Google Search Console Guide: The Reports That Matter
Every SEO tool you can pay for estimates what Google is doing. Google Search Console is the one place where Google tells you directly: which searches you appear for, which pages it has indexed and why others are left out, and whether anything is wrong. It's free, and I'd set it up before installing any other SEO tool.
Setting it up
Go to Search Console, add a property and choose one of two types:
- Domain property. Covers every subdomain and both HTTP and HTTPS. Verified with a DNS TXT record at your domain registrar or DNS host. This is the better choice for most sites.
- URL-prefix property. Covers one exact prefix, such as
https://www.example.com/. Can be verified by uploading an HTML file, adding a meta tag, or through Google Analytics or Tag Manager. Useful if you can't edit DNS or want a separate view of one section.
Verification through DNS can take a little while to propagate. Once verified, data starts collecting from that point, and some reports fill in within a few days.
Add your colleagues or agency as users under Settings rather than sharing your Google login. Give "Full" or "Restricted" access as needed, and keep "Owner" for people who should be able to add or remove others.
The Performance report
This shows how your site does in Google Search: clicks, impressions, average click-through rate and average position, filterable by query, page, country, device and search appearance. Data goes back 16 months.
Useful ways to use it:
- Find quick wins. Filter to queries where average position is roughly 8 to 20. These pages are close to page one, and better content, internal links or a sharper title tag can move them. The title tags guide helps with the last one.
- Spot low CTR. Pages with many impressions but few clicks may have weak titles or descriptions, or may be showing for searches they don't really answer. Preview how your result looks with the SERP preview tool.
- Compare date ranges to diagnose a traffic drop. Is it one page or the whole site? One country? Mobile only? That narrows the cause quickly.
- Check branded vs non-branded traffic by filtering queries that contain or exclude your brand name.
Remember "average position" is averaged across all impressions, so it can be misleading for pages that rank for many different queries.
The Pages (indexing) report
This shows how many URLs Google has indexed and lists reasons pages aren't indexed. Not every item here is a problem. Some typical reasons:
| Reason | Usually means |
|---|---|
| Excluded by 'noindex' tag | Fine if intentional; check it isn't on important pages |
| Alternate page with proper canonical tag | Normal for duplicates and parameter URLs |
| Page with redirect | Normal for old URLs |
| Not found (404) | Fine for pages that shouldn't exist |
| Crawled, currently not indexed | Google saw it and chose not to index; often a quality or duplication issue |
| Discovered, currently not indexed | Google knows the URL but hasn't crawled it yet |
| Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user | Your canonical signals conflict |
Focus on whether your important pages are indexed. A few thousand excluded parameter URLs is not a crisis. Your top service page missing from the index is.
URL Inspection
Paste any URL from your property to see whether it's indexed, which canonical Google selected, when it was last crawled, whether it's mobile-crawled, and any structured data detected. "Test live URL" fetches it fresh and shows the rendered HTML and a screenshot, which is the best way to check what Google actually sees on JavaScript-heavy pages.
You can also "Request indexing" here after publishing or significantly updating a page. It's useful for individual important pages, but there's a daily limit and it doesn't guarantee indexing.
Sitemaps
Submit your XML sitemap here and check that Google can read it. The report shows when it was last read and how many URLs were discovered. The XML sitemaps guide covers what should be in the file.
Links report
Shows your top externally linked pages, top linking sites, top anchor text and internal link counts. It's a sample rather than every link, but it comes from Google itself. It's a reasonable place to start if you're checking whether a link-building campaign is being picked up, and to see which pages your internal linking favours.
Experience and enhancements
- Core Web Vitals shows field data for mobile and desktop, grouped by similar URLs.
- HTTPS lists pages not served over HTTPS.
- Enhancements (shown when Google detects the relevant structured data) report errors in markup such as breadcrumbs, products, videos and reviews.
Security and Manual Actions
Check these whenever traffic drops sharply. Manual actions lists any penalty applied by a Google reviewer, such as for unnatural links, with the affected scope and a way to request reconsideration once fixed. Security issues reports hacked content or malware. Both are usually empty, and you want them to stay that way.
Other useful bits
- Removals lets you temporarily hide a URL from results, for example after accidentally publishing something private. It's temporary; you still need to remove or noindex the page.
- Crawl stats (under Settings) shows how often Googlebot visits, response times and status codes. Useful for large sites; see crawl budget.
- Email alerts notify owners of new issues. Make sure the right person actually reads them.
A simple routine
- Weekly: glance at Performance for sudden drops; check for new email alerts.
- Monthly: review the Pages report for important URLs dropping out; check Core Web Vitals and enhancement errors; look at queries in positions 8 to 20.
- After any major change: inspect key URLs live and resubmit the sitemap if structure changed.
If you haven't verified a Domain property yet, do that today with a DNS TXT record. Then open the Performance report, filter for positions 8 to 20 over the last three months, and pick three pages to improve.