In the rapidly evolving landscape of Agentic SEO, the tools we use to measure, monitor, and optimize our digital presence are more critical than ever. However, the market is flooded with legacy software charging exorbitant fees for data that is often estimated, delayed, or simply irrelevant in an AI-first world.
As we move through 2026, the criteria for a “top” SEO tool have shifted. We no longer care about “Keyword Volume” (a metric from the 2010s). We care about Vector Coverage, Inference Cost, and Protocol Compliance.
When Sam Altman accidentally leaked OpenAI Siteowner-Central (OSC) in January 2026 at a private event for investors, a collective gasp went through the SEO industry. For twenty years, Google Search Console (GSC) had been the only dashboard that mattered. Suddenly, the “Black Box” of LLM optimization had a user interface.
Now that OSC has been in public beta for three months, the question on every Agentic SEO’s mind is: How does it compare to the incumbent?
In the Agentic Age, speed is not just a luxury; it is a prerequisite for being included in the inference context. If your site loads too slowly, the agent times out before it can even parse your vectors.
Google Search Console (GSC) is the definitive dashboard for monitoring your site’s speed/health. Unlike lab tools (Lighthouse), GSC uses CrUX (Chrome User Experience Report) data. This means it judges you based on what real users are experiencing on their actual devices (mostly cheap Android phones on 4G networks).
In the blue corner, we have the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, handling over 91% of global search traffic: Google Search Console (GSC).
In the red corner, we have the scrappy, feature-rich underdog, backed by the AI might of Microsoft: Bing Webmaster Tools (BWT).
For nearly two decades, SEOs have treated GSC as the “Must Have” and BWT as the “Nice to Have.” But in 2026, with the rise of integration between Bing and ChatGPT, and Google’s shift to Gemini-powered results, the landscape has shifted.
The web is evolving from a library for humans to a database for agents. This transition requires a fundamental rethink of “General SEO.” We call this Protocol-First SEO.
The Shift
- Human Web: HTML, CSS, Images, Clicks, Eyeballs.
- Agentic Web: JSON, Markdown, APIs, Tokens, Inference.
What is Protocol-First?
It involves optimizing content not just for visual consumption but for programmatic retrieval. The Model Context Protocol (MCP) serves as a standardized way for AI models to interact with external data. If your website or application exposes data via MCP or similar standards (like llms.txt), you are effectively “indexing” your content for agents.
For 20 years, the “Sitemap” has been the standard for indexing. You create a list of URLs, you tell the search engine where it is, and then you wait. you expect the crawler to come back… eventually.
In the Agentic Web, “eventually” is too slow. News breaks in seconds. AI models update in real-time. If your content isn’t indexed now, it might as well not exist.
Enter IndexNow, an open protocol championed by Microsoft Bing and Yandex.
The landscape of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is undergoing a seismic shift. For decades, the primary mechanism of discovery was the keyword—a string of characters that users typed into a search bar. “Best shoes.” “Plumber NYC.” “Pizza near me.”
Today, with the advent of Large Language Models (LLMs) and vector databases, we are moving towards an era of contextual vectors.
The Vectorization of Meaning
In traditional SEO, matching “best running shoes” meant having those words on your page in the <title> tag and <h1>.
Seeing the “Excluded” number rise in your Page Indexing report is enough to give any SEO anxiety. But in the modern agentic web, indexing issues are often diagnostic tools rather than failures. They tell you exactly how Google perceives the value of your content.
This guide decodes the most common error statuses and provides actionable fixes.
The Big Two: Discovered vs. Crawled
The most confusing distinction in GSC is between “Discovered” and “Crawled.” They sound the same, but they mean very different things for your infrastructure.