Google has just announced that it updated its reports in Search Console to show if an error is invalid or valid in terms of it being an issue for Google to process for indexing and ranking. This is being done to better communicate if an error is causing an issue with appearing in Google Search or not.
Google wrote "we are grouping the top-level item (a rich result for the rich result reports, a page or URL for the other reports) into two groups: pages or items with critical issues are labeled something like invalid; pages or items without critical issues are labeled something like valid." Google said they are doing this to "make it easier to see quickly which issues affect your site's appearance on Google, in order to help you prioritize your fixes."
Here is what it looks like before and after - click to enlarge:
These changes will be visible in the coverage report, enhancement reports and URL inspection tool, and maybe others?
The change will take time to show up in the API, Google said these will be "updated in the URL Inspection API when we complete the rollout in a few months." "This means that if your property shows the updated item classification in Search Console, you might see differences when comparing results from the product interface and the API. Note that after the rollout is complete, there will be no new values in the API." Google said they will update us when the API is fully updated.
Daniel Waisberg from Google said "This is a great change, a lot of thinking went into it! 🤓 But remember: this is "only" a reporting change in Search Console; there are no changes in how Google crawls, indexes, or serves your pages."
This is a great change, a lot of thinking went into it! 🤓 But remember: this is "only" a reporting change in Search Console; there are no changes in how Google crawls, indexes, or serves your pages. https://t.co/hpIsKMOZtk
— Daniel Waisberg (@danielwaisberg) June 15, 2022
Google posted more details on this change over here explaining "the URLs or items in the report are no longer grouped at the top level by three or more status categories (for example: Valid, Warning, and Error), but are instead grouped into two broad statuses reflecting whether they are invalid or not (where invalid means that there is a report-specific critical issue in the page or item, and not invalid means that the item might still contain warnings, but has no critical issues). The implications and exact terms for the valid and invalid states varies by report type."
These are the reports impacted by this change:
- Core Web Vitals
- Mobile Usability
- AMP report
- Rich results report
- URL Inspection tool
Forum discussion at Twitter.
