Google Search Console

What is Google Search Console?

Google Search Console is a free service from Google that shows how a website performs in Google Search. It reports the queries people searched, how often your pages appeared and were clicked, which pages are indexed, and any crawling, security or manual action problems Google has found on the site.

Search Console was called Google Webmaster Tools until 2015. It is the only place where Google itself tells you how your site is doing in its results. Every other SEO tool estimates; Search Console reports Google’s own data, with some sampling and privacy filtering.

You add a site as a property. A **domain property** (verified by a DNS record) covers every subdomain and both http and https. A **URL-prefix property** covers only addresses that start with the exact prefix you enter, such as https://www.example.com/. You can verify a URL-prefix property with a DNS record, an HTML file, a meta tag, Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager.

The main reports are: the Performance report (clicks, impressions, CTR and average position by query, page, country, device, search appearance and date); Page indexing (which URLs are indexed and why others are not); Sitemaps; the URL Inspection tool (live test of one URL, with the rendered HTML and a request-indexing button); Core Web Vitals; HTTPS; enhancement reports for rich results; Links (top linked pages, top linking sites, top anchor text); and the Security issues and Manual actions reports.

Performance data goes back 16 months. Anything older is gone unless you export it, so save it to a spreadsheet, a warehouse (Search Console has a bulk export to BigQuery) or a tool that stores it for you. Data usually lags by a day or two, though recent days are available in a fresher, provisional view. Links shown in AI Overviews and AI Mode are counted within the web search totals rather than in a separate breakdown.

Why Google Search Console matters for SEO

Search Console is where Google tells you directly whether it can crawl and index your pages, and whether it has penalised you. A manual action only shows up here. So do hacked-content and malware warnings. If you never check it, you can lose rankings for weeks without knowing why.

It is also the most reliable source of query data you will get. Analytics tools see that a visit came from Google but, because search terms are encrypted, not what was searched. Search Console fills that gap: you see the real queries, how many impressions each one earned and how your click-through rate compares across pages.

That makes it the starting point for most SEO work: finding striking distance keywords to push onto page one, spotting pages whose CTR is low for their position (usually a title problem), catching keyword cannibalization where two pages swap for the same query, and confirming whether a change helped.

How to set up Google Search Console

1. Go to search.google.com/search-console and sign in with the Google account you want to own the property.
2. Choose **Domain** and enter your bare domain (example.com). Add the TXT record Google gives you at your DNS provider, wait for it to propagate, then click Verify. Use a URL-prefix property instead only if you cannot edit DNS.
3. Submit your XML sitemap under Sitemaps so Google can find every page you want indexed.
4. Add other people under Settings > Users and permissions with Full or Restricted access, rather than sharing your login.
5. After a few days, open Page indexing to see which URLs are not indexed and why, and the Performance report to see your first queries.
6. Check the Manual actions and Security issues reports. Both should say no issues detected.
7. Set up a regular export or connect a tool that stores the data, so you keep more than 16 months of history.
8. Turn on email notifications so Google can alert you to new indexing errors, manual actions or security problems.

Google Search Console example

example.com.  3600  IN  TXT  "google-site-verification=AbC123exampleToken"