Google Search Console (GSC) is the only place where you get data straight from Google about how your website performs in search. It’s free, and if you know where to look, it will tell you exactly what to fix and where your next traffic is hiding.
In this guide, I’ll walk you through how to set up Search Console, what every report does, and 20 practical tips I use to grow organic traffic.
Updated October 2026: this guide reflects the current Search Console interface, including the 24-hour performance view, branded query filters and the generative AI features report. All screenshots are new, and the data in them is anonymized.
What Is Google Search Console?
Google Search Console is a free tool from Google that shows how your site appears in Google Search. It tells you which searches bring visitors to your site, which pages Google has indexed, and whether anything is stopping your pages from ranking.
It used to be called Google Webmaster Tools, but it was renamed Search Console back in 2015.
Why Is Google Search Console Important for SEO?
Most SEO tools estimate your traffic and rankings. Search Console shows you Google’s own data. That makes it the most reliable source for:
- Seeing the exact search queries that bring people to your site
- Finding out which pages are indexed, and why others aren’t
- Spotting technical problems like crawl errors, slow pages or broken structured data
- Getting warned about manual actions and security issues
- Measuring how your content performs in Google’s AI features
How to Set Up Google Search Console
1. Add Your Website as a Property
Go to Search Console, sign in with your Google account and click Add property. You can choose between two property types:
- Domain property: covers your entire domain, including all subdomains and both http and https. This is what I recommend for most sites.
- URL-prefix property: only covers URLs that start with the exact address you enter, like https://www.example.com/.
2. Verify That You Own the Site
A Domain property must be verified by adding a TXT record to your domain’s DNS settings. Your domain registrar or host usually has a guide for this, and it only takes a few minutes.
URL-prefix properties can also be verified with an HTML file, an HTML meta tag, Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager. On WordPress, the easiest way to add the meta tag is through an SEO plugin like Rank Math or Google’s Site Kit plugin. Avoid pasting it into your theme’s header.php, since it disappears when the theme updates.
3. Submit Your Sitemap
Go to Indexing > Sitemaps, enter the URL of your XML sitemap (for example sitemap_index.xml if you use Rank Math or Yoast) and click Submit. Search Console then shows when Google last read it and how many pages it discovered.
4. Add Users
If someone else works on your SEO, go to Settings > Users and permissions and click Add user. You can give them Full access, which includes most actions, or Restricted access, which is view-only. Only owners can add or remove other owners.
Google Search Console Reports Explained
Overview
The Overview page gives you a quick summary of your search performance, indexing and experience, plus recommendations Google thinks you should look at. It’s a good starting point, but the real insights are in the individual reports.
Performance Report
The Performance report is where you’ll spend most of your time. It shows four metrics for your site in Google Search:
- Total clicks: how many times someone clicked through to your site
- Total impressions: how many times your site appeared in search results
- Average CTR: the percentage of impressions that turned into a click
- Average position: the average ranking position of your site
You can break the data down by queries, pages, countries, devices, search appearance and days, and look at up to 16 months of history. There’s also a 24 hours view with hourly data, which is great for checking how a new or updated page performs right after publishing.
Generative AI Features Report
Search Console now has a separate report (currently in beta) for how your site performs in Google’s generative AI features. You’ll find it under Performance, and it shows impressions broken down by pages, countries, devices and days.
It’s the best way to see which of your pages are being shown in AI-powered results, and how that changes over time.
URL Inspection Tool
Paste any URL from your site into the search bar at the top to see whether it’s on Google, when it was last crawled, which canonical URL Google chose and whether any enhancements were detected.
Click Test live URL to check the current version of the page, and Request indexing when you’ve published or significantly updated a page. Don’t overuse it, though, since there’s a daily limit and it doesn’t guarantee indexing.
