As we are in the digital age, the information that we obtain today, may not be the same in a week, or even the next day! The same applies for search optimization. Search is always evolving with new tools to help measure the effectiveness or performance of the activities that we engage in.
Google Search Console’s “Crawl Reports”
For instance, if you take a look at how Google’s Search Console has evolved over the years, you will see many differences between the “Legacy Tools and Reports,” and their updated ones. For example, one tool that was, and is still currently used is the “Crawl Stats” report. This report is useful because it can alert the site owner or whoever may be handling the site of how crawlable the site is. The feedback that you might get back in this report is that your crawl rate is low. Having a low crawl rate is not ideal, and the reasons why it is so low can mean a lot of different things. It can mean that your site pages take long to load, your site content is old, and so much more. The only problem is that you would need to, for example, audit your pages and find the real issue, which can take some time, as these reports do not specifically point out what you need to make improvements on.
Google Search Console’s “Coverage Report”
Trying to figure out what is going on with your site, is time-consuming, and difficult at times, so Google has updated its Search Console tools and reports, to help site-owners more easily pinpoint their site issues. In the new tools and reports, you can find the “Coverage Report,” which shows the index status of your site pages, accompanied by a description of why they were or were not able to be indexed. With this report, you can get more detailed feedback on the types of crawling problems that you may have on your site.
Now, it is important to note that all of these reports are useful, no matter if they are the older version or the newer version. There are so many websites out there with SEO issues, and one tool may not be the solution to all of those issues. The answer to your problems may be in the “Legacy Tools and Report” document, or it may be in the newer version, it all depends on what you are looking for, and that is why Google most likely has not updated some of their old reports due to their continued usefulness.