Post-Deploy Health Check

• Its own discovery engine (people find you through the platform)
• Live social proof — builds trust faster than any product page
• Direct sales channel that bypasses Google entirely
• Brand personality in motion — the sketches, the humor, the weirdness

• Whatnot viewers Google you after streams
• Your site is your credibility anchor ("is this real?")
• Product schema + rich results = professional presence in search
• Organic search is the long game — Whatnot could shift, your site won't

The two channels feed each other. Whatnot drives curiosity; the site converts trust. When someone Googles "mad hudson watches" after a stream, what they find looks legit and loads fast.

In the left sidebar, go to Indexing → Pages. This shows which pages Google has indexed and which it hasn't. You want your product pages, collections, and homepage in the "Indexed" count.

Good: All 6 product pages indexed. No new errors or "Excluded" pages that weren't excluded before.

Bad: Product pages showing as "Discovered - currently not indexed" or "Crawled - currently not indexed." This would mean something's preventing indexing after the new theme (unlikely, but worth checking).

Click Performance → Search results in the sidebar. Four metrics:

• Total Impressions — how many times any Mad Hudson page appeared in someone's Google search. This is your visibility number. Early on, this is the most important number.
• Total Clicks — how many times someone clicked through from Google. For a niche brand, even single-digit daily clicks from organic search is meaningful.
• Average CTR — clicks divided by impressions. A low CTR on a high-impression query means your title/description isn't compelling enough to click. That's a title problem, not a ranking problem.
• Average Position — where you rank. For brand searches ("mad hudson watches"), you should be position 1–3. For category searches, anything in the top 20 is a win at this stage.

Below the graph, click the Queries tab. This shows the actual search terms people used when your site appeared.

• Brand searches ("mad hudson", "mad hudson watches") — your existing audience. Should be position 1.
• Product searches ("eddie watch", artist name + watch) — people who know what they want.
• Category searches ("artist collaboration watches", "hand painted watches") — new discovery. This is where SEO earns its keep.
• Surprise queries — searches you didn't expect. These often reveal what Google thinks your site is about.
• Whatnot connection: Watch for queries that include "whatnot" or stream-related terms. If people are searching "mad hudson whatnot" after streams, that's the cross-channel effect in action.

Click the Pages tab (next to Queries). This shows which pages are getting search traffic. Ideally: homepage and all product pages are appearing. If a product page has zero impressions, Google might not be indexing it properly.

In the sidebar under Enhancements, look for Product snippets. We added Product schema (JSON-LD) to all product pages — name, price, availability, images. When it works, your search results get rich snippets.

Good: 6 valid items (one per product). No errors. This means Google recognizes your product data and may show enhanced listings.

Click Core Web Vitals in the sidebar. Three metrics:

• LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) — how fast the main content loads. Under 2.5 seconds is good.
• INP (Interaction to Next Paint) — how fast the site responds to clicks/taps. Under 200ms is good.
• CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) — how much stuff jumps around while loading. Under 0.1 is good.

The pre-deploy baseline had all three green. This check confirms the new theme didn't break anything.

Whatnot → people discover you through live streams → some Google you afterward → your site confirms you're legit → they buy (on site or come back to next stream)

Organic search → people find you through Google → your product pages have stories, prices, schema → they buy or follow → some find you on Whatnot

The creative, sketch-comedy energy on Whatnot makes people curious. The professional, well-structured site makes people trust. Neither works as well without the other.

• Impressions rising = Google is showing you more. Good sign.
• Clicks rising = people are clicking through. Even better.
• New queries appearing = you're being discovered for things you didn't rank for before. Best sign.
• Impressions flat = normal for the first 2 weeks. Google is still processing.
• Impressions dropping = investigate. Check indexing first, then Core Web Vitals.

Bottom line: Check GSC once a week. Look at impressions, clicks, and queries. If something looks off, flag it. Otherwise, the SEO work is working in the background while you focus on what's actually driving sales — Whatnot, the brand, the weird creative energy that makes Mad Hudson different.