Search Console Audits for our clients to discover opportunities to enhance Search performance and identify bottlenecks that may be hindering organic search traffic growth. We also keep a diligent eye on weekly traffic and try to identify any early trends or issues that might cause trouble.

A good GSC Audit generally covers a few things:

A summary of your search performance on Google.
How is your website getting indexed
Which pages are driving most of your traffic, and which pages need improvement
Which queries are driving traffic to your website, and how can you find untapped opportunities
What caused a traffic drop
Whether there are some technical issues on the website that are holding back its potential

This guide assumes your site is already added and verified in Search Console. If you’re still at the setup stage, Google’s official documentation walks you through it.

Once the data starts populating, this is the first thing you should check:

Sitewide health check

This is the dashboard that you will see when you open your site property. On the left, selecting “Overview” gives you all your site data at a glance. Generally, you can see click trends, Indexing trends, brief details of your Core Web Vitals, HTTPS status, and Enhancement (Rich Results) status. Don’t worry, we will discuss all of these sections in detail, but seeing this at a glance or checking it regularly can also help you identify whether everything is functioning correctly.

Google has now integrated Insights directly into Search Console, where you can check your Top-Performing Pages and Queries. It also shows you which pages/queries are trending up or down. You can toggle between the date ranges you want to see and regularly check your Google Search Performance.

Performance

If you want to check your site’s performance in detail, click the “Performance” tab in the left-hand side panel. This section is often one of the most visited by business owners and SEOs alike because it provides in-depth information about the site’s performance. You will see a graph showing 4 trends: Clicks, Impressions, CTR, and Average Position. You can also toggle between time ranges and choose from 24 hours, 7 days, 28 days, 3 months, 6 months, a year, and the last 16 months.

GSC stores only 16 months of your site’s performance data. This is something you have to keep in mind, especially if you want to do YoY audits. There are certain methods you can use to extend that using BigQuery, Paid tools, or by exporting the data locally and storing it, but that’s a discussion for another day.

In the performance tab, you can also compare your current performance to the previous corresponding period. Below the graph, you can see several tabs, such as Queries, Pages, and Countries. Clicking each tab will show you the exact data for its respective dimensions.

You will most likely use the Queries & Pages tabs, as they provide detailed information about which searches drive users to your site via clicks. For which queries does your website appear most often, and which pages are underperforming despite being your top service/product pages? You can expand the data to view up to 500 rows on a single page and dive deeper. You can also use the filters; however, they come with limitations. We will share a workaround for it that will enable you to conduct the audit and gain insights into your site’s performance.

All the queries that are visible to you in the list are never complete. Google omits the anonymized data. They are generally included in unfiltered chart totals, but applying a query filter can change the totals because anonymized queries are then excluded.

Google now shows how your site performs in AI-related features. You can now see your site’s performance in AI-related features in the Google Search Console. In June 2026, they introduced Search Generative AI performance reports, which let you track impressions from AI Overviews, AI Mode, and Discover’s AI features.

This data was already available in your performance report. However, now you can see them separately. The feature is rolling out gradually, so it may not appear for your property yet. Also, the lack of “Clicks” metrics leaves lots of data interpretation to your imagination. Nevertheless, you can see what pages are performing best and replicate the process for the rest of your site.

During a full site review, we always analyze the share of your traffic coming from branded versus non-branded searches. Branded searches are from people who already know you and search for your business’s name. Non-branded searches are where visitors find you without knowing you in advance.

Learning the difference is important because for some sites, branded traffic can mask issues. Your total clicks might be stable; however, the non-branded traffic might be dropping. In the past, you could use regex to filter out either branded or non-branded traffic. However, Google has now added an option to filter branded traffic. But for now, it is only available for top-level properties with sufficient traffic. Also, the numbers are not always absolute, and Google admits there might be some discrepancies.

Now, we will conduct an in-depth analysis of the data provided by Search Console and how we can use it to maximize our organic search presence on Google.

