Google Search Console (GSC) is Google's free webmaster platform for monitoring a site's search performance, index coverage, structured data, hreflang, and Core Web Vitals.
Key surfaces:
- Performance: clicks, impressions, CTR, average position by query and page, sliced by country, device, and search type.
- Pages (Coverage): indexed vs. excluded URLs with reasons for exclusion.
- Sitemaps: submitted sitemaps and their processing status.
- Enhancements: rich-result eligibility per content type (Products, FAQs, HowTo, Articles, Breadcrumbs, etc.).
- International Targeting: hreflang errors and country targeting.
- Core Web Vitals: LCP, INP, CLS p75 over rolling 28-day window.
- Security & manual actions: warnings about hacks, malware, or manual penalties.
- Links: top external and internal linking pages.
GSC is the authoritative source of truth for how Google sees a site. Most SEO problems surface here before they surface in rankings. Equivalents exist for Bing (Bing Webmaster Tools) and Yandex (Yandex Webmaster).