Sign-in and setup in ten minutes
Signing in to Search Console
Google Search Console is available at search.google.com/search-console using a Google Account. It is best to sign in with your company’s Google Account rather than an employee’s personal account, as ownership is tied to this account. If that employee leaves, access goes with them.
Domain or URL prefix: which property type to choose
In the first step, you need to specify what you want to monitor. There are two options:
| Property type | What it covers | How to verify |
|---|
| Domain (recommended) | The entire domain: www and non-www versions, http and https, and all subdomains | With a TXT record in the domain’s DNS settings |
| URL prefix | Only pages under the exact URL specified, for example only those starting with https://www. | With an uploaded HTML file, meta tag, Google Analytics, or Tag Manager code |
A Domain property is the safer choice because you see all variants in a single place. An URL prefix property comes in handy if you do not have DNS access or want to monitor a specific section of a large website separately.
Verification and submitting a sitemap
After verification, enter your sitemap URL in the Sitemaps section of the left menu; in most systems, this is /sitemap.xml. The status will change to “Success” in a few hours or days. If the sitemap contains redirected or non-existent URLs, the Pages report will flag this, so only live, indexable URLs belong in the sitemap.
Adding users for a developer or agency
You can grant access to others under Users and permissions in the Settings menu. Developers or agencies should be added with their own accounts with Full or Restricted permissions, while ownership remains with your company. Never share passwords; access can be revoked with a single click once work is complete.
The 5 reports worth checking
1. Performance: clicks, impressions, position
This is the most important section of Search Console. It shows four key numbers: how many times your website appeared in search results (impressions), how many times it was clicked (clicks), the click-through rate (CTR), and the average position. Below, tabs allow breakdown by queries, pages, countries, and devices. Data is available for up to 16 months back, with a delay of two to three days.
The quickest gains are in queries ranking between 4th and 20th position, where impressions are high but clicks are low. According to Google, these pages are already relevant, just not ranking high enough. A more accurate title tag, a better targeted paragraph, or an internal link will deliver the biggest impact here.
It is worth checking queries and pages together: if two of your own pages appear for the same search, they are competing with each other. This is known as keyword cannibalisation. The solution is to decide which page owns the topic, and have the other page link to it.
2. Pages: why a page is not indexed
The Pages report (formerly Coverage) shows how many of your pages Google has indexed and why others were excluded. There will always be excluded pages, and not every status message indicates an error. The most common ones:
| Message | What it means | What to do |
|---|
| Crawled - currently not indexed | Google crawled the page but did not index it. Often the content is too thin or very similar to another page. | Expand it with unique content and link to it from important pages. If it is genuinely unnecessary, it can remain as is. |
| Discovered - currently not indexed | Google knows about the URL but has not crawled it yet. For a new page this is temporary; if widespread, it points to a slow server or weak internal linking. | Add internal links, check the sitemap, and verify server response times. |
| Alternate page with proper canonical tag | The page is a variant of another page, and this is indicated by the canonical tag. | Nothing, if intentional (for example, URLs with filter parameters). |
| Page with redirect | The URL redirects to another, so it is not indexed itself. | Nothing, if intentional. However, remove it from the sitemap. |
| Not found (404) | The page no longer exists or the crawler arrived from a broken link. | If it had traffic or backlinks, set up a 301 redirect to the most relevant equivalent page. |
| Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user | Google overrode the specified canonical tag because it received conflicting signals. | Align the canonical tag, internal links, and sitemap so they all point to the same URL. |
3. URL inspection and requesting indexing
For any URL typed into the top search bar, Search Console tells you whether it is indexed, when the crawler last visited, and which URL Google selected as canonical. For new or significantly updated pages, you can request indexing here. This is not a guarantee and daily requests are limited, but for important pages it can speed up discovery by days.
4. Core Web Vitals: real visitor experience
This report uses real measurements from Chrome users to show which page groups are fast and which need improvement, separated for mobile and desktop. For low-traffic websites there is not enough data, in which case the report remains empty. What the metrics mean and the order of fixes are explained in our guide on fixing a slow website.
5. Links: who links to your website
The Links report shows which of your pages receive the most external links, from which domains, and with what anchor text, as well as the distribution of internal links. The list is a sample rather than an exhaustive total, but trends are clear: if an important service page has hardly any internal links, that is easy to fix.
What Search Console does not show
- Traffic outside Google: Bing search results require Bing Webmaster Tools, which is worth setting up anyway because several AI-powered search engines rely on Bing’s index.
- Visibility in AI responses: whether ChatGPT or Perplexity mentions your business must be measured separately.
- Exact daily rankings: position is an average value that fluctuates depending on the searcher, location, and device.
- Every single query: Google hides very rare searches for privacy reasons, which is why total queries may be lower than the page’s overall totals.
- Real-time data: figures arrive with a delay of two to three days, so the effect of yesterday’s change is not yet visible.
A 15-minute monthly check-up routine
- Performance, comparing the last 28 days with the previous 28 days: is there a major drop in clicks or impressions?
- Queries ranking between 4th and 20th position with high impressions: these form next month’s optimisation list.
- Pages report: has a new error type appeared, or has the number of unindexed pages increased?
- New and updated key pages: run an URL inspection to see if they have been indexed.
- Core Web Vitals: is there a new page group with a poor rating?
- Security & Manual Actions: you want to see an empty list here. If it is not, it requires immediate attention.
How we use it: two examples from our own website
The impact of updating a title tag
On 14 September 2026, we updated only the title tag of our Google SEO service page, leaving everything else unchanged. We measured the result in the Performance report using a page filter and date comparison: in the 23 days before the update, there were 46 impressions with an average position of 63.8, while in the 23 days after, there were 229 impressions with an average position of 18.8. The method is key: baseline measurement before making a change, one change at a time, followed by comparing periods of equal length.
Uncovering keyword cannibalisation
By combining query and page breakdowns, we noticed that from late September, searches related to “accessible webshop” were displaying our glossary entry on web accessibility instead of our main article on the topic. In 12 days, impressions for the article dropped from 220 to 45, while the glossary entry received 140 impressions. The fix was not creating a new page, but defining clear roles: the glossary entry explains the concept and links to the article for commercial intent queries.
We perform the same analysis for our clients in monthly reports. If you would like someone to regularly review your website’s Search Console data and provide an action list, you can read more about this on our search engine optimisation service page.