How We Analyze Page-Level Performance in GSC

Most Google Search Console audits begin and end with a surface-level Page/Query Analysis. That is when you check the pages that have dropped in traffic and pages that have grown in traffic. This helps you plan your next move. Also, as your organic traffic grows, you need to uncover opportunities you cannot easily find in the Search Console interface.

There is a limitation in the current Google Search Console export: you can only view and export 1,000 rows. However, we have a simple workaround for that. For this, you’ll need Google Sheets and a free add-on called Search Analytics for Sheets. It’s a third-party tool that pulls data via Google’s official Search Analytics API, and instead of a 1000-row cap, you get a goldmine of data up to 25000 rows. However, just so you know: Anonymized queries remain excluded, and the Search Analytics API is subject to daily data limits. For very large properties, Search Console’s BigQuery bulk export is the more scalable and practical option.

However, in most cases, Search Analytics will still be useful, and here’s how to set it up:

Open a new Google Sheet and go to Extensions > Add-ons > Get add-ons.
Search for “Search Analytics for Sheets” and click Install. You’ll be asked to grant permissions; this is a one-time authorization.
Make sure you authorize it with the same Google account that has access to your Search Console property. If your GSC access is on a different account, the add-on won’t see your sites.
Once installed, go to Extensions > Search Analytics for Sheets > Open Sidebar. A panel will open on the right side of your sheet. You only need to authorize once per account; after that, it works in all your spreadsheets.

Now you are ready to import your site’s data from Search Console into Google Sheets. You can select a date range, group pages and queries together, or apply custom filters, for example, pulling only your blog traffic. Afterward, just “Request Data,” and you are ready to do an in-depth analysis in Google Sheets. You can use custom formulas and other things. Now we will discuss a few things you can interpret from your data:

Finding the real opportunities for Pages:

Just to set the tone, you cannot judge different page types by the same parameters. A blog traffic page will not have the same metrics as a location or service page. So, before you do the analysis, it is necessary to set the expectations that different pages need to be judged differently. You can filter and focus on the pages and queries that mean the most for your business.

You can look at a specific page in isolation, or check a particular query or keyword, and see which URLs are getting impressions and clicks for that query. Should there be another page ranking for that query instead?

Why is the page’s CTR low? Can we make any changes to the search snippet that can improve it? Is there any particular query or page that has suddenly started to get a huge number of impressions? You can use numerous formulas in Google Sheets to manipulate data and extract the best information.

We recommend sorting your page by traffic to see which pages contribute the most to overall traffic. In most cases, a small number of pages drive the majority of all clicks. These pages deserve continuous enhancement without changing their core structure and intent. You should monitor these periodically, update them regularly, and replicate the patterns: if something works here, there’s usually a pattern you can repeat elsewhere.

After that, focus on the pages with potential & low CTR. The first type: pages with low CTR, the ones we discussed earlier. Google is serving pages in the results; however, the page snippets and your SERP features are not compelling enough for users to click through. In most cases, fixing the meta title and meta description or understanding the SERP layout helps you address low CTR.

Also, a point to be noted before you make any snippet changes or target SERP features: a low CTR at position 3 is a real problem, while a low CTR at position 15 is just normal, because barely anyone scrolls that far. The choice of strategy varies depending on where your page appears in the SERP.

The second type is the pages that are on the brink of breaking into the top 3 key positions. These are the pages that need a little push with a few optimizations and enhancements; a page at position 4 with strong clicks can often be pushed into the top three with a content refresh and a few internal links. These pages are on the brink of getting traffic; you just need to figure out the final optimization that is needed. But it is not that easy. It all depends on your understanding of the SERP & User intent.

This is where you need to do a SERP and competitor analysis. Learn why your page is just outside the top 10: is it search snippets, missing topical coverage, or the use of rich results, schema, internal links, or backlinks? You will always find something that could be improved.

