Google Search Console now allows users to examine product rich results

Google Search Console, Google's free resource for monitoring your website's presence in the search engine's results, now lets users track their product rich results for search queries. The new report shows users the clicks and impressions for each product rich result. 

This new filter can give small businesses even more insight into how Google displays their products and how each page is performing over time. This new report uses a simple one-click filter instead of requiring users to navigate more complex filter set-ups.

Small and medium-sized businesses should regularly access this new report to monitor spikes in views based on campaigns and holiday shopping surges.

About Google's product rich results

Product rich results are a specific format of search result that gives searchers product information at a glance without navigating off Google to the actual product page. Instead of a page title and meta description, the result lists the following pieces of information:

• Rating (star rating and numeric rating)
• Price
• If the product is in stock or out of stock
• A short description of the product

This result enhances customers' shopping and product research experiences.

While the reporting feature is new, product rich results are not. Investing time in improving these result types allows businesses to reach customers faster, look more trustworthy, and give Google's search algorithm the information it needs to prioritize them.

Google Search Console is the interface businesses can use to analyze how consumers interact with their product listings and, now, product rich results specifically. The key insights business owners and marketers can look for include:

• How many product rich results appear in the search results for specific queries (compared to blogs, reviews, and "non-product rich" product results)
• The average position of product rich results in different search queries
• How general users see different product rich results
• The average click-through rate (CTR)

Businesses now have direct insight into how their product results perform compared to general product results and can decide if they need to put more time into growing their collection of product rich results.

What's the difference between Google Search Console and Google Analytics?

If you haven't heard of Google Search Console, that may be because it's easy to confuse it with the Google Analytics tools. But the two interfaces provide very different views of your site's performance, and Google is constantly adding new functions to the console.

Google Analytics analyzes user traffic on your site. This includes how visitors reach your site, where they travel to once they get there, and the path most visitors take on your site before buying a product. This is the feature-rich resource many online businesses use to track the success of their marketing campaigns.

Google Analytics can track and analyze this information for you whether the visitors come to your site through Google or not.

Google Search Console, on the other hand, specifically focuses on the transition from a Google search query to your site. With this tool you can generate reports that help you improve your site's visibility and SERP performance.

Both tools are invaluable to business owners and online marketers, for you can use both tools to identify and then solve problems with your product-related traffic.

For example:

If you generate a report on Google Analytics about use behaviors around your top-selling product, you might discover a significant increase in sales. The report can tell you where the increases in traffic are coming from (such as from Google.com or a high-ranking review on an influencer's blog), but it can't tell you why you're suddenly receiving more traffic from Google.

Google Search Console can. It can highlight any increases in total clicks, total impressions, and your product rich results average position in Google results. This information can fill in the blanks and help your marketing team focus on the actions that create the most momentum for your products.

How to generate product-rich results reports in Google Search Console

Users must have integrated Google Search Console into their site in order to access this feature. To do so, log in to your Google Analytics account. Then click "Add a Property" to enter your site domain and verify ownership. In this step, you may be required to add a tracking ID to your site so Google can start to collect and analyze data.

After your Google Search Console is set up, it takes approximately a week to receive meaningful amounts of data.

If you already have Google Search Console set up, you can immediately explore the data. To access this new report, navigate to your Google Search Console homepage. Then click on "Search Appearance" and find "Product Results" on the drop-down menu. From there, you can further isolate factors by filtering based on query text, geography, and time.