Set up Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free Google service that shows how your website appears in Google Search. It tells you which searches bring people to your site, how often they click, and whether Google has run into problems reading your pages.

So think of it as a dashboard, not a switch. It won't move you up the results by itself, but it shows you what's working and what needs fixing.

Search Console calls your website a "property." There are two kinds, and your choice decides how you prove the site is yours.

Our advice: if you can log in to the company where you bought your domain name, choose Domain. It covers everything in one go. If you can't, choose URL prefix and use the HTML tag method below.

1. Go to Google Search Console and sign in with your Google Account.
2. Open the property menu (it shows your site's name once you have one) and select Add property. (If it's your first time, you may land on this step straight away.)
3. Choose a website property, then Domain or URL prefix, and type your address.
4. Search Console now shows you how to prove the site is yours. You can do it right away, or choose Verify later and come back to it.

Google calls this verification. It exists because owners can see private search data and change settings, so Google wants to be sure it's really you.

Option 1: a DNS record (for a Domain property)

DNS is the address book for your domain name. It lives with the company you bought your domain from, usually called your domain provider. You'll add one line of text to it.

1. Search Console gives you a TXT record: a line of text that starts with google-site-verification=. Copy it.
2. If Search Console lists your domain provider, choose it and select Start verification. You'll log in to your provider, and Google adds the record for you.
3. If your provider isn't listed, log in to your provider in a new tab and find the DNS settings for your domain. Add a new TXT record. Leave the Host (or Name) field blank or type @, whichever your provider's help says, and paste the google-site-verification text as the Value.
4. Save, go back to Search Console and select Verify.

Option 2: the HTML tag (for a URL-prefix property)

1. Choose the HTML tag method. Search Console shows a short line of code that includes google-site-verification.
2. Add it to the head section of your home page. Most website builders have a place for this. Search your builder's help for "Google Search Console" first: Google notes some builders have a setting or plugin that verifies you easily, or even automatically.
3. Save and publish your site, then select Verify.

To check the tag is live, open your home page's source code in your browser and search it for google-site-verification.

A sitemap is a file on your site that lists the pages you want Google to know about.

1. Find your sitemap. Many sites keep it at yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml, so type that into your browser. If nothing shows up, check your website builder's help, or ask your web person.
2. In Search Console, open Sitemaps from the menu.
3. Paste your sitemap's address into the Add a new sitemap box and select Submit.
4. Check the status. Success means Google read it. Couldn't fetch means Google couldn't get the file, so open the address yourself and make sure it loads without a login.

Give it a few days, then open Performance. It shows the last three months by default, with four numbers across the top:

• Clicks: how many times someone clicked through to your site from Google Search.
• Impressions: how many times your site appeared in the results.
• CTR (click-through rate): clicks divided by impressions.
• Average position: where your site tends to show up on the page. Lower numbers mean higher up.

Under the chart, the Queries tab lists the searches that showed your site, and the Pages tab shows which of your pages people found.

Don't worry if you search for yourself and see something different. Google says results depend on the time, place, device and recent history of the person searching.

When you add an important page or change one, you can ask Google to crawl it (visit and read it).

1. Paste the page's full address into the search bar at the top of Search Console. This opens the URL Inspection tool.
2. Read the result. URL is on Google means the page can appear in results. URL is not on Google means it can't yet.
3. Select Request indexing.

If someone helps with your website, give them their own access instead of your password. Search Console has these levels:

• Owner: full control, including adding and removing people. That's you.
• Full user: sees all the data and can take some actions.
• Restricted user: can view most of the data, and that's it.

For someone who only needs to look, choose Restricted.

1. Open Settings, then Users and permissions. (Only owners can see this page.)
2. Select Add user.
3. Enter the email address of their Google Account. It has to be a Google Account, and an email group won't work.
4. Choose Restricted as the permission, and save.

When someone stops working with you, remove them from the same page. If they were a verified owner, Google says to also remove their verification tag or record, or they could verify again and get back in.

• Verify fails with a DNS record. Wait a day or two, then try again. Check that the record matches exactly, with nothing extra copied in.
• "Meta tag not found." Make sure you published the change, the tag is on your home page (not another page), and your home page opens without a login.
• No data after several days. Check that you added the right address (https or http, with or without www). Google says it can also mean your site hasn't been seen in Google Search yet.
• No Users and permissions page. Only owners see it. Ask the property's owner to add you.

Next, set up Bing Webmaster Tools. It can import everything you just did in a few clicks. And if your Google Business Profile isn't verified yet, set it up too: Google says a site verified in Search Console can sometimes help your profile get verified instantly.

This guide is free for everyone. It's also one of the step-by-step setup guides included with our SEO and AI-search audit, so every fix in your report comes with instructions you can follow.