Guide

Google Search Console Guide

Last updated 2 May 2026

Google Search Console is a free tool from Google that shows how your site appears in Google Search. Unlike third-party platforms that infer data through crawls and rank tracking, Search Console reports from Google’s own index and user data. It is the authoritative source for indexing status, search performance, and technical issues.

This guide covers setup, every major report, and how to use the tool to diagnose the most common SEO problems.

Setup

Adding your property

Go to search.google.com/search-console and click Add property. You’ll choose between two property types:

Domain property: covers everything under a domain. All subdomains (www, blog, m) and both HTTP and HTTPS are included. Requires verification via a DNS TXT record added at your domain registrar. This is the recommended approach for most sites.

URL prefix property: covers only the specific prefix you enter (https://www.example.com/). Easier to verify but misses data from other subdomains or protocols unless you add them separately.

Verification methods

Method	How	Covers
DNS TXT record	Add a TXT record at your registrar	Full domain
HTML file	Upload a file to your web root	That URL prefix only
HTML meta tag	Add a tag to your homepage `<head>`	That URL prefix only
Google Analytics	Links via GA4 if you have Manage Users access	That URL prefix only
Google Tag Manager	Links via GTM if you have Manage access	That URL prefix only

After verification, allow 24–48 hours for initial data to populate. Full performance data appears within a few days; full indexing data can take a week or more on new sites.

User access

You can add other users under Settings > Users and permissions. Two permission levels:

Full: can see all data, request indexing, submit sitemaps, submit disavow files
Restricted: read-only access to reports

Add developers, content managers, and agency contacts as restricted users. Limit full access to people who need to take actions.

Performance report

The Performance report is the most-used section of Search Console. It shows how often your site appears in search results and how users interact with those results.

Metrics

Clicks: the number of times a user clicked through to your site from a Google result.

Impressions: the number of times a URL from your site appeared in a Google result. A URL counts as an impression when it appears in the viewport, even if the user doesn’t click.

CTR (click-through rate): clicks divided by impressions, expressed as a percentage.

Average position: the mean ranking position across all queries and impressions. Lower is better (position 1 is the top result). This is a blended average. A URL that ranks 1 for one query and 10 for another has an average position of 5.5.

Search types

From 2025, the Performance report splits data across four search types:

Web: traditional organic results
Image: Google Images
Video: video results
News: Google News and Top Stories

A fifth type, AI Overviews / AI Mode, surfaces as a separate dimension within the web results view. Pages cited in AI Overviews can have very high impressions with relatively low CTR. The AI summary answers the query without requiring a click. This is not a problem to fix; it is a change in how search delivers value.

When interpreting CTR trends, filter by search type to avoid mixing these distinct contexts.

Filters and dimensions

You can filter by date range (up to 16 months), query, page, country, device, and search appearance. Dimensions can be combined: filter to a specific page and then break down by query to see what that page ranks for.

Key use cases:

High impressions, low CTR: your page appears in results but users don’t click. Usually a weak title tag or meta description. Check what’s ranking above you and what their titles look like.
Strong impressions, falling position: the page is losing rankings. Check for algorithm updates, competing pages gaining authority, or content that has gone stale.
Unexpected queries: queries you didn’t write content for. Either create more content on those topics or optimise the existing page to better match that intent.
Position 4-10 with good impressions: near-page-one rankings worth pushing to position 1-3. These often respond to content improvements, title optimisation, or internal linking.

Custom annotations

Annotations let you add dated notes directly to the Performance chart. Click the annotation icon on the date axis and add a short description: “Published updated guide”, “Disavow submitted”, “Site migration complete”, “June core update”.

These notes appear as markers on the graph and remain visible when you return to the report. They are visible to all users with access to the property. Use them consistently and annotations become a permanent record of what changed and when. This is far more useful than trying to reconstruct events from memory during a traffic investigation.

Branded queries filter

The Performance report can automatically separate branded from non-branded queries. Click New in the filter bar and select Query > Doesn’t contain your brand name to see non-branded performance. Or use the built-in branded filter (available in some account configurations) to toggle between the two.

Branded queries (those containing your company name, product names, or URL) behave very differently from non-branded ones. They typically show high CTR and top positions. Mixing them into your overall metrics inflates both. Look at non-branded performance separately to understand how your content performs for people who don’t already know you.

AI-powered configuration

An experimental feature lets you describe the analysis you want in plain language — “show me mobile performance for my blog pages in the UK over the last 90 days” — and the tool configures the filters automatically. This is in early rollout and may not be available in all accounts.

Page Indexing report

Found under Indexing > Pages, this report shows every URL Google has discovered on your site, split between indexed and not indexed. Non-indexed URLs are grouped by reason.

Indexed

Pages in the “Indexed” column are in Google’s search index and eligible to appear in results. Being indexed is not the same as ranking — it means Google has the page in its database.

Not indexed — common reasons

Crawled — currently not indexed: Google visited the page but decided not to include it in the index. This is the most common signal of a content quality problem. The page exists and is crawlable, but Google judged it not useful enough to index. Address the content, not the technical setup.

Discovered — currently not indexed: Google found the URL (via a sitemap or link) but hasn’t crawled it yet. Common on large sites or new pages with few internal links. Use the URL Inspection tool to request indexing. Add internal links to accelerate crawling.

Excluded by noindex tag: A meta robots or HTTP header noindex directive is present. Intentional on staging environments, thank-you pages, and faceted navigation. Remove the tag if the page should be indexed.

