Wednesday, December 04, 2019
Search Console sends millions of
messages every month. They’re our main way to let you know when your website has a new issue and
to make you aware of updates and opportunities to improve your presence on Google.
To make working with messages more efficient in Search Console, we have been working to make
messages an integral part of the product. As of today, messages will be available through a
panel accessed easily by clicking the bell icon at the top of any page in Search Console. The
main difference from the old interface is that now you’ll have access to your messages
throughout the product, no need to leave your reports.
You’ll see a notification with the number of new messages on top of the bell icon, as shown below.
Click it to see a panel with a list of messages for your site, you can mark one or more messages
as read to clear the clutter.
We are also introducing a new way to make messages more actionable by categorizing them into
several types, such as Coverage, Enhancement types, Performance, and others. This will make it
easier for you to find information about a specific issue.
We are also introducing the capability for site owners to access all the messages sent to the
site, even those that were previously sent, regardless of when they were verified and when the
messages were sent. Now, when users gain access to a new site they can see messages the site
have received in the past, which should help the new owners to understand the context for that
property.
The message panel shows messages only from May 23, 2019 onward. Messages sent before that date
can be viewed only in your personal email or in the legacy message list. Your old messages will
be available in the old interface for the time being, you can find them under the
“Legacy tools and reports”
section in the sidebar.
We hope this new feature improves your workflow and puts all the information you need at your
fingertips to make better and faster decisions. If you have any feedback please let us know
through the
forum
or via Twitter.
How we apply this
Google announcements age. We keep this post here for the record, and we note for clients whether the behaviour it describes still applies today or has since been superseded.
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