Google Search Console fundamentals

Google Search Console is a free service that shows how Google sees your site: which queries bring visitors, which pages are indexed, what errors Google found and whether any manual action applies. Analytics tools show what visitors do once they arrive. Search Console shows what happened before they arrived, inside Google Search itself. It is the most important tool in this track, and most of what you learn elsewhere becomes practical once you can read it.

Getting access: verification

Search Console only shows data to people who prove they own or manage a site. You add a property and verify it. A Domain property covers every subdomain and protocol (https://, http://, www., shop.) and is verified with a DNS record. A URL-prefix property covers one exact prefix such as https://www.example.com/ and can be verified several ways, including an HTML file, a meta tag or Google Analytics.

Verification does not affect rankings or make a site indexable. It only gives you access to private data and tools.

The Performance report

The Performance report shows how your site performs in Google Search results over time. It has four headline metrics, and each has a precise meaning.

Below the chart you can break the data down by query, page, country, device, search appearance and date. Filtering is where the report becomes useful. Filter by a page and open the Queries tab to see which searches bring traffic to that page. Filter by a query and open the Pages tab to see which of your URLs appear for it.

Reading average position carefully

Average position is an average across every impression, so it moves when the mix of queries changes as well as when rankings change. If a page starts appearing for many new queries at position 40, its average position gets worse even if its main query still ranks third. If it stops appearing for low-ranking queries, its average gets better while traffic may fall. Always look at clicks and impressions alongside position, and check individual queries before drawing conclusions.

URL Inspection

The URL Inspection tool answers questions about one specific URL: is it on Google, when was it last crawled, was crawling allowed, was indexing allowed, which canonical did you declare and which one did Google select. For JavaScript-heavy pages, the live test shows the rendered HTML and a screenshot, so you can confirm Google sees your content.

After fixing an important page, you can use "Request indexing" to ask Google to recrawl it. This asks for a recrawl; it does not guarantee indexing or any ranking, and repeating the request does not help.

The Page indexing report

The Page indexing report groups every URL Google knows on your site into indexed and not indexed, with a reason for each group: "Excluded by noindex tag", "Blocked by robots.txt", "Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user", "Crawled, currently not indexed", "Not found (404)" and so on. Many of these statuses are normal. A site with filters and parameters will always have duplicates and excluded URLs.

What you are looking for are surprises: important pages listed under a status you did not intend, or a sudden rise in a status after a release. If 300 product pages suddenly appear under "Excluded by noindex tag", a template probably changed.

Other reports worth knowing

The Sitemaps report shows whether Google could read each sitemap you submitted and how many URLs it discovered. The Links report shows which external sites link to you and which of your pages are linked most, according to Google. The Core Web Vitals report groups pages by real-user performance. The Manual actions report is where Google tells you if a human reviewer applied an action for a spam policy violation. If it says "No issues detected", no manual action applies.

A simple monthly routine

Once a month, open the Performance report and compare the last 28 days with the same period a year earlier, so seasonality does not fool you. Check the Page indexing report for new or growing statuses, and look at the Manual actions and Security issues reports. That fifteen-minute routine catches most problems long before they show up as a crisis.