Search Console annotations: what they record, and what they never tell you

Search Console annotations are dated notes you pin to the Performance chart. Right-click the chart, pick a date, type up to 120 characters, and the note sits on the timeline as a marker: "new title template", "migrated /blog", "fixed canonical bug". Google launched them in November 2025 and calls them a personal notebook for your search data.

They are the right tool for remembering when something happened. They are the wrong tool for knowing whether it worked, and most write-ups stop before that second half.

TL;DR:

• Add one by right-clicking the Performance chart, choosing "Add annotation", setting a date and writing up to 120 characters.
• Every owner and full user of the property sees them; restricted users can view but not add or delete.
• A property holds up to 200 annotations. They cannot be edited, and Google deletes any older than 500 days.
• They show on the chart whatever filters you apply, but not in comparison mode or the 24-hour view.
• An annotation marks a date. It says nothing about whether the change moved anything, because it has no before and after window and no idea what the rest of your site did.

How do you add an annotation in Search Console?

Open the Performance report, right-click anywhere on the chart and choose "Add annotation". Set the date the change went live, type a note of up to 120 characters and save. The note appears as a marker on that day of the chart. You can delete an annotation but not edit it, so a typo means deleting it and adding it again.

Write the note so a teammate understands it in a year: what changed, on which pages, and why. "Titles: added year to 14 guide pages" is useful. "SEO update" is not.

Who can see Search Console annotations?

Everyone on the property. Google's help page says annotations are shared: "any owner or full user of the property can add, view, or delete any annotation", and "a restricted user will be able to view, but not to add or delete annotations." Google treats them as shared business data, so keep names, phone numbers and other personal details out of them.

Search Console also adds its own system annotations. Google describes them as showing "issues with data processing and reporting", and they are worth reading before you blame a dip on your own change.

What are the limits on annotations?

Four, all from Google's help page:

• 200 per property. Plenty for a small site, tight for a team that annotates every deploy.
• No editing. Add or delete only.
• Deleted after 500 days. "Annotations older than 500 days are automatically deleted." That is longer than Search Console's 16-month data window, so a note outlives the data it describes by only a few months.
• Not everywhere. They show on the chart "regardless of what filters you apply", but they do not appear in comparison mode or in the 24-hour view.

What an annotation cannot tell you

Whether the change worked. An annotation is a line on a date. When you look at the chart afterwards you still have to answer three questions it leaves open:

1. Did Google read the change yet? A title edit does nothing until Google recrawls the page, which can take days or weeks. The line sits on the day you shipped, not the day Google saw it, so the "after" you are looking at may still be the old page.
2. What did the rest of the site do? If every page dropped 15% that month, a page that held steady did well. A chart with one line on it cannot show that, so a normal ranking fluctuation or a core update reads as your change succeeding or failing.
3. Did anything else change on that page? Two edits inside the same few weeks make both unreadable. Nothing stops you adding the second annotation.

This is why "I annotated it and traffic went up" is a story, not a measurement. The honest way to measure an SEO change needs a fixed window that starts when Google rereads the page, a comparison against pages you did not touch, and no second edit until it is read.

When annotations are enough

For context you skim: a migration, a redesign, a hosting move, the day analytics broke. They answer "what was going on around then?" when you scroll back months later, and they are free. Use them for that.

They stop being enough when you make many small changes to many pages and want to know which ones paid off. At that point you need a record per change, tied to the page and the search it was aimed at, read against the rest of the site.

Tracking changes beyond a note on the chart

That record is what QueryScope keeps for each change. Your coding agent records the change from the IDE, with the search it targets and what it predicts. The clock starts when Google recrawls the page, not when you shipped. The page is not handed back for another edit while it settles. And the result is read against what the rest of the site did over the same weeks. The record lives on our side with your daily Search Console snapshots, so it is still there after Google's 500 days and 16 months are up.

Keep annotating the big events in Search Console. Let the per-change record answer the question the note cannot.

Sources

• Google Search Central Blog, Adding context to your Search Console data with custom annotations (right-click to add, up to 120 characters, visible to everyone with access to the property).
• Google Search Console Help, Annotations (200 per property, no editing, deleted after 500 days, owner and full user permissions, system annotations, not shown in comparison mode or the 24-hour view).