How to set up Google Search Console, what each report actually tells you, and five routines (with filters and steps) that turn its data into ranking fixes.
Short answer: Google Search Console is Google's free tool for seeing how your site appears in search. You verify your site, submit a sitemap, and then use three areas most: Performance (which searches show you and how often people click), Pages under Indexing (which URLs are in Google and why others are not), and URL Inspection (the status of one specific page). Everything else is supporting detail.
This guide is organized as a working manual: set it up once, learn what each report is for, then run the five routines at the end on a schedule.
| Report | Question it answers | Check it |
|---|---|---|
| Performance (Search results) | Which queries and pages get impressions and clicks, at what position | Weekly |
| Pages (Indexing) | Which URLs are indexed, which are not, and the reason | Weekly, and after launches |
| URL Inspection | Is this one URL indexed, which canonical Google chose, how it rendered | On demand |
| Sitemaps | Did Google read your sitemap and how many URLs it found | After site changes |
| Core Web Vitals | Which URL groups have poor or needs-improvement loading, responsiveness and layout stability from real Chrome users | Monthly |
| HTTPS | Whether pages are served securely | Monthly |
| Enhancements (e.g. Breadcrumbs, Products, Videos) | Whether structured data is valid and eligible for rich results | After template changes |
| Manual actions | Whether a human reviewer penalized the site | If traffic drops sharply |
| Security issues | Hacking, malware or deceptive content detected | If traffic drops sharply |
| Links | Top linking sites, top linked pages, internal link counts | Quarterly |
| Removals | Temporarily hide URLs from results | Only in emergencies |
The four metrics are clicks, impressions, CTR (clicks divided by impressions) and average position. A few things trip people up:
Use the filter bar: Query, Page, Country, Device, Search appearance and Date. The "Compare" option in the date filter is the fastest way to see what changed.
The report splits URLs into indexed and not indexed, with reasons. The reasons you will see most, and what they usually mean:
Not every excluded URL is a problem. Focus on pages you want to rank.
Pages on page two already have Google's attention. Small, specific improvements move them more than new posts do.
Filter to pages in the top 5 positions and sort by CTR, lowest first. A page ranking well but rarely clicked usually has a vague title or a description that does not match the query. Rewrite the title to match what people searched, and check that Google is not rewriting it (compare the live result with your title tag).
After a redesign, migration or big template change, open Pages and compare the indexed count with the previous weeks. A sudden rise in "noindex", "404" or "Redirect" reasons is your early warning. Inspect a few affected URLs with URL Inspection, fix, then use Validate fix in the report.
In the top bar, paste the URL into URL Inspection. It tells you whether the page is on Google, the canonical Google selected, when it was last crawled and whether the page is mobile-usable and has valid structured data. Click Test live URL to see how Google renders it now, including a screenshot and any blocked resources. Use Request indexing only after you have actually changed something.
For official detail on any report, Google's Search Console Help center is the canonical documentation and is kept current.
Search Console tells you where to look; it does not fix pages. When a routine flags a page, work through our on-page SEO checklist, and set up behavior tracking with the website analytics setup guide so you can see what visitors do after the click.
Sites built with We.Inc come with hosting, SSL and a generated sitemap, so connecting Search Console is mostly the verification step. You can then ask the editor to rewrite a title or add a section, and check the result in URL Inspection.
Yes. Search Console is a free Google service. You only need a Google account and the ability to verify that you own or manage the website.
A Domain property covers every subdomain and both http and https versions, and is verified with a DNS TXT record. A URL-prefix property covers only the exact address you enter (for example https://www.example.com/) and can be verified in more ways, such as an HTML file, a meta tag or Google Analytics. Use a Domain property when you can edit DNS.
Data usually starts appearing within a few days of verification. Performance data only covers the period after the property existed in some cases, and the Performance report keeps up to 16 months of history.
No. It asks Google to crawl the URL sooner. Whether the page is indexed still depends on quality, duplication and technical signals. There is also a daily quota on requests, so use it for important new or updated pages rather than every URL.
Search Console shows what happens before the click: which searches showed your pages, your position, impressions and clicks, plus indexing and technical problems. Google Analytics shows what visitors do after they arrive. You want both, and they can be linked.
How we research, test and update this page: our editorial policy. We.Inc is our own product.
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