TL;DR: A weekly Google Search Console check takes 15 minutes and catches problems that could silently drain your traffic for weeks. Here are the 10 reports worth scanning every week, in order of urgency.
| Report | Where to find it | Weekly action |
|---|---|---|
| Manual Actions | Security & Manual Actions | Any alert = urgent |
| Security Issues | Security & Manual Actions | Any alert = urgent |
| Index Coverage | Indexing > Pages | Watch for new errors |
| Performance | Performance > Search results | Compare to prior week |
| Search Generative AI (2026) | Dedicated AI report | Track AI Overview impressions |
| Core Web Vitals | Experience > Core Web Vitals | Watch Poor page count |
| Rich Results | Enhancements | Fix any new errors |
| Sitemaps | Indexing > Sitemaps | Confirm last fetch date |
| Links | Links | Flag sudden drops |
| URL Inspection | URL bar (⌨ type any URL) | Spot-check key pages |
Why 10 Reports and Not All of Them?
Google Search Console has dozens of data views, but most of them don’t need weekly attention. The 10 below are the ones where a week’s delay in catching a problem costs real traffic. The others — like the full Sitemaps history or the Page Experience rollups — are useful quarterly or when you make structural changes to your site.
The goal of a weekly check isn’t to analyze everything. It’s to catch the handful of critical problems early: a page that dropped out of the index, a schema error blocking rich results, a CTR collapse on your top product page, a security flag Google found before you did.
Report 1: Manual Actions
Where: Security & Manual Actions → Manual actions
What it shows: A manual action means a human at Google reviewed your site and applied a penalty — usually for spammy links, thin content, cloaking, or structured data misuse. It directly suppresses your rankings for affected pages or the entire site.
What “bad” looks like: Any message that isn’t “No issues detected.”
When to act: Immediately. Read the manual action description, fix the root cause (often spammy backlinks or low-quality content), then submit a reconsideration request. Do not wait.
Report 2: Security Issues
Where: Security & Manual Actions → Security issues
What it shows: Malware, hacked content, phishing pages Google detected on your domain. If this shows an alert, Google may display a browser interstitial warning to users before they visit your site — effectively stopping all traffic.
What “bad” looks like: Any flag. Even “Suspected phishing” on one page kills trust sitewide.
When to act: Same day. Contact your host, scan with a tool like Sucuri or Wordfence if you run WordPress, and submit for review once the infection is removed.
Report 3: Index Coverage (Indexing > Pages)
Where: Indexing → Pages
What it shows: How many of your pages are indexed, how many have errors or warnings, and how many are deliberately excluded (noindex tags, canonicals, etc.).
What “bad” looks like:
- 5xx Server errors — Google tried to crawl a page and your server failed. This delays indexing and signals instability.
- 404 Not Found on pages that should exist — a recent site migration or URL change may have broken pages without redirects.
- “Crawled — currently not indexed” on important pages — Google saw the page but judged the content too thin or too similar to another page to include.
- Sudden drop in Valid pages — if your “Valid” count drops 10%+ from last week, something significant broke.
When to act:
- Any new 5xx errors → same day (server or hosting problem)
- New 404s on important pages → add 301 redirects within 24 hours
- “Crawled — not indexed” on pages you care about → strengthen the content and resubmit
For a complete breakdown of every error type and its specific fix, see the Google Search Console crawl errors guide.
Report 4: Performance — Search Results
Where: Performance → Search results
What it shows: Total clicks, impressions, average CTR, and average position for your site in Google Search. You can filter by page, query, country, or device.
Useful comparisons to make weekly:
- Pages sorted by click change (7 days vs prior 7 days) — flags any page losing traffic suddenly
- Queries showing your top 10 keywords — are you holding position, improving, or slipping?
- CTR by position — for pages ranking positions 1–3, a CTR below 15–20% often signals a title tag or meta description problem
What “bad” looks like:
- A page that was getting 50+ weekly clicks drops to near-zero — check if it’s still indexed, if a competitor jumped above you, or if Google changed the SERP format
- A top query’s average position slips from 4 to 12 in a week — check if you published competing content on the same topic or if a competitor updated their page
- CTR collapses on a stable-position page — title tag or meta description may need rewriting
When to act: Any page with clicks down >30% week-over-week gets a quick audit — check it’s still indexed (URL Inspection), check competitors in that SERP, and check if the page content has changed.
Report 5: Search Generative AI (New in 2026)
Where: A dedicated Search Generative AI report, separate from the standard Performance report
What it shows: Google launched this report on June 3, 2026. It tracks how often your URLs appear inside Google’s AI features — the AI Overview answer blocks and AI Mode — which are a distinct surface from standard organic results. As of launch it reports impressions, pages, countries, devices, and dates only. It does not yet show clicks or CTR; Google has said it will add metrics over time.
One catch: it’s rolling out to a subset of site owners in the UK first and expanding globally afterward, so the report may not appear in your account yet. If it’s missing, that’s the rollout — not a problem with your site.
What “bad” looks like:
- Zero impressions for weeks despite strong organic rankings — your content may not be structured for citation (no direct answers, missing question-based headings, no clear facts/entities to extract)
- Impressions plateau while competitors grow — content may need more specific facts, comparison tables, or direct question-answer formats
When to act: This is an emerging channel, so the goal right now is to establish a baseline. Note your weekly AI impressions and watch the trend. If impressions grow, look at which pages are being surfaced and produce more content in that format. Because the report has no click data yet, treat impressions as a visibility signal rather than a traffic number.
