How to Set Up Google Search Console and What to Check Monthly

If you could ask Google one question about your website, it might be, "How do people find us, and is anything broken?" Google Search Console answers much of that for free. It shows which searches lead to your site, which pages Google has indexed, and problems it found along the way.

Setup takes about fifteen minutes. A monthly review takes about twenty. Here is how to do both.

Step 1: Sign in and add your site

Go to Google Search Console and sign in with a Google account. Use an account your organization controls rather than a personal one, or plan to add a second owner from your organization.

You will be asked to choose a property type:

• Domain property: covers every version of your domain, including www and non-www, http and https, and subdomains. It is verified by adding a record to your domain's DNS settings. This is usually the best choice.
• URL-prefix property: covers only addresses that begin with the exact prefix you enter. It offers more verification options, such as uploading a file or adding a tag to your site.

Step 2: Verify ownership

For a domain property, Search Console gives you a TXT record. Log in to wherever your DNS is managed, often your domain registrar or hosting provider, add the record exactly as shown, then click Verify. DNS changes can take a little time to take effect, so if verification fails at first, wait and try again.

For a URL-prefix property, follow the instructions for your chosen method. Many website platforms and plugins offer a simple field for pasting the verification code.

Step 3: Submit your sitemap

A sitemap lists your site's pages so Google can find them. Most website platforms create one automatically, often at an address ending in sitemap.xml. Open the Sitemaps section, enter the sitemap address and submit it. Search Console will report whether it could read the file.

Step 4: Add the right people

In Settings, open Users and permissions to add teammates. Give full access only to people who need it, and remove access when someone leaves, just as you would with any other account.

Your monthly twenty-minute review

Performance

The Performance report shows clicks, impressions, average click-through rate and average position for searches that showed your site. Google has said that traffic from its AI features, such as AI Overviews, is included in these totals.

Each month:

• Compare the last 28 days with the previous period.
• Look at the top queries. Do they match what you want to be found for?
• Look at the top pages. Are your most important pages getting seen?
• Find pages with many impressions but few clicks. Their titles and descriptions may need work, which our guide to title tags and meta descriptions covers.

Indexing

The page indexing report shows how many pages are indexed and lists reasons others are not. Some exclusions are normal, such as redirected or duplicate pages. Look for important pages that should be indexed but are not, and for sudden changes.

URL Inspection

Enter any page address to see whether it is indexed, when Google last crawled it and whether problems were found. After publishing or significantly updating an important page, you can request indexing here.

Experience

Review Core Web Vitals and HTTPS reports for pages flagged as slow or not served securely. Our checklist for speeding up a slow website helps with fixes.

Security and manual actions

Check these sections monthly. Ideally they say no issues detected. If Google reports a security problem or a manual action for spam, act quickly; these can seriously affect your visibility.

Enhancements

If your pages include structured data, such as events or products, Search Console reports errors in those markups.

Surprises to expect in the first weeks

• Data takes time to appear. A newly added property may show little or nothing for a few days.
• Numbers start small. A small site may see modest impressions at first. Trends over months matter more than any single week.
• Average position is an average. It blends many queries and pages, so a single number can hide big differences. Filter by query or page for a clearer picture.
• Some pages will be excluded. Redirects, duplicates and pages you deliberately keep out of search are normal entries in the indexing report.

Keep notes

Record a few numbers each month, such as total clicks, total impressions and indexed pages, plus anything you changed. Over time, you will see which improvements actually made a difference, and you will spot problems faster.

When to look more often

Check Search Console soon after a website redesign, a platform move, a domain change or any major content update. These are the moments when indexing problems and broken redirects most often appear. If you are planning a launch, our website launch checklist includes the Search Console steps, and our guide to keyword research for beginners shows how to turn the query data you find here into better content.