Mobile app, mobile website, desktop website -- how do you track their combined visibility in search? Until now, you've had to track all of these statistics separately. Search Console is introducing the concept of "property sets," which let you combine multiple properties (both apps and sites) into a single group to monitor the overall clicks and impressions in search within a single report.

It's easy to get started:

  1. Create a property set
  2. Add the properties you're interested in
  3. The data will start being collected within a few days
  4. Profit from the new insights in Search Analytics!

    Property Sets will treat all URIs from the properties included as a single presence in the Search Analytics feature. This means that Search Analytics metrics aggregated by host will be aggregated across all properties included in the set. For example, at a glance you'll get the clicks and impressions of any of the sites in the set for all queries.

    This feature will work for any kind of property in Search Console. Use it to gain an overview of your international websites, of mixed HTTP / HTTPS sites, of different departments or brands that run separate websites, or monitor the Search Analytics of all your apps together: all of that's possible with this feature.

    Don't just listen to us, here's what we heard from one of the beta-testers:

    It was one of my most important demands since the beginning of Webmaster Tools / Search Console. And I love the way it is given to us. I see that the remarks of beta-testers have also been understood by Google engineers. So thank you so much! -- Olivier Andrieu (Abondance)

    We'll be rolling this out over the next couple of days. If you have multiple properties verified in Search Console, we hope this feature makes it easier for you to keep track. If you have any questions, feedback, or ideas, please come and visit us in the webmaster help forum, or read the help documentation for this new feature!

    Posted by Ofir Roval, Search Console Team

    P.S. Want to become a beta-tester for future features? Just sign up to become a beta-tester and we'll get in touch.

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Evolution of search results for queries like [peanut butter cookies recipe]: with rich cards, results are presented in carousels that are easy to browse by scrolling left and right. Carousels can contain cards all from the same site or from multiple sites.
For site owners, this is a new opportunity to stand out in Search results and attract more targeted users to your page. For example, if you have a recipe site, you can build a richer preview of your content with a prominent image for each dish. This visual format helps users find what they want right away, so you're getting users who specifically want that especially delicious cookie recipe you have.
We’re starting to show rich cards for two content categories: recipes and movies. They will appear initially on mobile search results in English for google.com. We’re actively experimenting with more opportunities to provide more publishers with a rich preview of their content.
We’ve built a comprehensive set of tools and completely updated our developer documentation to take site owners and developers from initial exploration through implementation to performance monitoring.

Explore rich card types and identify where your content fits
Browse the new gallery with screenshots and code samples of each markup type.
Test and tweak your markup
We strongly recommend using JSON-LD in your implementation.
  • Find out which fields are essential to mark up in order for a rich card to appear. We’ve also listed additional fields that can enhance your rich cards.
  • See a preview in the revamped Structured Data Testing Tool of how the rich card might appear in Search (currently available for recipes and movies).
  • Use the the Structured Data Testing Tool to see errors as you tweak your markup in real time.

Keep track of coverage and debug errors
Check how many of your rich cards are indexed in the new Search Console Rich Cards report.
  • Keep an eye out for errors (also listed in the Rich Cards report). Each error example links directly to the Structured Data Testing tool so you can test it.
  • Submit a sitemap to help us discover all your marked-up content.
Find opportunities for growth
In the Rich Cards report, you'll see which cards can be enhanced by marking up additional fields.

Monitor performance
A new “Rich results” filter in Search Analytics (currently in a closed beta) will help you track how your rich cards and rich snippets are doing in search: you’ll be able to drill down and see clicks and impressions for both.


Q: Can I keep my existing rich snippets markup?
A: Yes, you can! We’ll keep you posted as the rich result ecosystem evolves.

Q: What about the Structured Data report in Search Console?
A: The Structured Data report will continue to show only top-level entities for the existing rich snippets (Product, Recipe, Review, Event, SoftwareApplication, Video, News article) and for any new categories (e.g., Movies). We plan to migrate all errors from the Structured Data report into the Rich Card report.

Q: What if I use the wrong markup?
A: Technical and quality guidelines apply for rich cards as they do for rich snippets. We will enforce them as before.
Learn more about rich cards in the Search and the mobile content ecosystem session at Google I/O (watch the recording on YouTube) or in our developer documentation. If you have more questions, find us in the dedicated Structured data section of our forum, on Twitter or on Google+.

