How Google Search Console Came to Be

Google Search Console wasn’t always as great as it is now. It has come a long way starting with its creation in 2005. It was originally called Google Webmaster Tools and basically did the same thing that it does today just with a more limited suite of tools. The next big update to Google Search Console came in 2015 when the name officially changed from Google Webmaster Tools to Google Search Console. Nothing else really changed in that update as Google was mostly focusing on making sure that with the rebrand they didn’t confuse too many users and that the transition was smooth. Then in 2018 Google added some really cool features that allowed users to test their site live. This allowed webmasters to better understand their site in real time and quickly find and diagnose issues on the site. Another big portion of this update was that webmasters could now request indexing and the history was increased to 16 months giving webmasters more data to identify trends. Finally there were a series of updates from 2020-2022 that added some good new features and reports that made Google Search Console a more well rounded and useful place to analyze website data. Google added a core web vitals report which gave a quick overview of your site and included all the important data in one spot so that webmasters could get a quick summary of their site performance. They also added an HTTPS report in these updates which basically shows which pages are being served under the HTTPS tag and those that aren’t. It also shows why those pages that aren’t under HTTPS why they aren’t being shown under HTTPS. All these updates and many more have come together to make Google Search Console what it is today.