Google Search Console is a free Google service that shows how your site appears in Google Search and helps you find and fix problems. To set it up you sign in with a Google account, add your site as a property, verify that you own it, and submit your sitemap. You do not need Search Console to appear in Google, but it shows how Google sees your site.
What Search Console does
According to Google, it helps you monitor, maintain and troubleshoot your site's presence in Search results. It shows:
- Whether Google can find and crawl your pages.
- Which pages are indexed and why others are not.
- How often your site appears (impressions), which queries show it and how many people click.
- Security issues and manual actions.
- Which sites link to you.
It is used by business owners, SEO specialists, site administrators and developers.
Step 1: Choose a property type
| Domain property | URL-prefix property | |
|---|---|---|
| Example | example.com | https://example.com/ |
| Covers | All subdomains, protocols and paths | Only URLs starting with that exact prefix |
| Verification | DNS record | Several methods |
| Best for | Most sites | When you cannot edit DNS, or want to track one section |
For a Domain property, enter the root domain without the protocol, path or www. For a URL-prefix property, enter the full address including https:// and the trailing slash.
Step 2: Verify ownership
Verification proves you own the site, because Search Console shows owner-only data. For a Domain property you add a DNS record at your domain provider. For a URL-prefix property you can use other methods. If a method fails, check you used the right property type and the right protocol.
Data collection starts when anyone adds the property, even before verification. Data usually appears within a few days.
Step 3: Submit your sitemap
Open the Sitemaps report, enter your sitemap URL (for example /sitemap.xml) and submit. A sitemap helps Google discover pages, though it is not required. See our technical SEO checklist.
Step 4: Check the first reports
Google suggests, for beginners, looking at:
- Overview/property dashboard: security issues, manual actions and trends.
- Performance report: clicks, impressions, CTR and position. See the Performance report explained.
- Page indexing: which pages Google has found. See Crawled, currently not indexed.
- URL Inspection: how Google sees one page. See URL Inspection and request indexing.
Google says many users only need a monthly check-up unless Search Console alerts them to a problem.
Good habits
- Add owners and users with the right permissions.
- Keep the DNS record or verification token in place, or you may lose verification.
- Do not panic at every notice. Read what it says first.