Google Search Console Guide: Setup and Reading the Reports

Google Search Console is a free tool that shows how your site appears in Google Search. It lets you track which searches you show up for, how often you are clicked, which pages are indexed and any technical problems, all in one place. This guide covers how to set it up, how to read the most important reports and what to check every month.

Adding and verifying a property

A site added to the tool is called a property. There are two types, and your choice decides which data you see:

Property type	What it covers	Verification
Domain	All subdomains, http and https	DNS record only
URL prefix	Only the address you enter and below	HTML file, meta tag, Analytics or Tag Manager

Choose a domain property if you can. The www and non-www versions, and any subdomain, then sit in a single report. You add the DNS record through your domain registrar's panel; verification can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours.

Google's getting started guide also summarises which reports matter to which role. If you manage the site with a developer or consultant, add them as users rather than owners.

Submit your sitemap

The first job after verification is submitting your XML sitemap. Enter its address in the Sitemaps section; on most sites you find it by adding "sitemap.xml" to the end of the domain.

After submitting, check the status reads "Success". Compare the number of discovered pages shown there with the real number of pages on your site. A large gap suggests missing or surplus addresses in the sitemap. Our technical SEO audit guide explains what a sitemap should contain.

Reading the performance report

The performance report is the most used part of the tool. It shows four core metrics:

• Total clicks: how many times people came to your site from a search result.
• Total impressions: how many times your site appeared in search results.
• Average CTR: clicks divided by impressions.
• Average position: your average ranking in the results.

The performance report help page explains how each metric is calculated. For example, a result can count as an impression without the user scrolling to it; loading on the page is often enough.

The real value is in the filters. The Queries tab shows which searches you appear for, the Pages tab which pages earn traffic, and the Countries and Devices tabs where your audience is and what they use. On bilingual sites, enter "/tr/" or "/en/" in the page filter to track each language separately.

Finding pages with low click-through rates

The quickest wins are pages that already get impressions but few clicks. To find them:

1. Set the date range to the last three months.
2. Turn on all four metrics and switch to the Pages tab.
3. Sort by impressions.
4. Note pages ranking in the top ten whose click-through rate is clearly lower than similar pages.

Titles and descriptions on those pages usually do not match the search well. Our guide on how to write meta descriptions shows how to rewrite them, with examples.

Pitfalls when interpreting the data

It is easy to misread performance data. The first trap is judging average position on its own. When your site starts appearing for new, harder searches, average position can drop; if total clicks are rising, your visibility is actually widening.

The second is comparing short date ranges. Search behaviour differs between weekdays and weekends. Always compare periods of the same length and, ideally, the same mix of days; 28-day periods are useful for exactly this reason.

The third is that some queries are hidden for privacy. Searches made by very few people do not appear in the list, so the clicks in the query table can add up to less than the overall total. That is not an error.

The page indexing report

This report shows how many of your pages are in Google's index and why the rest are not. Not every excluded page is a problem. Redirected addresses, pages deliberately set to noindex and parameter duplicates should not be indexed anyway.

What matters is whether important pages appear in the list. "Crawled, currently not indexed" usually means the content is thin or too similar to another page. "Discovered, currently not indexed" means Google knows the page exists but has not crawled it yet.

In the first case, strengthen the content, merge near-duplicates and link to the page from related posts. In the second, make sure the page is in the sitemap and receives internal links.

The URL Inspection tool

To check a single page, enter its address in the search bar at the top. The URL Inspection tool shows whether the page is indexed, when it was last crawled, which canonical was selected and its mobile status.

"Test live URL" checks the page as it is right now. Run this test after a fix and then request indexing. The request does not guarantee immediate indexing, but it can speed up the crawl.

Core Web Vitals and other reports

The Core Web Vitals report in the Experience section groups your pages into good, needs improvement and poor using real-user data. Our Core Web Vitals guide explains what the metrics mean and how to improve them.

Other sections you should not overlook:

• Manual actions: any penalty Google has applied to your site for spam appears here.
• Security issues: hacked pages or malware warnings.
• Links: which sites link to you and how your internal links are distributed.
• Rich results: errors and warnings on pages with structured data.

A monthly check routine

You do not need to open the tool every day. Half an hour on the first working day of the month is enough to check the following:

1. Compare the last 28 days with the previous period in the performance report.
2. Note the five pages and queries whose clicks fell most.
3. Look for any new error type in the page indexing report.
4. Log the change in poor URLs in the Core Web Vitals report.
5. Confirm the manual actions and security issues sections are empty.

Writing these numbers into a simple spreadsheet shows, over months, which change affected what. For a quick outside view, you can also scan your site with our free SEO checker. If you run a local business, read this data alongside your profile performance using our Google Business Profile guide.