Report 6: Core Web Vitals
Where: Experience → Core Web Vitals
What it shows: How many of your pages are rated Good, Needs Improvement, or Poor for Google’s three page-experience metrics:
- LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): How fast the main content loads. Good = ≤2.5 seconds.
- INP (Interaction to Next Paint): How responsive the page feels when clicked or tapped. Good = ≤200ms.
- CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): How much the page jumps around while loading. Good = <0.1.
As of 2026, roughly 55% of sites globally pass all three metrics, with LCP being the most common failure.
What “bad” looks like:
- Any URLs in the “Poor” category — Google has confirmed Core Web Vitals are a page experience ranking signal
- A week-over-week increase in Poor URLs — something changed (new image size, new JavaScript block, ad network addition)
When to act: Any new Poor URL deserves investigation. Use the URL Inspection tool + PageSpeed Insights to identify the failing metric and the element causing it.
Report 7: Rich Results and Enhancements
Where: Enhancements section in the left sidebar (shows up when GSC detects structured data on your site)
What it shows: Errors and warnings in your structured data — the schema.org markup that enables rich results like star ratings (Product schema), recipe rich snippets, How-To steps, and breadcrumbs in SERPs.
Important 2026 change: Google discontinued FAQ rich results for most sites in May 2026. If you see a drop in FAQPage schema in Enhancements, that’s expected — not a bug you caused.
What “bad” looks like:
- New errors in your active schema types (Article, Product, Breadcrumb, HowTo) — these mean affected pages are excluded from rich result eligibility
- A high ratio of Warnings to Valid items on Product schema — missing required fields like
priceoravailability
When to act: Fix any Errors in active enhancement types within the week. Warnings reduce eligibility but don’t disqualify — fix them in your next dev sprint.
Report 8: Sitemaps
Where: Indexing → Sitemaps
What it shows: Which sitemaps you’ve submitted, when Google last fetched them, and whether there were any errors.
What “bad” looks like:
- Status showing “Error” — Google couldn’t read your sitemap (usually a syntax error or a wrong URL)
- “Last read” date is weeks old — Google may have stopped crawling your sitemap for some reason
- Submitted URLs count much lower than your actual page count — check if the sitemap is generating correctly after recent site changes
When to act: Any “Error” status needs same-week investigation. A stale “last read” date is less urgent but worth resubmitting the sitemap URL to refresh the crawl.
Report 9: Links
Where: Links (at the bottom of the left sidebar)
What it shows: Your top linked pages (which pages on your site have the most backlinks), your top linking sites (which external domains link to you most), and top anchor text used in links to your site.
What “bad” looks like:
- A sudden drop in the number of linking sites (could mean a major site removed their link to you)
- New exact-match keyword anchor text from unrecognized domains in large quantities (potential spammy link buildup)
- A key page drops out of “Top linked pages” — it may have lost backlinks
When to act: The Links report changes slowly; extreme week-to-week swings are worth investigating but aren’t common. Flag big drops in linking sites for follow-up — it may mean a PR mention expired or a partner site changed their links.
Report 10: URL Inspection (Spot-Check)
Where: Search bar at the top of GSC — type any page URL
What it shows: The indexing status of a specific page: whether it’s indexed, when Google last crawled it, which URL Google treats as canonical, and whether there are any blocking issues (noindex tag, robots.txt, authentication).
This isn’t a “report” in the traditional sense — it’s a diagnostic tool you use when something seems off with a specific page.
Use it when:
- A page you recently published isn’t showing up in Search after 2+ weeks
- A page’s traffic collapsed and you want to confirm it’s still indexed
- You fixed a broken redirect or canonical and want to check Google sees the current state
How to act: If a key page shows “URL is not on Google,” read the details. Common causes are a noindex meta tag left on from staging, a canonical pointing to a different URL, or a robots.txt block. Fix the cause, then click “Request Indexing” — Google typically re-crawls within a few days.
Turning This Into a 15-Minute Monday Routine
The order above — Manual Actions → Security → Coverage → Performance → AI Search → Core Web Vitals → Rich Results → Sitemaps → Links → URL Inspection — is also the right priority order. You’re scanning for fires first, then optimization signals.
Most weeks, nothing will be on fire. The value of a weekly routine is catching the rare week when something is: an indexing bug after a site update, a new manual action from a bad link batch, a Core Web Vitals regression after a new plugin.
If you want this done automatically, SEOPulse sends you a plain-English weekly email every Monday covering your core health score, indexing errors, ranking changes, and schema status — the same checks above, without having to log in.
What’s Changed in GSC in 2026
A few quick updates if you haven’t logged into GSC recently:
- Search Generative AI report (June 3, 2026): A new standalone report showing impressions for your URLs inside AI Overviews and AI Mode. It reports impressions, pages, countries, devices, and dates — no clicks or CTR yet. Rolling out UK-first to a subset of accounts, expanding globally over time, so it may not be in your account yet.
- Weekly and monthly views (December 2025): GSC added weekly/monthly aggregation options to smooth out the day-to-day noise in the Performance report. Useful for spotting trend reversals more cleanly.
- Mobile Usability report retired (December 2023): Google removed the standalone Mobile Usability report, the Mobile-Friendly Test tool, and its API because responsive design is now standard. For mobile-specific diagnostics, use the URL Inspection tool plus PageSpeed Insights with the Mobile tab selected.
- FAQ rich results discontinued (May 7, 2026): Google stopped showing FAQ rich results (the expandable Q&A blocks in SERPs) for most sites. FAQ schema still has value for AI Overview eligibility and internal clarity, but it no longer generates a SERP enhancement.