What Google Search Console can tell you that Google Analytics can’t


For most higher education websites, Google is the primary way people discover our content. At Minnesota Carlson, it accounted for over one million sessions in 2025 — nearly two-thirds of our total site traffic.

Google Analytics tells you what people do after they land on your site from Google, but not how they got there or why prospective visitors aren’t finding you.

That’s where Google Search Console (GSC) comes in, a free tool that helps you monitor, maintain and troubleshoot your site’s presence in Google search results. 

How to set up GSC

The trickiest part about GSC is verifying website ownership. If you have technical access, you might be able to tackle this yourself by following Google’s instructions. If you don’t, contact the Measurement & Analytics team ([email protected]) or schedule an appointment during their office hours. 

Five helpful features

  1. Search Results report — Shows what people search for, which pages appear in results and where clicks are actually happening. 
  2. Pages report — Shows why some of your website pages aren’t indexed (shown) on Google. 
  3. Sitemaps — Use this to share your website's sitemap with Google to help it discover your new or updated content more quickly.
  4. Core Web Vitals — Core Web Vitals affect SEO. This report shows which pages don’t meet Google’s standards for speed and stability.
  5. Insights — Get auto-generated snapshots of your top-performing content and see which pages are trending up or down.

Three real examples of how I used GSC

  1. One of the most useful ways I use GSC is to understand how people phrase their questions. As search behavior becomes more conversational—especially with AI tools—longer, question-based queries are becoming more common.
  2. Our team creates blog-style content to help prospective graduate students in their journey. I wanted to see exactly which keywords led them to those specific articles. 
  3. In July 2025, our school changed its preferred short name from “Carlson School” to “Minnesota Carlson”. I wanted to monitor whether our name change was reflected in real search behavior.

To learn how to find this data for your own work, check out the DAL-U community of practice page, section titled Common Use Cases for Google Search Console Data.

Here is a dashboard that you can copy and use. 

For questions, please reach out to me,  Justin Hammerschmidt ([email protected]), or the Measurement & Analytics team ([email protected]). 

Topics: Digital Analytics Tips and Tricks