Search Console: the free Google SEO tool to set up first
Google Search Console is the one tool every business with a website should have connected. Google's Search Console help calls it "a free service offered by Google that helps you monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site's presence in Google Search results." You do not need it to appear in Google, but without it you are guessing about how Google sees your site.
Search Console shows which search queries bring up your site, how often searchers click, which sites link to you, and alerts when Google hits indexing or spam issues. The Performance report defines a click as "the number of times a user clicked your site from Google Search results" and an impression as how many times your site appeared in the results. Its default view covers the past three months.
Two other reports earn their keep. The Page indexing report shows how many of your URLs Google has crawled and indexed, and Google says plainly that you "should not expect all URLs on your site to be indexed, only the canonical pages." The URL Inspection tool shows why Google could or could not index a specific page and lets you request a crawl, though Google's URL Inspection help says a request "does not guarantee that the page will appear in the Google Index."
One warning. According to Google's Analytics help, "Search Console keeps data for the last 16 months." Export the Performance report once a year or the history is gone.
Google Business Profile: free, and it has its own search data
A Google Business Profile costs nothing. Google's Business Profile page says "creating a Business Profile and listing your business on Google is free." For a service business, the profile is what shows in the map results, so it is the free Google SEO tool closest to the phone ringing.
The Performance tab is the part most owners never open. Google's performance help lists the search terms people used to find your business, direction requests, call button taps and website clicks. The searches metric updates at the start of each month and can take up to 5 days to appear. Google also notes that you cannot directly manage which queries show your profile. What you can do is keep the profile complete and accurate, which we walk through in our local SEO audit checklist.
PageSpeed Insights: how fast your site is for real visitors
PageSpeed Insights answers whether your site is slow on a phone. Google's PageSpeed Insights documentation says it "reports on the user experience of a page on both mobile and desktop devices, and provides suggestions on how that page may be improved."
Read the two halves of the report separately. Field data is what real Chrome users experienced over the previous 28-day collection period. Lab data comes from Lighthouse running a simulated load. A small site may have no field data at all, in which case the lab score is all you get. On the Lighthouse score, 90 or above is good, 50 to 89 needs improvement, and below 50 is poor.
| Metric | What it measures | Good |
|---|---|---|
| Largest Contentful Paint | Loading | Within 2.5 seconds |
| Interaction to Next Paint | Responsiveness | 200 milliseconds or less |
| Cumulative Layout Shift | Visual stability | 0.1 or less |
Google's web.dev guide says to measure these at the 75th percentile of page loads, on mobile and desktop separately. If your phone numbers miss those marks, that is a website design problem more than a content problem.
Rich Results Test: check your structured data
The Rich Results Test checks whether Google can read the structured data on a page, such as the business details in LocalBusiness markup or the questions in an FAQ. Google's Rich Results Test help says you can test a live URL or paste a code snippet, and it tests as a smartphone by default. Passing the test is not a promise of a rich result: Google says it "does not guarantee that your page will appear exactly as shown."
Google Trends: seasonal demand, not search volume
Google Trends shows when interest in a topic rises and falls, which is useful for timing a page about AC repair or storm damage. It is not a keyword volume tool. Google's Trends FAQ says each data point is divided by total searches for that place and time, then "scaled on a range of 0 to 100 based on a topic's proportion to all searches on all topics." Terms with low volume show as 0, so a narrow Austin trade query will often look flat even when people are searching it.
The free Google tool that no longer exists
Plenty of older SEO checklists still point to Google's Mobile-Friendly Test. It is gone. Google Search Central notes that as of December 1, 2023, both the test and Search Console's Mobile Usability report were retired. For a mobile check today, run the mobile tab in PageSpeed Insights.
What free Google SEO tools will not do
These tools measure and diagnose. None of them raises a ranking by itself, and none of them is a paid shortcut either: Google's own guide to how Search works says "Google doesn't accept payment to crawl a site more frequently, or rank it higher." The work is reading the reports and fixing what they show, which is exactly what our local SEO service does month to month.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Google Search Console free?
Yes. Google describes Search Console as a free service for monitoring and troubleshooting a site's presence in Google Search results.
How long does Search Console keep my data?
Search Console keeps data for the last 16 months, according to Google's Analytics help. Export anything you want to compare year over year.
What replaced Google's Mobile-Friendly Test?
Google retired the Mobile-Friendly Test on December 1, 2023. PageSpeed Insights still tests a page on mobile, with Lighthouse lab data and real-user field data.