Google Search Console is a free tool that shows how your site is doing in Google search. You see which searches you appear for, how many clicks you get, which pages are indexed and which problems Google has found on your site. Where Google Analytics tells you what a visitor did on your site, Search Console tells you what happened before they arrived. Setup takes a few minutes and there is no waiting for data to accumulate; if Google is already crawling your site, historical data appears right after verification.
What Is Search Console For?
Most site owners open Search Console once to submit a sitemap and never look again. Yet the tool's real value is in its answers to three questions: which words do people use to find me, how many of my pages can Google see, and what have I broken. No other tool answers these three with this accuracy; third-party SEO tools estimate Google's data, Search Console is the data itself.
A small example. A home textiles site thought its blog posts brought no traffic. Looking at the Performance report by query showed that for the search "how to wash a duvet cover" it received 9,000 impressions a month but, sitting at an average position of 11, collected only 40 clicks. The post's title and opening paragraph were rewritten around the search; two months later the same query ranked 4th and monthly clicks were above 900. That information existed nowhere outside Search Console.
Setup and Site Verification
You sign in at search.google.com/search-console with your Google account and choose "add property". There are two property types. A domain property gathers every version of the site (http, https, with and without www, subdomains) in one place; it is verified through DNS, by adding a TXT record in your domain management panel. A URL-prefix property covers only the exact address you type, but it can be verified by uploading an HTML file, with a meta tag, or through Google Analytics or Tag Manager; easier for people without technical access.
If you have DNS access, prefer the domain property; you will not have to look for traffic to the non-www version in a separate property. Verification completes within minutes to a few hours. Then submit your sitemap in the Sitemaps section; the address is usually yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml, and e-commerce platforms generate it automatically.
The Performance Report: Which Searches, How Many Clicks
This is where you will spend most of your time in Search Console. There are four main metrics: impressions (how many times your page appeared in results), clicks, click-through rate and average position. You can break the data down by query, page, country, device and date; 16 months of history is kept. That limit matters: unless you export the data, you cannot compare beyond 16 months.
Three filters help when reading the report. First, queries with high impressions and a low click-through rate; Google is showing you, the user is choosing someone else, and the title and description need to be written around the search. Second, queries with an average position between 8 and 20; these are candidates that a small content improvement can move onto the first page. Third, the split between queries containing your brand name and those that do not; brand traffic grows with advertising and awareness, non-brand traffic is the real measure of SEO.
The Pages Report: What Google Sees and What It Doesn't
The Pages report under Indexing shows how many of your pages Google has indexed and how many it left out, and why. The excluded ones are listed by reason, and each reason means something different:
- Excluded by "noindex" tag: you or your platform closed this page deliberately. If you see a category or product page in the list, something is wrong.
- Duplicate, Google chose a different canonical than the user: Google decided your page is a copy of another. Common on filtered and parameterised URLs.
- Crawled, currently not indexed: Google saw the page but did not find it valuable. Hundreds of pages land here on thin-content pages, especially on large e-commerce sites.
- Not found (404): pages that receive links from inside or outside the site but no longer exist. Old campaign and removed product pages.
- Page with redirect: normal; but if a redirect chain exists, the target should be reached in one step.
Checking this report monthly is enough. A sudden drop in the number of indexed pages shows that a theme or platform update accidentally added noindex or that robots.txt closed off a directory, and gives you the chance to notice before organic traffic falls.
URL Inspection: The Status of a Single Page
Paste a page's address into the search bar at the top and Google shows when it last crawled the page, whether it indexed it, which canonical address it chose and how it rendered on mobile. For a page you have just published or fixed there is a "request indexing" button; this is a signal to speed up crawling, not a ranking guarantee. It makes sense to use it when you fix an important page, not for every page one by one.
Other Reports: When to Look
Loading speed and layout shift values experienced by real users, grouped by page. If the number of pages in the "poor" group is growing, there is a template-level speed problem.
Domains linking to your site and your most-linked pages. Internal link distribution is here too; useful for finding important pages that receive no internal links.
Hopefully always empty. When Google applies a penalty or finds malware on the site, it shows up here; an email notification arrives as well.
There have been announcements that Search Console is adding reporting specific to AI search; which properties see that report and when is being rolled out gradually by Google, so not seeing it in your account is normal.
Taking Search Console Data Out
The interface shows at most a thousand rows in a report and deletes anything older than 16 months. Long-term tracking requires exporting the data; every report has an export option at the top right, and automated retrieval through the API is possible too. When you connect Search Console in AdsLuma, query and page data is fetched and stored daily; the 16-month limit no longer applies after the connection date, as it takes as much history as Google provides at the first connection and accumulates from that day on. Because it sits on the same screen as ad and GA4 data, the question "organic clicks fell; did ads rise or did the total fall" is answered at a glance.
What to Do in the First Week
- Open a domain property and verify it through DNS; give agencies and tools full user access
- Submit the sitemap and check that it reports no errors
- Compare the indexed count in the Pages report with the real number of pages on the site
- List the 20 queries with the most impressions over the last 3 months in the Performance report and mark those with a low click-through rate
- Note the queries at positions 8 to 20 and their pages; these are the first item of the content plan
- Make sure email notifications are on; indexing and security warnings arrive this way
Frequently Asked Questions About Google Search Console
Is Google Search Console free?
Yes, completely. The only condition is verifying that you own the site, through a DNS record, an HTML file, a meta tag or Google Analytics.
What is the difference between Search Console and Google Analytics?
Search Console describes the stage before the user reaches the site: which search you appeared in, how many clicks you got, which pages Google indexed. Analytics describes what the user did after arriving. The two complement each other.
How far back does Search Console data go?
16 months in the Performance report. For a longer history you need to export the data regularly or connect it to a tool that stores it.
The site is verified but no data shows; why?
If Google has not crawled your site yet, or the site is very new, the report stays empty. Submit the sitemap and wait a few days; use URL inspection to see whether the home page has been crawled. If it is still empty, check that robots.txt is not blocking the site.
AdsLuma fetches and stores Search Console query and page data daily; it shows organic, paid and on-site behaviour for the same period on one screen.
Book a demo
