Search Console Checks

When Google Search Console is connected, Vizzybl compares what Google says about your pages with what the AI answers you track actually link to. It works out eight checks every night. They are worked out by fixed rules, not by a model, so the same data always gives the same result, and each one comes with the numbers behind it.

This is being switched on for workspaces in stages. It is available on Pro, Ultra and Enterprise, and needs Search Console connected in Settings > Connections.

Where you see them

• Vizzy's Findings on Home: a finding that rests on a check carries the label Checked against Search Console. Findings may only state something about Search Console if a check supports it.
• Chat: type /gsc-checks to list them, /gsc-page with a page address for one page's report, /gsc-trend for your daily history, /gsc-inspect with a page address to ask Google about one page now, and /gsc-coverage to see what data is held.
• Audit reports: in Infrastructure & Crawlability, a card titled Google's view of this page shows whether Google has indexed the audited page.

The eight checks

Check	What it tells you
Page is not in Google's index	Google has not indexed a page that matters, with Google's own reason: blocked by robots.txt, a noindex rule, a failed fetch, or another address chosen as the main copy. Google says a page must be indexed to be linked from AI Overviews or AI Mode.
Ranks in Google, not cited by Google's AI	A page gets impressions on question searches at a good position, and AI Overviews and AI Mode did not link to it. The page exists and Google rates it: improve it, do not write a new one.
Cited and ranks	AI answers link to the page and Google shows it.
Cited, but hardly shown in Google	AI answers link to the page though Google rarely shows it. The AI found it another way; it is worth protecting.
Impressions hold, clicks fall	Impressions and position held while clicks fell by 30% or more. An answer shown above the results is the likely reason.
Branded search trend	Searches that name your brand, this 28 days against the last, beside the change in your AI share of voice.
Prompt has a page, or has none	For each prompt you track, the Google searches that resemble it and the page Google shows for them, or that it shows none of your pages.
Published page progress	For each page you published through Vizzybl: whether Google has indexed it, whether Google has crawled it since you last updated it, how often it was shown, and whether AI answers linked to it.

How to read them

• "In the answers we track." A check about citations only knows the AI answers to the prompts you monitor. A page may be cited for questions you do not track.
• "Google's AI" means AI Overviews and AI Mode. Those are the two engines Google says link only to pages in its index.
• Exact or approximate. Most checks match by page address, which is exact. Matching a prompt to Google searches is approximate, because a prompt is a sentence and a search is a few words. A prompt you imported from Search Console is matched exactly.
• No cause is claimed. "Likely" means likely. The branded search trend says whether two things moved together, not that one caused the other.
• A check that could not be worked out says so. If your data could not be read on a given night, the check is skipped with its reason. It never reports "nothing found" in that case.
• The comparison with the same period last year needs more than a year of history, so it appears on Enterprise only.

They are not scores

A check never adds or removes points. Your audit scores, GEO Readiness and the AI Visibility Index do not use Search Console data, so they mean the same for a brand that has connected Search Console and one that has not.

Related

• Connections: what is read from Search Console, how long it is kept, and what Google does not provide
• Understanding Audit Scores