What is Google Search Console (GSC)?

Google Search Console (GSC) is a free tool from Google that shows how your website does in Google Search. It tells you which searches show your pages and how often people click. It also shows whether Google can find and index your pages, and what the problem is when it can't. It used to be called Google Webmaster Tools.

What you can do with Search Console

With Search Console, you can:

• see your search traffic: which searches show your pages, how often your site appears and how often people click
• check that Google can find your pages, crawl them to read what's on them and index them, so they can appear in search results
• fix indexing problems and ask Google to look at a new or updated page again
• see which other websites link to yours
• check how fast and stable your pages are for real visitors
• get a message when Google finds a problem on your site, such as spam or signs of hacking

The data covers Google only: Google Search and, if your site gets enough traffic there, Discover and Google News. Visits from other search engines, ads or social media don't appear in it. AI Overviews and AI Mode are included, because Google counts them as part of the normal web results.

Search Console doesn't change anything on your site itself. Even so, if you're starting with search engine optimisation (SEO), set it up first. It shows you where to start and, later on, whether your changes worked.

How to set up Google Search Console

You need a Google account and, for a Domain property, access to your domain's DNS settings. You change those with the provider that runs your domain's name servers, even if you registered the domain with another company. If you're not sure which provider that is, enter your domain in a free name server lookup tool. The name servers it shows usually carry the provider's name. If your domain uses our name servers, you'll find the DNS settings in the control panel.

Choose a Domain or URL-prefix property

Search Console calls each website you add a property, and each property gets its own reports. For a website, you choose between a Domain property and a URL-prefix property.

Our advice: choose the Domain property type. It collects the data of every version of your site in one place, so nothing on another subdomain or protocol is left out. You don't have to pick only one, though. Next to it, you can add URL-prefix properties for parts of your site you want to track on their own. If you can't change your domain's DNS settings, start with a URL-prefix property instead.

Add and verify your website

To set up a Domain property:

1. Go to Google Search Console, sign in with your Google account and add a new property.
2. Choose Domain as the property type and enter your domain without https:// or www, for example yourbusiness.co.uk.
3. Copy the TXT record that Search Console gives you.
4. Add the TXT record to your domain's DNS settings, with the provider that runs your name servers. If that's us, our help centre shows how to add a TXT record.
5. Go back to Search Console and click Verify. A new DNS record can take up to two or three days to be picked up. If verification fails at first, wait a day or two and try again.
6. Leave the TXT record in place after your site is verified. If you remove it, your site will no longer be verified.

If you chose a URL-prefix property, Search Console offers other ways to verify, such as uploading an HTML file or adding a meta tag to your homepage. Google's verification guide explains each one.

Submit your sitemap

A sitemap is a file that tells Google which pages on your website it should know about. You probably have one already, because most content management systems create one automatically. On a WordPress website, for example, it's at /wp-sitemap.xml.

1. Find your sitemap's address. If your site runs on a website builder or a hosting service, its help pages say where the sitemap is.
2. In Search Console, open the Sitemaps report, enter the address of your sitemap and click Submit. The address looks like https://yourbusiness.co.uk/sitemap.xml, or https://yourbusiness.co.uk/wp-sitemap.xml on WordPress. Google should fetch the sitemap straight away, but crawling the pages in it can take longer, and there's no guarantee every page gets crawled.
3. Check the status. If it doesn't say Success, click the row to see what went wrong.

The main reports, explained

Using Search Console for SEO mostly comes down to a handful of reports. Each one points you to something to check or improve.

Performance: the searches that find you

For each search, or query, that showed your pages in Google, this report gives you four metrics:

• Clicks: how often someone clicked through to your site.
• Impressions: how often your site appeared in the results.
• CTR (click-through rate): the share of impressions that led to a click.
• Average position: on average, how high your highest result ranks in the search results, where 1 is the top.