Page Indexing Report
The Page indexing report (under Indexing > Pages) shows how many of your pages are indexed and how many aren’t. Scroll down to see exactly why pages aren’t indexed:
Not every reason is a problem. Redirects, pages with a noindex tag and alternate pages with a proper canonical tag are usually intentional. Focus on reasons like Not found (404), Server error (5xx) and Crawled – currently not indexed for pages that should rank.
Core Web Vitals Report
The Core Web Vitals report groups your URLs as good, needs improvement or poor, for mobile and desktop. It uses real-user data from the Chrome UX Report and measures three metrics: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Interaction to Next Paint (INP) and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). INP replaced First Input Delay (FID) in March 2024.
If your site doesn’t have enough traffic, you’ll see a “not enough usage data” message instead. In that case, test your pages with PageSpeed Insights or Lighthouse.
HTTPS Report
The HTTPS report shows how many of your indexed pages are served over HTTPS and flags any that aren’t. Ideally, every URL should be in the green.
Note: Google has retired the Mobile Usability report, the Mobile-Friendly Test and the Page Experience report. Mobile-friendliness and page speed are now best checked with Lighthouse and PageSpeed Insights.
Enhancements
Under Enhancements, you’ll find a report for each type of structured data Google detects on your site, like breadcrumbs, videos, products or profile pages. Each one lists valid items and any errors that stop you from getting rich results.
Keep in mind that FAQ rich results are now only shown for well-known government and health websites, and HowTo rich results have been removed, so don’t expect those to show up for a regular site.
Security and Manual Actions
The Manual actions report tells you if a human reviewer at Google has penalized your site for breaking Google’s spam policies, and the Security issues report warns you about hacked content or malware. In both cases, “No issues detected” is what you want to see.
Links Report
The Links report shows your top linked pages from external sites, the top linking sites and your most-used anchor texts, as well as your most internally linked pages. It’s not a complete backlink list, but it’s Google’s own data and a good way to spot your strongest pages.
Crawl Stats and robots.txt (Settings)
Two of the most useful reports are hidden under Settings. Crawl stats shows how often Googlebot crawls your site, how fast your server responds and any crawl errors by response code.
The robots.txt report shows the robots.txt files Google found for your site, when they were last checked and whether there were any problems. It replaced the old robots.txt Tester.
20 Google Search Console Tips to Grow Your Traffic
1. Fix Pages That Should Be Indexed
Go to Indexing > Pages and look through the reasons pages aren’t indexed. If an important page shows up under Not found (404), Server error (5xx) or Crawled – currently not indexed, fix the problem, improve the content if needed, and then click Validate fix.
Not sure whether Google can crawl your site at all? Here are simple ways to check if your website is crawlable.
2. Find Striking-Distance Keywords
In the Performance report, enable Average position, open the Queries tab and sort by position. Queries where you rank around positions 8 to 20 are your quickest wins, since a small improvement can push them onto page one. I’ve written a full guide on striking distance keywords.
3. Use Your Queries for Keyword Research
The Queries tab shows the exact searches people use to find you. Look for queries with lots of impressions that aren’t covered properly on the page that ranks. They’re perfect for a new section, an FAQ or even a separate article.
4. Improve Pages With a Low CTR
Find pages with many impressions but a low CTR compared to their position. Often, the title or meta description simply isn’t compelling enough. Rewrite them and check the result a few weeks later. Here’s how to write SEO headlines that get clicks.
5. Spot Keyword Cannibalization
Click a query in the Queries tab and switch to the Pages tab. If several of your pages get impressions for the same query, they may be competing with each other. Consider merging them or making their focus clearer.
6. Use Regex to Find Question Queries
Click Add filter > Query, choose Custom (regex) and enter something like ^(what|how|why|when|where|who|can|does|is) . Now you only see questions people ask, which are great ideas for content and FAQ sections.
7. Separate Branded and Non-Branded Traffic
The query filter also lets you show only branded or non-branded queries. Non-branded traffic shows how well your content attracts new visitors who don’t already know you, which is usually what SEO is really about.
