Google added features for app indexing in search console

Google has announced their first update in Search Console on Friday. They have not taken a long time after they promised to make Search Console a comprehensive source of information for every user. You can track your app content performance in search via Search console now. It also lets you know how Google renders your application pages through Fetch as Google feature.

Google has announced the addition of new reports in Search Console for Apps. You need to add your App in search console and verify your ownership first. For that, open the search console and enter your app name. Then sign in with the authorized Google Play account with that app to verify the ownership. Obviously Google won’t show data to unauthorized users. If you don’t have the access of the application in the play store, then you need to ask owner to verify the app in search console. It is also important to associating your website with the app to make app indexing work. It will also help you understand and ranking the app content better.

Search Analytics Report provides the detail insights about how the app content is performing in search. It provides the information about the top app pages and traffic by country along with the top performing queries for application. It contains all the basic filters as the website analytics. But it also lets you filter the data by a specific search query or sort the data by clicks, impressions, CTR and positions. If you find your targeted search queries right on the top of that table you are doing a decent job for app promotion. If it doesn’t mean you are losing your way and need to rethink over the marketing strategy.

Google has also created the alpha version of the Fetch as Google for Apps. Google said in blog, “We’ve created an alpha version of the Fetch as Google tool for apps to help you check if an app URI works and see how Google renders it. It can also be useful for comparing the app content with the webpage content to debug errors such as content mismatch.” It will give some insights to app developers about how Google see the app and help them encounter the bugs. The Crawl Error Report shows the errors Google finds while indexing the app content. It won’t display the deep links, but it will show the type and number of errors found during the indexing.

Applications are the future of search. Google has already announced app indexing as a ranking signal earlier this year, along with the mobile-friendly update. These tools in search console are also intended to provide more comfort to app developers in understanding app performance. It is encouraging for app developers that search engines like Google and Bing are refurbishing their app indexing process.