The report opens on the last three months of data. Search Console keeps 16 months, so you can look further back too. Start with queries that get a lot of impressions but few clicks, such as "buy candles online" for a candle shop. People see your page for those searches but don't choose it, so improve its title and description first. The queries also show the words your customers actually search for, which makes them useful for keyword research.

Pages with an average position just below the top results are worth working on next. Give them a clearer title or a fuller answer.

Pages: is your site in Google?

The Pages report shows which of your pages Google has indexed, meaning stored and able to appear in search results. It also shows which pages it hasn't indexed, and why.

Most sites have a few pages that aren't indexed, often for a good reason. Duplicates, filter pages and redirects are usually left out on purpose. A page with a noindex tag, a line of code that tells Google to leave it out, or a page you've removed doesn't belong in Google anyway. What matters is that your important pages (your homepage, services and contact page) are indexed. If one isn't, the reason in the report tells you where to start, and you can read more about why a page isn't indexed.

URL inspection: check a single page

URL inspection checks one page at a time. Paste an address and it shows whether the page is in Google and when Google last crawled it. After you publish a new page or change an important one, you can click Request indexing to ask Google to crawl it again. That doesn't guarantee the page gets indexed or ranks well. You can only send a limited number of requests a day, so save them for the pages that matter.

Core Web Vitals and HTTPS

The Core Web Vitals report shows how your pages score on Core Web Vitals. These are Google's measures of how quickly a page loads, how quickly it responds and how stable it stays while it loads, for real visitors. If your site is new or has few visitors, the report may not have enough data yet. That's normal for a small site, and it doesn't mean something is wrong.

The HTTPS report next to it counts your indexed pages on HTTPS, the secure connection, and on plain HTTP. If some pages still show up on plain HTTP, check that your site has an SSL certificate and that those addresses send visitors on to their HTTPS version.

Links

The Links report shows a sample of the other sites that link to yours, your backlinks, and how your own pages link to each other. It isn't a complete list, but it's enough to spot patterns.

Look for important pages that few of your other pages link to. Google finds pages by following links, and so do your visitors. Add internal links to those pages from related pages.

Manual actions and security issues

Both reports should say "No issues detected". If they don't, a Google reviewer has found spam on your pages, which is called a manual action. Or Google has found signs that your site has been hacked. You'll get a message about it too. Fix the problem first, then request a review from the same report.

Rather leave SEO to experts? Our SEO team improves your content, headings, internal links and images, so search engines and customers understand your business better.

Google Search Console vs Google Analytics

Search Console and Google Analytics are both Google tools, and they're easy to mix up. They answer different questions.

You don't have to choose between them. Use Search Console and set up Google Analytics as well. When you link them, Google Analytics shows your Search Console queries, and which pages people land on from Google Search and what they do there.

Frequently asked questions

How do I log in to Google Search Console?

Sign in at Google Search Console with the Google account you used to add your site, then choose your site in the property selector. Your sites are all listed there, so you can switch between them if you have more than one.

Is Google Search Console free?

Yes, Google offers it as a free service. Once your site is set up, it's worth checking your reports about once a month, and straight away when Google sends you a message about a problem.

Does Search Console improve my rankings?

Not on its own, and you don't need Search Console to appear in Google. The pages and problems the reports point to are where your SEO work starts.

How long until I see data?

Usually a few days. Search Console starts collecting data as soon as your site is added, even before you verify it, and the reports fill up from there. There's no data from before that, so it's worth adding your site early.

Can I give other people access?

Yes. Add them as a user in the Search Console settings, for example your web designer or a colleague, instead of sharing your Google login. Keep the owner role for yourself, so you stay in control.

Search Console is useful for a brand new website too: request indexing of your homepage, and Google should start crawling your site, although that doesn't guarantee your pages get indexed or appear in results. If you don't have one yet, build your website with our Aida AI Website Builder, without coding, and add it to Search Console as soon as it's live.