In an announcement, Google has launched “domain properties,” which is a feature that allows users to see data from a whole domain in one view within Google Search Console. This can consolidate your http, https, www, non-www, m-dot, etc into a single property to get an aggregate view of your site’s performance and errors/warnings in a single Google Search Console property.
So what is domain properties? Basically, it’s a way for Google Search Console to allow site owners, developers, SEOs and webmasters to see a whole view of a domain name in a single area. This used to be handled with property sets, but Google announced on Tuesday that property sets is going away. Google announced that domain properties will be replacing it, which was tested as a feature back in November.
How does it work?
“Domain properties show data for all URLs under the domain name, including all protocols, subdomains, and paths,” said Google. A omaind property aggregates data for all subdomains, protocols, and subpaths. For example, if you define a domain property as “example.com”, the data includes example.com, any subdomains of example.com (for example, m.example.com, support.m.example.com, www.example.com, and so on), and any subpaths of any of those domains, on both http and https.
It’s probably in the middle of rolling out at the time of this writing, so if you don’t see it yet, check it out in a day or two. But Google said “if you already have DNS verification set up, Search Console will automatically create new domain properties for you over the next few weeks, with data over all reports.” If you don’t have DNS verification set up, Google said that you can click on the add new domain property, go to the property selector, add a new domain property, and use DNS verification.
Data aggregation is automated, but if you don’t want it and you want to segment Domain property data by subdomain, path, or protocol, Google said that you can use one of the following techniques:
- Add a page filter in the Performance report to see data for specific protocols or subdomains
- Create additional URL-prefix properties for segments of the Domain property; for example for the Domain property example.com, create additional properties for m.example.com, http://example.com, https://example.com/spain/, and so on.
This matters because it brings back a feature that was going away with the old Search Console – specifically property sets. Also, since this is automated via DNS verification, it can and will change your data and properties. It is important to know this is launching now and if you use DNS verification, it can and likely will impact your existing reports.
If you want to find out more, check out this Google help document.