Posted by Na'ama Zohary, Search Console Team, and Elliott Ng, Product Management Director, Search Ecosystem
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New Search Console reports combine Search Console and Google Analytics metrics

New Insights

The new reports allow you to examine your organic search data end-to-end and discover unique and actionable insights. Your Acquisition metrics from Search Console, such as impressions and average position, are now available in relation to your Behavior and Conversion metrics from Google Analytics, like bounce rate and pages per session.

Below are some new capabilities resulting from this improved integration:
 • Find landing pages that are attracting many users through Google organic search (e.g., high impressions and high click through rate) but where users are not engaging with the website. In this case, you should consider improving your landing pages.

 • Find landing pages that have high site engagement but are not successfully attracting users from Google organic search  (e.g., have low click through rate). In this case, you might benefit from improving titles and descriptions shown in search.

 • Learn which queries are ranking well for each organic landing page.

 • Segment organic performance by device category (desktop, tablet, mobile) in the new Devices report.
 

New Landing Page report showing Search Console and Google Analytics metrics

 

Additional Information 

Each of these new reports will display how your organic search traffic performs. As data is joined at the landing page level, Landing Pages, Countries and Devices will show both Search Console and Google Analytics data, while the Queries report will only show Search Console data for individual queries. The same search queries will display in Google Analytics as you see in Search Console today.

As mentioned in our Search Console Help Center, some data may not be displayed, to protect user privacy. For example, Search Console may not track some infrequent queries, and will not display those that include personal or sensitive information.

Also, while the data is displayed in parallel, not all Google Analytics features are available for Search Console data - including segmentation. Any segment that is applied to the new combined reports will only apply to Google Analytics data. You may also see that clicks from Search Console may differ from total sessions in Google Analytics.

 To experience the new combined reports from Search Console and Google Analytics, make sure your properties are linked, and then navigate to the new section “Search Console”, which should appear under “Acquisition” in the left-hand navigation in Google Analytics.

Posted by Joan Arensman, Product Manager, and Daniel Waisberg, Analytics Advocate
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Search is a powerful tool. It helps people to find, share, and access an amazing wealth of content regardless of how they connect or where they are located. As part of Google’s search quality team, we work hard to ensure that searchers see high quality search results—and not webspam. We fight spam through a combination of algorithms and manual reviews to ensure that sites don’t rise in search results through deceptive or manipulative behavior, especially because those sites could harm or mislead users.

Below are some of the webspam insights we gathered in 2015, including trends we’ve seen, what we’re doing to fight spam and protect against those trends, and how we’re working with you to make the web better.


2015 webspam trends

  • We saw a huge number of websites being hacked – a 180% increase compared to the previous year. Stay safe on the web and take preventative measures to protect your content on the web.

  • We saw an increase in the number of sites with thin, low quality content. Such content contains little or no added value and is often scraped from other sites.


2015 spam-fighting efforts

  • As always, our algorithms addressed the vast majority of webspam and search quality improvement for users. One of our algorithmic updates helped to remove the amount of hacked spam in search results.

  • The rest of spam was tackled manually. We sent more than 4.3 million messages to webmasters to notify them of manual actions we took on their site and to help them identify the issues.

  • We saw a 33% increase in the number of sites that went through spam clean-up efforts towards a successful reconsideration process.


Working with users and webmasters for a better web

  • More than 400,000 spam reports were submitted by users around the world. After prioritizing the reports, we acted on 65% of them, and considered 80% of those acted upon to be spam. Thanks to all who submitted reports and contributed towards a cleaner web ecosystem!

  • We conducted more than 200 online office hours and live events around the world in 17 languages. These are great opportunities for us to help webmasters with their sites and for them to share helpful feedback with us as well.

  • The webmaster help forum continued to be an excellent source of webmaster support. Webmasters had tens of thousands of questions answered, including over 35,000 by users designated as Webmaster Top Contributors. Also, 56 Webmaster Top Contributors joined us at our Top Contributor Summit to discuss how to provide users and webmasters with better support and tools. We’re grateful for our awesome Top Contributors and their tremendous contributions!

We’re continuously improving our spam-fighting technology and working closely with webmasters and users to foster and support a high-quality web ecosystem. (In fact, fighting webspam is one of the many ways we maintain search quality at Google.) Thanks for helping to keep spammers away so users can continue accessing great content in Google Search.


Posted by Kiyotaka Tanaka and Mary Chen, User Education and Search Outreach