Google Search Console: how to set up your website

01What Search Console is for

Search Console is the free tool through which Google shows you how it sees your website: which pages it has indexed, which it has not and why, which searches bring you impressions and clicks, and which errors there are. You do not need it to appear on Google, but you do need it to know what is going on.

• Performance: the searches, pages, countries and devices you appear for.
• Page indexing: the status of each URL and the reason some are not indexed.
• URL Inspection: how a specific page is doing, and a way to request crawling.
• Sitemaps: submission and status of your sitemap.
• Generative AI: impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode, if you have enough data.

02Choose the property type

When you add your website, Search Console asks you to choose how to register it. It is the only important decision:

If you can access your domain’s DNS, the domain property is the most complete option. If you cannot (for example, another company manages the domain), the URL prefix lets you start without touching DNS.

03How to set it up, step by step

1. 1

   Sign in to Search Console with the Google account you want to manage the website.

2. 2

   Click “Add property” and choose Domain or URL prefix. Enter the domain or the full URL including the protocol.

3. 3

   Choose a verification method and follow the instructions that appear.

4. 4

   Click “Verify”. If it fails, check that the record, file or tag is in place correctly and try again.

5. 5

   Once verified, open the property and submit your sitemap.

04The verification methods, in plain English

• DNS record: you add a TXT or CNAME record in your domain provider’s control panel. Google says it can take up to two or three days to be served. Keep the record after verifying.
• HTML file: you upload a file to the root of your website. It must open without logging in; Search Console does not follow redirects when looking for it.
• HTML tag: you paste a meta tag into the head of your home page. If it is placed wrongly or altered, it fails.
• Google Analytics or Tag Manager: works if you already have them installed and your account has the necessary permissions.
• Sites hosted on Google services (Sites, Blogger): verified automatically with the account that manages them.

05Submit your sitemap

A sitemap is a file listing the URLs on your website that matter to you. It is not mandatory: Google says that if your pages are well linked it usually discovers most of the site. It is more useful on new sites or those with few links. If you use a CMS such as WordPress, it normally generates one already.

1. 1

   Open your sitemap in the browser (it is usually at yourwebsite.com/sitemap.xml) and check that it loads.

2. 2

   In Search Console, go to “Sitemaps”, paste the URL and click “Submit”.

3. 3

   Check the status: “Success”, “Has errors” or “Couldn’t fetch”. If it is not “Success”, click the row to see the details.

“Success” means Google has read it without errors and queued the URLs; it does not mean it will index them all.

06What to look at in the first week

• Page indexing: whether your important pages are indexed. Two common statuses are “Discovered – currently not indexed” (Google knows about it but has not yet crawled it) and “Crawled – currently not indexed” (it has visited it but not indexed it).
• URL Inspection: paste a URL and check whether it is on Google. If it is not, request indexing; it guarantees nothing, and Google says it usually takes a day or so, although it can take much longer.
• Performance: there will be little data at first; let a few weeks pass before drawing conclusions.

If you discover your pages are not being indexed, carry on with why your website is not on Google. And to understand timescales, see how long SEO takes. Reviewing these reports is part of the SEO diagnosis.