We also recommend checking the queries for these pages in-depth. You will find a ton of information on what users are searching for and why your page is getting served by Google for those queries. Improving these pages should always be your top priority, as it will create a snowball effect on the traffic for the rest of your site.

The final category of the pages you would find on your site is Dead Pages. These are the pages that have not been getting either clicks or impressions for quite a long time. You will find some pages that have been affected by a core or spam update. Also, some pages would have thin content or be simply outdated. These pages need special analysis. We rarely recommend deleting a page; however, as Google has become noticeably more selective about what it crawls and indexes, tough decisions may be necessary. You can consolidate the content of these pages, delete them altogether, or redirect them if you feel they carry certain authority.

A quick word on Google Discover

If your content shows up in Google Discover, the personalized mobile feed, you’ll find a separate Discover performance report in Search Console. If you don’t see it, your site hasn’t met the minimum threshold yet. Discover works differently from regular Search. There are no queries, since Google surfaces your content to users based on their interests, rather than waiting for them to search for it. Traffic from Discover is much more volatile and unpredictable.

Query-Page Analysis

What stands out when using the “Search Analytics for Sheets” extension is that you can group the data by both “Query” & “Pages”. Attributing each query to its respective pages allows you to view the data in a unique way. There are different kinds of analysis that you can do by reviewing your Query – Page analysis.

Firstly, you can check which target queries have been attributed to which page. You can review the key terms and see which page Google thinks of, and compare that with the primary query your page should be ranking for. Next, you should review the historical data for the query; fluctuating rankings and frequent changes in URL attribution to queries may also be a sign of cannibalization.

Since we get Queries attributed to the URL it is associated with, we get unique data, the number of queries Google has found for the page in the selected time period. A growing query count usually indicates that the page is gaining visibility across a broader range of searches, even before you may see clicks in the data set.

A sustained decline can sometimes act as an early warning that the page is losing search visibility. Although this data may also depend on impressions, average position, and clicks, we can still conclude.

Cannibalization Check

Conversely, you can choose a query and count the number of pages it ranks for. This can give you an idea of whether your site is suffering from keyword cannibalization. You can also analyze this in Google Sheets with a simple formula. Let’s assume that your queries are in column A and the page URL in column B. Drop the formula given below next to your data in the empty cell at the top and fill it down.

=COUNTIF(A:A, A2)

Since the export from the Search Analytics extension pairs each query with the page it appeared on, you can easily identify queries that are appearing on multiple URLs. Anything above 1 is worth a look. Also, you need to filter out the URL-Page combinations with low impressions.

But before diving into the analysis, keep in mind that two pages for one query is not automatically a problem. Sometimes, it means that you own two spots in SERP for that query. What you want to find are the actual problems. Is the wrong page ranking above the right one? Are the positions flip-flopping between two URLs month after month?

Analyze the average position of both pages and check if both of them are not ranked because Google is not able to pick a clear winner. This is a classic sign of cannibalization, which might be hampering your site’s performance.

Pro tip: Run branded and non-branded cannibalization checks separately.

The fix depends on what you find. If you find two pages that have the same intent, you might want to consolidate them and redirect one to the other. If they serve genuinely different intents, you need to make them distinct by changing the page titles, meta descriptions, etc. And in both cases, optimize your internal linking to point to the page you want to rank for, and check your anchor text to match your query and its natural variations.

Using Regex

Using regex is a great way of finding buried opportunities in your query data. It is tough to analyze thousands of queries one by one and categorize them. However, using Regex in GSC or in Google Sheets will give you valuable insights. For example, you can find questions, pricing queries, location-based searches, comparisons, and more.

After that, you can use live SERP analysis or other paid tools, such as Ahrefs or Semrush, to get search data and compare your pages with competitors’. Here are some of the common regexes you can use in Google Sheets:

Questions: ^(how|what|why|when|where|who|which|can|does|is|are|do)\b

You can find queries as questions to add to FAQs, headings, or to learn about the user’s general pain points.

