Google telling you directly which of your pages it has indexed, which it has refused, and what people searched to find you.
Use it when
Use it on day one of any site you want found. There is no substitute and no paid tier.
The catch
It shows you nothing before you verify, and there is no backfill, so the sooner you add a site the sooner the data starts. It is also blunt: it will tell you Google found your pages and declined to index them, which is useful and unflattering in equal measure.
Where it sits in the stack
Google Search Console is filed under “Knowing whether any of it worked” in the stack directory. Its label there is the same one at the top of this page: i run this, meaning this is first-hand rather than read off a pricing page.
What has changed about its pricing
Nothing, as far as this site has recorded. Google Search Console has no entry in the price change log, which means either its pricing has held since this site started checking or nobody here has re-read it since the figure above was taken. The log distinguishes those two cases deliberately, and a tool with no entry is the weaker of them.
The alternatives in the same slot
These do the same job and sit in the same section of the directory.
- Bing Webmaster Tools — listed, not tested, has a free tier
- Plausible — listed, not tested, paid only
- Umami — listed, not tested, has a free tier
The whole stack, filterable, with the catch stated on every entry.
Open the directory