Setting up Google Search Console: step by step

Anyone with a website needs to know how it performs in Google. Search Console is Google’s free tool for the job: it shows which pages are indexed, which queries bring impressions and clicks, and where technical problems appear. This guide takes you through the setup in three steps and the checks worth running right afterward.

TL;DR: Setting up Google Search Console takes about fifteen minutes. Sign in with your Google account, add the website as a domain property, and verify ownership through DNS. Then submit the sitemap and inspect your most important pages. The rest of this guide covers the Performance and Pages reports and how I use them for client websites.

What is Google Search Console?

Google Search Console is a free Google tool for tracking a website’s search performance. It reports impressions and clicks, the queries behind them, indexing status, and technical issues that may affect visibility. It gives you Google’s own data about how your site appears in Search.

Google Analytics measures what visitors do on your site. Search Console measures what happens in Google before they click. They answer different questions, and using both can give you a fuller picture.

Setting up Google Search Console in 3 steps

You only need a Google account to start.

The first checks after setup

Data collection starts when the property is first added to any Search Console account, even before verification. Search Console cannot show data from before that first addition. Start with these three checks:

• Submit your sitemap: under “Sitemaps”, add a URL such as https://yoursite.com/sitemap.xml. It helps Google discover your pages and lets you monitor the submitted URLs.
• Check your most important pages: use the URL Inspection field at the top to see whether Google can crawl and index them. You can request indexing there for a new or substantially updated page.
• Look at the Performance report after a few weeks: note which queries and pages get impressions. That is your starting point for further SEO work.

How to use Google Search Console after setup

Once setup is complete, open the Performance report and select Search results. Choose a date range with enough data, then use the Pages tab below the chart to see which URLs earn impressions. Start with these checks:

• Pick a page and find its queries. Click a relevant page with substantial impressions in the Pages table, then switch to the Queries tab. Search Console filters the report to that page. Queries with average positions around 8 to 20 can be useful candidates for improvement, but check whether the page answers their intent before changing it. Average position combines different searches and is not a fixed ranking.
• Investigate impressions without clicks. Sort the Pages table by impressions and compare clicks and CTR. Low CTR alone does not prove that the title is wrong: position, device, country, and competing search features also affect clicks. Filter to the page and query, check the actual search results, then decide whether to improve the snippet, the content, or neither. For more on choosing relevant queries, see searching for keywords.
• Check what Google actually indexes. The Pages report under Indexing shows which URLs are indexed and which are not, with the reason attached. “Discovered, currently not indexed” and “Crawled, currently not indexed” can have several causes: inspect the URL and the content before assuming a technical problem. For a new or substantially updated page, request indexing via URL Inspection.

The Sitemaps report completes the round: it shows the status of your submitted sitemaps and the URLs Google discovered through them. Discovery does not mean those URLs are indexed. Google’s overview of Search Console explains the tool’s main uses. The blog overview has more practical articles on using that data for SEO.

How I use Search Console at Straffe Sites

I monitor Search Console continuously for my own site and client websites. Specialized AI agents prepare part of that work: they fetch data for fixed periods, compare pages and queries, group related searches, and flag pages with many impressions but few clicks or possible overlap between articles. The result is a shortlist of improvements, such as a clearer title, a stronger internal link, or a section that needs more substance.

The agent does not make the final decision. I still judge search intent, commercial priority, brand tone, and what gets published. This approach speeds up the analysis without giving up control. It is the same approach I use for SEO and ongoing website maintenance. If you want to turn that monthly review into a recurring loop that an agent prepares for you, read Automating SEO with AI.

Conclusion

Google Search Console takes about fifteen minutes to set up and then starts building a direct record of how the site appears in Google Search. Submit the sitemap, inspect the important pages and review the Performance report regularly. It will show which pages are close to earning more clicks and where the next useful improvement may be.

Don’t have time to monitor it yourself? I use Search Console in my SEO work and when maintaining client websites. Get in touch, and we can look at what your data is telling you.