This is to identify the specific price-related queries users are searching for.

Location-based: (near me|city one|city two|city three)

This can actually be a goldmine for local businesses. You can also review them to identify nearby areas where your business should have a presence.

People at this stage are choosing between options. If you are showing up here without a page built for it, that is a clear content opportunity.

To use any of these in Google Sheets, wrap the pattern in REGEXMATCH:

=REGEXMATCH(LOWER(A2), "^(how|what|why|when|can)\b")

Keep in mind that filtered totals will always look smaller than your real numbers, because rare queries are never included in your data.

Traffic Drop Analysis in Google Search Console

Now that you have the data, you can start identifying the pages that have seen a month-over-month decline in traffic. Or there could be pages that performed tremendously well last year, but this year, the number of clicks has declined. It is important always to understand the context and learn the full story before making any knee-jerk decisions about the traffic drop.

Whenever you see a drop, the first thing is to determine whether it is attributable to a single page, a single query, a section of your site (similar pages or queries), or is site-wide.

In this case, the first thing you need to verify is whether the page is crawlable or indexable. After that, you need to inspect the URL in Google Search Console and check whether everything is fine in the inspection report. The most important things to review are the obvious ones: canonical, index tag status.

In case of a drop from a single query or a bunch of similar or related queries, check whether there is a drop in searches by doing Keyword research using any paid tools of your choice. Check the trend of Keyword search volume for that particular query, and if there is a drop in demand, there is little you can do.

Always check for Algorithmic updates by Google in and around the drop you are seeing on your site. This is important in cases where you are seeing a sitewide drop.

Getting through the Algorithmic updates has always been one of the biggest stressors for SEOs around the world. If you believe an Algorithmic update has impacted your site, it is important to contact a professional to determine the next course of action. Sometimes, Google evaluates your site after another update, and the traffic trends up again. However, sometimes the traffic may never come back.

If the page or query impressions are stable and the clicks have dropped, there may be a change in the SERP layout. You need to review your Search Snippet. Since the introduction of AI overviews and the AI mode, several SEOs have reported a drop in CTR, and in the future, we may need to set our expectations accordingly.

We have already discussed Cannibalization & Content Decay earlier; however, if you feel one of these issues is the primary reason for the traffic drop, you should devise your strategy accordingly. Export all the queries for the page that has seen a drop in traffic. Conduct an intent analysis to determine whether the page content meets the intent required by your audience and Google.

Good content does not guarantee ranking, and good rankings do not mean your content is good. However, we believe that a live SERP review is the most underrated step you can take to determine why your page is lagging. Always check for enhancements, word count, UX advantages, and many other factors that give your competitors the edge over you.

Always try to understand whether your page and page content are helpful. Review your analytics and engagement data, and check Microsoft Clarity recordings and heatmaps for UX issues. This data is not accessible to Google, but you can see it. If users are landing and leaving without finding what they came for, that is a real problem worth fixing, regardless of what Google measures or does not measure.

Technical and Indexing Status Check

This is a really important section that many people & businesses overlook during the GSC audit. One of GSC’s core functions is to provide you with an index status report on all available and unavailable pages.

Under the “Pages” option in the left-hand column, firstly, you will see “View data about your Indexed Pages”. You can see the number of URLs and their trends that have been indexed by Google, along with an example list of up to 1,000 indexed URLs.

An indexed URL is eligible to appear in Search, but indexing does not guarantee that it will appear for a particular query. Below that, GSC gives you a bunch of reasons why the pages are not getting indexed, and all the pages under each category.