8. Compare Date Ranges to Diagnose Drops
Click the date filter and open the Compare tab to compare periods, for example the last 3 months year over year. Then sort by the difference in clicks to find exactly which pages and queries lost traffic after an update.
9. Compare Mobile and Desktop Performance
The Devices tab shows how you perform on mobile, desktop and tablet. If your mobile CTR or position is much lower than on desktop, check how your pages look and load on mobile.
10. Check Your Performance by Country
The Countries tab shows where your traffic comes from. If you target several countries or languages, use hreflang tags to point Google to the right version. Note that the old International Targeting report has been retired, so hreflang and a clear site structure are now the way to go.
11. Track How You Perform in AI Features
Keep an eye on the generative AI features report to see which pages appear in AI-powered results. Pages that get many AI impressions are worth keeping accurate and up to date, since they’re increasingly how people discover your brand.
12. Inspect New and Updated Pages
After publishing or updating an important page, run it through the URL Inspection tool, test the live URL and request indexing. It’s also the fastest way to check which canonical URL Google picked.
13. Monitor Your Core Web Vitals
Check the Core Web Vitals report regularly, especially after design changes or new plugins. If a group of URLs moves to “poor”, open it to see which metric failed and which pages are affected.
14. Check for Manual Actions and Security Issues
If your traffic suddenly drops, check the Manual actions and Security issues reports first. They’re rare, but if there’s a problem, they explain what’s wrong and how to request a review once it’s fixed.
15. Find Internal Linking Opportunities
In the Links report, compare your top externally linked pages with your top internally linked pages. Pages with strong backlinks are great places to add internal links to pages you want to boost. Read more about internal link mapping.
16. Watch Your Crawl Stats
Under Settings > Crawl stats, look for spikes in server errors or a rising average response time. Both can slow down how quickly Google discovers and updates your pages.
17. Check robots.txt After Changes
Whenever you change your robots.txt file, open the robots.txt report to make sure Google fetched the new version without errors. One wrong line can block important parts of your site.
18. Use the 24-Hour View After Publishing
The 24 hours option in the Performance report shows hourly data that’s only a few hours old. It’s perfect for checking whether a new article or a big update starts getting impressions straight away.
19. Connect Search Console to Google Analytics 4
Link Search Console to GA4 to see your search queries next to engagement and conversion data. It’s also the best way to deal with the “not provided” problem in Google Analytics.
20. Automate Your SEO Reporting
Instead of exporting data by hand, connect Search Console to Looker Studio for automatic dashboards, or set up the bulk data export to BigQuery if you need all your data beyond the 1,000 rows the interface shows.
Wrap-Up: How to Use Google Search Console for SEO
Google Search Console is one of the most powerful free SEO tools there is, simply because the data comes straight from Google. Set it up properly, check the Performance and Page indexing reports regularly, and use the tips above to find your quickest wins.
If you use WordPress, my WordPress SEO guide covers how to fix many of the issues Search Console finds.
FAQ
What’s the difference between Google Analytics and Google Search Console?
Search Console shows how your site performs in Google Search before people visit, such as queries, impressions, clicks and indexing. Google Analytics shows what visitors do once they’re on your site. Connect them to see both in one place.
Is Google Search Console free?
Yes. Google Search Console is completely free. All you need is a Google account and a website you can verify.
How long does Google Search Console keep data?
The Performance report keeps up to 16 months of data. If you need more history, export your data regularly or set up the bulk data export to BigQuery.
How do I add my website to Google Search Console?
Click Add property, choose Domain or URL prefix, enter your site and verify ownership, for example with a DNS TXT record or an HTML tag. Then submit your XML sitemap under Indexing > Sitemaps.
Why is my page not indexed in Google Search Console?
Open the Page indexing report or inspect the URL to see the exact reason. Common reasons are a noindex tag, a redirect, a canonical pointing elsewhere, a 404 or server error, or Google deciding not to index the page yet.
