How to Use This Google Search Console Audit Checklist
Google Search Console is the primary source of truth for how Google sees an ecommerce store. Unlike third-party SEO tools, it reports actual crawl errors, indexing decisions, and click data directly from Google's systems. Running a structured audit against it — rather than spot-checking metrics — catches revenue-damaging issues before they compound.
The 12 items below cover the full audit surface: indexing health, crawl behavior, Core Web Vitals, structured data, internal linking signals, and search performance. Each item has a clear pass condition and a fail condition so the audit produces actionable outcomes, not open-ended observations. Work through these in order; earlier items can explain failures found later.
Indexing and Coverage Checks (Items 1–4)
**Item 1 — Valid Pages Count vs. Sitemap Count.** Open Coverage report → filter to 'Valid.' Compare the valid page count to the number of URLs in your submitted XML sitemap. PASS: Valid count is within 5% of sitemap count. FAIL: Gap exceeds 5%, indicating Google is excluding pages you want indexed or indexing pages not in the sitemap.
**Item 2 — Zero 'Excluded' URLs with Reason 'Crawled – currently not indexed.'** This status means Google visited the page but chose not to index it — a signal of thin content, duplication, or low perceived quality. PASS: Fewer than 10 URLs carry this label. FAIL: Double-digit or growing count requires content consolidation or canonical corrections before the next crawl cycle.
**Item 3 — No 'Soft 404' Errors on Product or Category URLs.** Soft 404s occur when a page returns a 200 status but signals out-of-stock or empty results to Google. PASS: Zero soft 404s on /products/ or /collections/ paths. FAIL: Any soft 404 on a revenue page requires either 301 redirects to active alternatives or dynamic content that replaces empty results with related products.
**Item 4 — Submitted and Indexed Status for All Sitemaps.** In the Sitemaps report, every submitted sitemap shows 'Success' and the 'Discovered URLs' count is non-zero. PASS: All sitemaps return Success status with a last-read date within 7 days. FAIL: Any sitemap shows 'Couldn't fetch' or has a stale last-read date older than 14 days, requiring server-side investigation.
Crawl and Access Checks (Items 5–7)
**Item 5 — robots.txt Blocks No Indexable Category or Product Pages.** Use the URL Inspection tool on three to five top-revenue category and product URLs. Confirm Google can access them. PASS: Inspection returns 'URL is on Google' or 'URL is not on Google' for a content reason, not an access block. FAIL: 'Blocked by robots.txt' on any revenue URL requires an immediate robots.txt edit.
**Item 6 — Canonical Tags Match Google's Selected Canonical.** Use URL Inspection on paginated collection pages, filtered URLs (e.g., ?color=blue), and product variant URLs. PASS: Google's 'selected canonical' matches the 'user-declared canonical' for every tested URL. FAIL: Mismatch means Google is overriding your canonical — usually because the declared canonical page has weaker signals than a competing URL you did not intend to promote.
**Item 7 — No Manual Actions Present.** Open the Manual Actions report. PASS: Report reads 'No issues detected.' FAIL: Any manual action — spammy structured data, unnatural links, thin content — requires remediation and a reconsideration request before any other SEO investment produces returns.
Core Web Vitals and Page Experience Checks (Items 8–9)
**Item 8 — Core Web Vitals Report Shows Zero 'Poor' URLs.** Open Core Web Vitals → Mobile. PASS: Zero URLs in the 'Poor' bucket. FAIL: Any 'Poor' URLs require engineering prioritization, as Google uses Core Web Vitals as a ranking signal and poor scores directly suppress product page visibility on mobile, which drives the majority of ecommerce traffic.
**Item 9 — 'Needs Improvement' URL Count Is Declining Month-Over-Month.** PASS: The 'Needs Improvement' trend line is flat or decreasing over a rolling 90-day view. FAIL: A rising trend line despite no traffic increase indicates new template deployments or third-party scripts are degrading performance across the catalog — audit recently added apps or theme changes.
Structured Data and Rich Results Checks (Items 10–11)
**Item 10 — Product Rich Results Are Valid for All Submitted Product URLs.** Open Enhancements → Shopping (or Product). PASS: Zero errors; warnings are acceptable if they relate to optional fields. FAIL: Any error on required fields (price, availability, name) means product rich results are suppressed in Google Shopping organic listings, reducing click-through rates on competitive queries.
**Item 11 — Breadcrumb and Sitelinks Searchbox Structured Data Has No Errors.** PASS: Breadcrumb enhancement shows valid status across all tested URLs; no errors in any active enhancement report. FAIL: Errors in breadcrumb markup cause Google to generate breadcrumbs from URL paths instead of your defined hierarchy, reducing the accuracy of how your category structure appears in search results.
Search Performance Check and Audit Cadence (Item 12)
**Item 12 — No High-Impression, Zero-Click Queries on Revenue Pages.** In the Performance report, filter by a revenue page (a top category or product), sort queries by impressions descending, and identify any query with over 500 impressions and zero clicks. PASS: All high-impression queries have a click-through rate above 0.5%. FAIL: Zero-click, high-impression queries indicate a title tag or meta description that fails to match searcher intent — rewrite both and monitor the 28-day rolling window.
Run this full checklist monthly for stores doing under seven figures in annual revenue, and weekly for eight-figure stores where a crawl error or manual action can produce measurable revenue loss within days. Store the results in a dated spreadsheet so trends across audit cycles become visible. A single audit catches problems; a recurring audit log reveals whether fixes actually held.