Blocked by robots.txt: Googlebot is disallowed from crawling the URL. Note. The URL can still appear in results (as a URL only, without content) if Google discovers it via links.

Alternate page with proper canonical tag: The page has a canonical pointing to a different URL. Google has consolidated signals to the canonical. If this page should be the canonical, update the tag.

Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as canonical: The page is in your sitemap but Google has chosen a different canonical, usually because the content is too similar to another indexed URL.

Soft 404: The server returns 200 but the content signals an error or empty state. Fix by returning a proper 404 or 410, or redirect to a live equivalent.

Redirect error: A redirect chain leads to a 4xx, 5xx, or another redirect beyond Google’s follow limit.

Not found (404) / Gone (410): The URL doesn’t exist. Expected for deleted pages with no replacement.

Server error (5xx): The server returned an error when Googlebot visited. Persistent 5xx errors cause Google to reduce crawl frequency.

For a step-by-step diagnostic process for each reason code, see the indexing troubleshooting guide.

URL Inspection tool

Type or paste any URL into the search bar at the top of Search Console to inspect it. The tool shows:

Whether the URL is indexed, and if not, why
The last crawl date
The canonical URL Google has selected
The rendered HTML (what Googlebot saw after JavaScript executed)
Any indexing issues, mobile usability problems, or structured data errors for that URL

Request indexing: queues the URL for a fresh crawl. Use after publishing new content, fixing a technical issue, or updating an existing page. There is a daily quota for requests across the property. Don’t use this indiscriminately on large sites.

View crawled page: shows the rendered HTML from Google’s last crawl. Compare this against what you see in a browser. Missing content in the rendered view points to a JavaScript rendering problem.

Sitemaps

Under Indexing > Sitemaps, you can submit XML sitemaps and monitor their status.

A submitted sitemap should show:

Submitted date
Last read date
Status: Success
Number of URLs discovered

Errors here (unreadable, parse error, HTTP error) prevent Google from efficiently processing your URL inventory. Check that the sitemap URL returns 200 with content-type: application/xml and that the XML is properly formed.

Rules for what belongs in a sitemap:

Only canonical URLs
Only URLs returning 200
No noindex pages
No redirects
No URLs with parameters you don’t want indexed

Including redirects, blocked, or low-quality URLs in a sitemap signals poor editorial judgment and wastes crawl quota.

Core Web Vitals report

Under Experience > Core Web Vitals, this report uses real Chrome user data (the Chrome User Experience Report, or CrUX) to show actual field performance, not lab tests.

Thresholds

Metric	Good	Needs Improvement	Poor
LCP (Largest Contentful Paint)	≤2.5s	2.5-4s	>4s
INP (Interaction to Next Paint)	≤200ms	200-500ms	>500ms
CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift)	≤0.1	0.1-0.25	>0.25

INP replaced FID (First Input Delay) as the interactivity metric in March 2024.

How to use the report

Issues are grouped by URL pattern, not individual URL. A problem affecting a whole category of pages appears as one row affecting hundreds of URLs. Click through to see example URLs, then test with PageSpeed Insights (which uses the same CrUX data) for more detail.

Core Web Vitals are a confirmed ranking signal, but a modest one. Fix genuine performance problems. Don’t expect ranking recoveries purely from metric improvements unless your scores are in the “Poor” range.

Links report

Under Links, you can see:

External links: the domains linking to your site, your most-linked pages, and the most common anchor text used in those links. This is Google’s view of your backlink profile. It differs from third-party tools (Ahrefs, Majestic) because Google doesn’t expose its full link index. It shows a sample.

Internal links: which pages on your own site receive the most internal links. This is useful for confirming that your most important pages also have the most internal link equity pointing to them. If a cornerstone page has few internal links, that’s a fixable signal.

Use the internal links report to audit whether your site structure reinforces your content priorities.

Manual Actions report

Under Security & Manual Actions > Manual Actions, any manually-applied penalties from Google’s webspam team appear here. Clean sites show “No issues detected.”

Active manual actions suppress rankings significantly and persist until the issue is resolved and a reconsideration request is submitted. Common causes: unnatural inbound links, cloaking, hidden text, and thin/affiliate content.

If you inherit a site or an old domain, check this report immediately.

Security Issues report

Under Security & Manual Actions > Security Issues, Google flags hacking, malware, or deceptive content it has detected on your site.

If a security issue is active, Google may show interstitial warnings to users before they visit your site — a severe traffic impact. Resolve the issue, clean the site, and submit a reconsideration request.

Connecting Search Console to other tools

Google Analytics 4: link GA4 to Search Console under GA4’s Admin > Product Links. This adds a Search Console report inside GA4 showing landing page performance alongside on-site behaviour. Available in GA4 under Reports > Search Console.

Looker Studio: the official Search Console connector lets you build custom dashboards combining GSC data with other sources. Useful for automated reporting.

Search Console API: programmatic access to performance data, indexing status, and more. The API supports a wider query limit than the interface (25,000 rows vs 1,000).

What to check weekly

Performance report: any significant drops in clicks or position in the past 7 days
Page Indexing report: any new errors or unexpected increases in non-indexed URLs
Core Web Vitals: any new “Poor” URLs
Manual Actions: confirm still clean

Monthly:

Links report: new top-linked pages, any unusual anchor text patterns
Sitemaps: confirm no errors
URL Inspection on recently published important pages: confirm indexed