Working an action

The loop is: diagnose, make one change, press Mark implemented, then read the outcome review about a month later.

Diagnose

Diagnose opens a page with everything we know about the action:

• What changed: clicks, impressions, CTR and position for the latest 28 days, against the 28 days before.
• Why this is happening: for a query, every page of yours that appears for it. For a page, its top queries.
• Technical evidence: what your last crawl said about the page, if you have imported one. See Crawl import.
• How to act: a short checklist for this kind of action.
• Property context: the site's top devices and countries, and how much of the site's traffic the detailed data covers.
• Recent changes: annotations on the site from the last 56 days, so you can see whether a release or a Google update lines up with the problem.

Check indexing

Check indexing asks Google's URL Inspection tool about the page, using the site's connected Google account. The result shows on the action card:

• whether the page is indexed
• Google's coverage state for it
• a warning if Google chose a different canonical address
• a link to open the full inspection in Search Console

Each check replaces the last result for that page. Google limits how many inspections a site can run each day, so check the pages you are about to work on rather than every action.

The button appears only on actions about a page.

Mark implemented

When you have made the change and it is live, press Mark implemented. This:

• moves the action to Awaiting review
• adds an annotation dated today to the site's charts, titled "SEO work implemented" followed by the action's title (see Annotations)
• sets a review date 28 days from today

Make one change per action. If you change three things at once, the review cannot tell you which one worked.

If you want a fuller before and after for a change, with a chart and a verdict on how clear the change is, start an experiment as well. See Experiments.

The 28-day review

Each morning we review actions whose review date has passed. A review waits until your data reaches the review date, and Search Console data runs about two days behind, so most reviews arrive about 30 days after you marked the change.

You can also press Review outcome on the action once it is due. If the data is not there yet, it tells you so and you can try again later.

The review compares the latest 28 days for the page (or for the query, when the action has no page) with the numbers stored with the action, and gives one of three outcomes:

• Positive: clicks or average position clearly improved.
• Negative: clicks or average position clearly got worse.
• Inconclusive: neither, or there was not enough data to compare.

Treat the outcome as a direction, not proof. It does not allow for seasonality, Google updates or anything else that changed at the same time, so check your annotations for those weeks.

Dismiss

If an action is not useful, press Dismiss. You can say why (for example "intentional" or "wrong intent"), but you do not have to.

A dismissed action stays dismissed, even when the same evidence turns up again. There is no undo. If the underlying page or query changes, a similar action can appear as a new one.