Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free tool from Google that shows how your website performs in Google Search and helps you find and fix problems. It is the most important tool for any website owner doing SEO, because it uses Google’s own data rather than estimates.

Written by Paul Hoda, SEO consultant since 2005. Last updated 8 November 2026.

How to set up Search Console

  1. Sign in at search.google.com/search-console with a Google account.
  2. Add a property. A Domain property covers all versions of your site (http, https, www, non-www and subdomains) and requires DNS verification. A URL-prefix property covers one exact version and offers more verification methods.
  3. Verify ownership using DNS, an HTML file, a meta tag, Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager.
  4. Submit your XML Sitemap.
  5. Add other team members with appropriate permissions.

Data starts collecting from verification, so set it up as early as possible.

The key Search Console reports

Performance

Shows clicks, Impressions, CTR and average position for your site, filterable by query, page, country, device, search appearance and date. Use it to find which keywords bring traffic, which pages are growing or declining, and where you rank on page two with potential to improve.

Pages (indexing)

Shows which URLs are indexed and why others are not, such as noindex, duplicates, redirects, 404s or “Crawled, currently not indexed”. See Indexing.

URL Inspection

Checks a specific URL: whether it is indexed, its canonical, last crawl date, mobile rendering and structured data. You can also request indexing.

Sitemaps

Shows submitted sitemaps and how many URLs Google discovered. My guide on how to remove a sitemap XML in Google Search Console covers cleaning these up.

Core Web Vitals

Groups URLs by LCP, INP and CLS status using real user data (Core Web Vitals).

Links

Shows top linking sites, most-linked pages and top internal links.

Manual Actions and Security Issues

Alerts you to penalties and hacked content (Google Penalties).

Enhancements

Reports on structured data types such as breadcrumbs, products and reviews.

Practical ways to use Search Console

  • Find quick wins: filter for queries with average position 5 to 20 and high impressions, then improve those pages.
  • Improve CTR: find pages with many impressions but low CTR and rewrite titles and descriptions.
  • Spot drops early: compare date ranges to see which pages and queries lost clicks.
  • Fix indexing issues on important pages.
  • Check new content is discovered and indexed.
  • Monitor after changes, such as migrations or redesigns.

Limitations

  • Data is sampled and anonymised; very rare queries are hidden.
  • The interface shows up to 16 months of data, so export or connect to Looker Studio or BigQuery for longer history.
  • Average position is an average across all impressions and can be misleading.

Search Console and analytics

Search Console shows what happens before the click; Google Analytics 4 shows what happens after. Link the two to see search queries alongside engagement and conversions. For reporting, see SEO Reporting.

Key Takeaways

  • Search Console shows how Google sees and ranks your site, using Google’s own data.
  • Use a Domain property to cover every version of your site.
  • Performance, Pages and URL Inspection are the most useful reports.
  • Find quick wins in queries ranking around positions 5 to 20.
  • Link it with Google Analytics 4 to connect searches with results.

Related Terms

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