The names of these categories keep changing in Google’s official documentation; however, the intent remains the same. In this blog, we will share the names of the reasons. If you want to know in detail about each category, what they mean, and what you need to know, read our blog: What Does “Pages Not Indexed ” Mean? Google Search Console (GSC)

Here are the categories that you might see:

Server error (5xx)
Redirect error
URL blocked by robots.txt
URL marked ‘noindex’
Soft 404
Blocked due to unauthorized request (401)
Not found (404)
Blocked due to access forbidden (403)
URL blocked due to another 4xx issue
Blocked by page removal tool
Crawled – currently not indexed
Discovered – currently not indexed
Alternate page with proper canonical tag
Duplicate without user-selected canonical
Duplicate, Google chose a different canonical than the user
Page with redirect

While you review, keep in mind that not every URL listed under “not indexed” is an issue. According to Google’s guidelines, if a page is not indexed for a valid reason, such as a different user-declared canonical, a 404 that does not have a replacement, or a page disallowed by robots.txt, you can leave it as it is. So the job here is not to clear out the list. The job is to figure out which of these statuses actually deserve your attention.

Usually fine, no action needed: Alternate page with proper canonical tag, Page with redirect, URL marked ‘noindex’ when you did it on purpose, and not found (404) for pages you deliberately removed.

Although you may expect a few surprises, you need to review these lists during a GSC audit. Suppose you find pages that should be indexed. Then there could be an issue in your setup, and you need to identify it. We also recommend skipping through the list regularly.

Worth investigating: Crawled – currently not indexed; Discovered – currently not indexed; Duplicate without a user-selected canonical; and Duplicate, Google chose a different canonical than the user.

A handful of URLs under these categories are generally expected for any site. However, if you see these categories trending up unexpectedly, then it is a signal to review and find the reasons. One possibility is that Google is unconvinced of your page’s quality, or that the canonical setup is incorrect.

Pro Tip: Export all the URLs you want to review into a Google Sheet or Excel, then use Screaming Frog to crawl them in List mode. This would filter out URLs that are just noise so that you can focus on the important pages.

Fix now: Server errors (5xx), redirect errors, and, most importantly, any page that should be indexed but is sitting in one of the buckets above. These are the URLs that need your attention straight away. You need to recognize any technical issues and rectify them.

Once fixed, you can validate your fixes in Google Search Console and review the Performance tab to see trends.

The report shows a maximum of 1,000 example URLs per status, and Google says that this list is not guaranteed to include every URL in a given status, even when there are fewer than 1,000. So if you suspect that thousands of URLs are affected, treat this report as a starting point and use tools such as Screaming Frog for in-depth analysis.

Also, it is advisable to compare the URLs in these reports with your website’s total URLs. If the report count is significantly lower, Google is not able to find the pages on your site. That means it is not an indexing issue but a URL discovery issue, and it usually points to weak internal linking or a sitemap that is not working as it should.

URL Inspection

Another great feature of Google Search Console is that you can enter and inspect every single URL in your property and check its status. It gives you both the status of the indexed URLs and the ability to test new pages before submitting them for indexing.

One thing to understand first: When you inspect a URL, Google shows you the most recently indexed version of the page. It does not show you the live version. If you want to see the live version, you need to “Test Live URL” separately.

The most important and useful information you can check by inspecting the URL is “Google-selected canonical” and “User-declared canonical”. If the two do not match, Google has selected a different canonical from the one you declared. Treat this as a symptom and investigate conflicting signals such as redirects, internal links, sitemap URLs, duplicate content, and canonical implementation.

Additionally, the tool tells you whether the index is allowed, when the page was last crawled, and how Google discovered it.

Live testing also lets you see how Google actually renders the page, which is always worth checking to see how your page looks in Google’s index. And of course, whether you have published a new service page or a new blog, you can test the URL and submit it for indexing right from here. Just know that there is a limit on how many requests you can make per property, so this tool is for your important pages, not for every URL on the site.

URL inspection tool in Google Search Console

Sitemaps

Make sure you have submitted a valid sitemap.xml link in the Google Search Console. Also, check whether it only contains canonical, indexable URLs. No invalid URLs, such as redirects or 404s, should be in the sitemap. Also, review the report for the last read date and errors.

