Watching a Page Change in Search

Adding a page

The Watchlist tab says Pages you changed, measured against Search Console once enough days have passed. Press Add page. The form asks for the Page address, a full address starting with http:// or https://, and Changed on, which cannot be in the future. Main search query and Note are optional. Add the query you most want the page to win, because the result reports it on its own line.

After you press Add page the tab says Page added. We will measure it on a date. You can also start from the Topics tab. A topic with a page of yours has a Watch this page button, which opens the same form with the address and the head keyword already filled in.

When it is measured

The wait is 21 days by default, and the form does not change it. Search Console reports a day's numbers about two days late, so the measure date is the change date plus 21 plus 2 days. Until then the list says Too early, measure on that date. After it, the status says Due, measuring soon until a scheduled job writes the check-in. Each page is measured once.

Choose the change date carefully. It is the day the edit went live. That day is left out of both windows, because the edit went live part way through it.

What is compared

The check-in takes two equal windows of Search Console rows for that exact page: the 21 days ending the day before the change and the 21 days starting the day after. The table Before and after lists Clicks, Impressions, CTR and Position for each, with the change. For position, a lower number is better, so the change is written as better or worse.

Below it, Top query moves lists up to five queries whose clicks changed the most, with clicks and position before and after. If you set a main query, a line shows its clicks and position on its own.

The page also lists caveats. They say this is a difference between two windows, that seasonality and other edits affect both, and, when it applies, that clicks and position moved in opposite directions.

The verdicts

Not enough data appears when either window has fewer than 100 impressions. That includes a page with no Search Console data at all. Improved or Declined appears when clicks moved by at least 15 percent of the before window and by at least 5 clicks. Anything smaller reads Flat. Position is reported and explained but is not part of the verdict, because it is an average over whichever queries showed the page.

Until the date, the detail says Not measured yet. Numbers appear here after the measure date. That means not yet measured, not no change.

Index status

The list and the detail panel show Google's own verdict for the page: Indexed, Not indexed, Partly indexed, Unknown, or Not checked yet. Under it you see Google's coverage wording, when Google last crawled the page, and a note when Google chose a different canonical page than the page declares.

Index status comes from Google's URL inspection, run by the daily Search Console sync for watched pages inside your connected property, up to 100 pages per run. Not checked yet usually means Search Console is not connected, or the page is outside the connected property.

FAQ