Google Search Console for Beginners
By CodexierPublished 6 min read
Google Search Console is a free tool that shows how Google sees your website: which searches bring people to it, which pages are indexed, which have problems and whether anything is stopping the site from appearing. It requires no code once verified and takes twenty minutes a month to read. This guide walks a business owner through verification, the sitemap, the performance report, indexing issues and the three reports worth checking on a schedule.
Verifying your property
A property is the site Search Console watches. Choose the domain property, which covers www and non-www, http and https, in one place. Verification means proving you control the domain, and the DNS method is the most durable: you add a text record at your domain provider, and it survives redesigns and platform changes. If you cannot reach DNS, the HTML tag or file methods work but break when the site is rebuilt. Add yourself as owner with your company Google account, then add other people as users so you can remove them later.
Submitting a sitemap
A sitemap is a file listing the pages you want Google to know about. Most platforms generate one automatically at a standard address such as sitemap.xml. Submitting it does not force indexing; it tells Google where to look and lets Search Console report which listed pages are indexed and which are not.
- Find the sitemap address in your CMS or SEO plugin settings; open it in a browser to confirm it lists real pages.
- In Search Console, open Sitemaps, paste the address and submit.
- Check back after a few days: the status should be Success and the discovered page count should roughly match your site.
- If you run Swedish and English versions, the sitemap should contain both with language annotations, so each version is indexed for the right searchers.
- Remove pages you do not want in search from the sitemap and mark them noindex; do not rely on the sitemap alone to hide anything.
Reading the performance report
Performance is the report most worth learning. It shows, for any period, the searches your site appeared for, how many times it was shown, how many clicks it got and its average position.
| Metric | What it means | What to do with it |
|---|---|---|
| Impressions | How often a page of yours appeared in results | Rising impressions with flat clicks means the title or description is not earning the click |
| Clicks | Visits from Google search | Track by page and by query to see what actually brings people |
| Average position | Where you typically rank for a query | Queries at positions six to fifteen are the cheapest to improve |
| Queries tab | The actual words people searched | Find questions you have no page for and write one |
| Pages tab | Which pages get search traffic | Improve the pages that are close, retire those that never appear |
Compare periods rather than reading a single month; search traffic is seasonal for almost every Swedish business.
Indexing and page issues
The Pages report under Indexing lists every URL Google knows about and whether it is indexed. Not-indexed is not always a problem: tag archives, filtered listings and old redirects belong there. It is a problem when pages you sell from are missing.
Crawled, currently not indexed
Google saw the page and chose not to index it. Usually thin or duplicate content. Improve the page or merge it into a better one.
Discovered, currently not indexed
Google knows the URL but has not fetched it yet. Common on new sites; improve internal links to the page and wait.
Excluded by noindex or redirect
Check that this is deliberate. A noindex left on from the staging site is a classic launch mistake.
Not found and server errors
Broken links or a site that was down when Google visited. Fix the link or the server, then use Validate Fix.
Three reports to check monthly
Put a monthly reminder in the calendar and read exactly three things. First, Performance compared with the same month last year: which pages and queries grew, which fell, and whether any page with high impressions has a poor click rate that a better title would fix. Second, Pages under Indexing: any important page newly not indexed, and any spike in errors. Third, Core Web Vitals: any URL group that has turned from good to poor, which usually means a new plugin, a large image or a script that needs a developer. Anything you cannot explain in those three reports is what a technical SEO audit is for; our guide to choosing between agency, freelancer and in-house covers who should do the follow-up work.
When you do not need more than this: a local business with a small site that is indexed, loads fast and shows up for its own name and services needs the monthly twenty minutes and nothing else. When you need help: if important pages will not index, traffic dropped sharply, or the vitals report is red and you do not know why, book a free 15-minute call, share read access to your property beforehand, and we will look at it with you; if you also want visits and enquiries connected to those searches, that is a tracking setup question.
Frequently asked questions
Is Search Console the same as Google Analytics?
No. Search Console reports what happens in Google's results before the click: queries, impressions, positions and indexing. Analytics reports what visitors do on your site after the click. Search Console requires no cookie banner because it collects nothing from your visitors.
How long after verification does data appear?
Some data appears within a day or two; a useful picture takes a few weeks. Historical data before verification is not available, which is the strongest reason to verify now rather than when you need it.
Why does Search Console show more clicks than my analytics?
They count differently. Search Console counts clicks on results; analytics counts sessions that loaded its script, which excludes visitors who declined cookies or left before the page loaded. A gap is normal; a growing gap suggests a tracking problem.
Should my web agency own the Search Console property?
No. Verify it with your own company account and add the agency as a user. If you change agency, you remove one user and keep all the history.
Opened Search Console and not sure what you are looking at?
Share read access before the call. In fifteen minutes we go through your Performance, Pages and Vitals reports together and tell you what, if anything, needs fixing.
Book a free 15-minute call