Finally, check the number of URLs in the Sitemap and the indexed URLs. The large gap means either the sitemap is displaying incorrect URLs or Google does not believe all the pages are worth indexing.

Core Web Vitals and device performance

This report is an accumulation of data from the Last 28 days from real users. So if you have made any changes or updates, it might take some time for them to show up. Google wants you to prioritize the URLs that fall under “Poor” first. If you want a detailed report of the issues, use PageSpeed Insights.

This is a team effort and may require help from your developer to diagnose the problem.

Manual Actions

This is critical and should be reviewed regularly. It means that a Google representative has reviewed your site and found an issue that violates Google’s Spam policies. Until you fix the problem and request a review, some or all of your site may not show in search results at all. The fixes need to be global and thorough. Fixes to some pages might not always resolve the issue.

Security Issues

The Security issues report warns when Google believes your website has been hacked or could be harmful to visitors or their devices. Manual actions are imposed when Google thinks you are manipulating the search results. Security issues arise when Google flags your website as a security threat.

Needless to say, you should review this regularly, and if you receive a communication from Google, fix it as soon as possible.

HTTPS

This section has a simple purpose: To show how many of your indexed URLs are served over HTTPS and how many are on HTTP. If you identify any HTTP URLs in the report, something within your setup is leaking the insecure versions into Google’s index.

Robots.txt

The robots.txt can be found under Settings. It shows when the robots.txt was last fetched, and any warnings or errors that occurred while Google was trying to check the file.

One of the most important things to keep in mind is that robots.txt controls crawling but not indexing. If you want a page to be completely removed from the search results, use a noindex tag. Blocking the URL in the robots.txt won’t do that. Also, not having a robots.txt file means Google can crawl everything.

Crawl Stats

There are three things you should look for: total crawl requests, sudden spikes, or sharp drops. Also, Average response time can tell you how hard Google is struggling or how easy it finds crawling your site. Finally, the host status, which shows robots.txt fetching, DNS resolution, and server connectivity, is also worth a look.

You can figure out whether Google is having issues connecting. Recurring connectivity issues may warrant further diagnostics.

Enhancements & Rich Results

Under “Enhancements” in the left panel, you can check and review the report of all the rich results Google has detected on your site. For example, breadcrumbs, review snippets, or videos. Product snippets and merchant listings are available under Shopping. These reports only appear for the markup your site has, so that the list may vary for each site.

Just a small update: Google stopped showing FAQ rich results in Search in May 2026. FAQ schema can still be retained for other platforms or systems that may use structured data, but it no longer makes a page eligible for an FAQ rich result in Google Search.

Disavow Tool

One of the tools that you won’t find in the Google Search Console but that is important to know about is the Disavow tool. Google keeps it separate from the Search Console, and this is deliberate. This tool should always be used with extreme caution. Usually, people check third-party tools to review their backlink profile and notice the “spam score”. Then, it is advised to disavow the backlinks using the Disavow tool. However, this is rarely necessary.

You should only consider using the Disavow tool when you have a significant number of spammy, artificial, or low-quality links that may harm your site’s authority. Remember, just because a tool flags a link as spammy does not mean it is. You should definitely review each backlink to determine whether it could damage your website. Honestly, this is one of the features that you may rarely use.

What Next?

Auditing Google Search Console is just the beginning of your organic marketing strategy. Once users are on your website, you should always track user behavior, the actions they take, and how many are actually converting and completing the intended goal. You can use Google’s own tool, Google Analytics, to review all these things.

A blog page losing 200 clicks and a service page losing 200 clicks may mean different things when one of them was the source of half your leads last quarter. That is a separate discussion and one we will cover. However, if your business is looking for a comprehensive Google Search Console audit, do get in touch with us, and our team of experts will be happy to help.