Google Search Console in 10 minutes, for business owners

What Search Console tells you

Search Console is the one place Google tells you, in its own numbers, how your site does in Search. It shows:

• Performance: the searches your site appeared for, how many times it was shown (impressions), how many clicks it got, and its average position.
• Page indexing: which pages are in Google's index and, for the ones that aren't, the reason.
• Sitemaps: whether Google can read the list of pages you give it.
• Experience and security issues: problems with mobile usability, page speed signals, manual actions or hacked content.

It doesn't show your competitors, and it doesn't show searches where you never appeared.

Set it up (about 10 minutes)

1. 1Go to Search Console and sign in with a Google account the business controls (not a staff member's personal account).
2. 2Choose Domain as the property type and type your domain without "https" or "www", for example yourclinic.in.
3. 3Google shows a TXT record. Copy it.
4. 4In your domain provider's DNS settings (GoDaddy, Hostinger, Namecheap, Cloudflare or similar), add a new TXT record with that value.
5. 5Back in Search Console, click Verify. DNS changes can take a while to spread, so if it fails at first, try again later.

A Domain property covers http and https, with and without www, and every subdomain. If you can't edit DNS, a URL-prefix property with an HTML tag also works, but covers only that exact address.

Submit your sitemap

Most website builders create a sitemap automatically, usually at /sitemap.xml. In Sitemaps, enter that address and submit. It helps Google find all your pages, especially new ones.

The three reports to check every week

Performance

Switch on all four metrics: clicks, impressions, average CTR and average position. Then look at:

• Queries: the searches that showed your site. Look for ones where you rank between about 8 and 20: you're close to page one and a better page could move you up.
• Pages: which pages earn clicks, and which earn none.

Search Console data runs a couple of days behind, so don't panic over yesterday.

Page indexing

This shows "Not indexed" pages and why: blocked by robots.txt, marked noindex, duplicate without a chosen canonical, crawled but not indexed, and so on. Some exclusions are normal (old redirects, duplicate filter pages). Worry when an important service page is excluded.

URL inspection

Paste any page address to see whether it's indexed, when Google last crawled it, and what Google saw. After you fix a page, you can ask Google to recrawl it from here.

Common surprises

• "Discovered, currently not indexed": Google knows the page exists but hasn't indexed it yet. Better internal links and a useful page help.
• "Crawled, currently not indexed": Google read it but decided not to index it, often because it's thin or very similar to another page.
• Big drops in impressions: check whether your site went down, a robots.txt change blocked Google, or a page was removed.

A five-minute weekly routine

1. 1Open Performance, set the date range to the last 28 days, and compare with the previous period.
2. 2Sort Queries by impressions. Note any new searches you now appear for.
3. 3Look for searches with many impressions but few clicks: improving the page title and description can win clicks without a change in position.
4. 4Open Page indexing and check the count of indexed pages hasn't dropped.
5. 5If you changed a page this week, run URL inspection on it and check the last crawl date.

Mistakes owners make with Search Console

• Setting it up with an agency's or employee's personal account, then losing access.
• Reading average position across all searches, which mixes brand searches with everything else. Filter by query or page instead.
• Panicking about every "Not indexed" page. Many are expected; focus on important pages.
• Checking only once. The value is in the trend over weeks.

Connecting it to other tools

Search Console can be linked with Google Analytics so search data and on-site behaviour can be seen together. Read-only access is enough for reporting tools: grant the minimum permission any tool needs.

What the four numbers mean

• Impressions: how many times a link to your site appeared in results. The person didn't have to scroll to it or click.
• Clicks: how many times someone clicked through to your site.
• CTR (click-through rate): clicks divided by impressions. Low CTR on a search you rank well for usually means the title or description isn't compelling.
• Average position: where your site appeared on average, with 1 being the top. It's averaged across every search and every time you appeared, so read it per search, not for the whole site.

A worked example

A tuition centre in Jaipur (a made-up example) opens the Performance report and filters to the last three months. It sees that "maths tuition class 10 jaipur" has many impressions at an average position of 14, but very few clicks: it's on the second page. The centre improves that page so the first two sentences answer what parents want to know (batch size, timings, fees), and links to it from the home page. A few weeks later it checks the same search again, and compares the position and clicks with the earlier period.

Sharing access safely

Add your web person or agency as a user under Settings, with the lowest permission that lets them do the job. Keep ownership with an account the business controls, and remove users when they stop working with you.