Google Search Console for business owners
A plain-English guide to Google Search Console for business owners: how to set it up, which five reports matter and what to look at each month.
Google Search Console is a free tool from Google that shows how your website performs in Google Search: which searches show your pages, how many people click, which pages Google has indexed and whether anything is broken. For a business owner, it's the closest thing to a direct line to Google about your website, and most of what you need fits into five reports and twenty minutes a month.
You don't need to be technical. You need it set up under your own account, a rough idea of what each report means and the habit of checking it monthly.
Setting it up in 15 minutes
- Go to Google Search Console and sign in with a Google account the business owns.
- Add a property. The Domain property covers every version of your site (http, https, www, subdomains) and is verified by adding a DNS record at your domain registrar. The URL prefix property is easier to verify with an HTML tag or Google Analytics, but covers only one version.
- Verify ownership using the method you chose.
- Submit your sitemap, usually at
yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml, in the Sitemaps section. - Add your web developer or marketer as a user, with the access level they need. Keep yourself as the owner.
Data starts collecting from the moment of verification, so set it up even if you don't plan to look for a while.
Report 1: Performance
This is the report you'll use most. It shows four numbers for any period:
| Metric | What it means |
|---|---|
| Total clicks | How many times people clicked through to your site from Google |
| Total impressions | How many times your pages appeared in results |
| Average CTR | Clicks divided by impressions |
| Average position | Your typical position in results, averaged across all searches |
Click the Queries tab to see the searches people used, and Pages to see which pages they landed on. Compare date ranges, such as the last three months against the previous three, or against the same months last year for seasonal businesses.
Things to look for: searches you care about that are missing; searches with many impressions but few clicks (your title or description may need work); and pages that suddenly lost clicks.
Report 2: Pages (indexing)
This report shows how many pages are indexed and why others are not. Some exclusions are normal: redirected pages, pages with a canonical pointing elsewhere, admin pages. Worry when important pages appear under reasons like:
- Excluded by noindex tag: someone told Google not to index it.
- Crawled, currently not indexed: Google saw it and decided it's not worth indexing yet, often because it's thin or similar to other pages.
- Not found (404): links point to a page that doesn't exist.
- Server error (5xx): your hosting failed when Google visited.
Report 3: URL Inspection
Paste any URL from your site into the search bar at the top. Search Console tells you whether it's indexed, when Google last crawled it and whether it found problems. After you publish or significantly update a page, you can request indexing here. It doesn't guarantee instant inclusion, but it often speeds things up.
Report 4: Experience (Core Web Vitals and HTTPS)
The Core Web Vitals report groups your pages into good, needs improvement and poor, based on real visitor data from Chrome users. If mobile pages land in poor, check the technical SEO checklist for the usual causes. The HTTPS report confirms your pages are served securely.
Report 5: Security and manual actions
Two short reports that should always say no issues detected. If Google finds hacked content, malware or spam tactics, it says so here, and it's urgent. Fix the issue, then request a review from the same report.
A 20-minute monthly routine
Put it in your calendar for the first Monday of each month:
- Performance: compare the last 28 days with the previous period. Note any big change in clicks.
- Queries: scan the top 20. Any new searches? Any important ones dropping?
- Pages: which pages gained or lost clicks? Did you change anything on them?
- Indexing: any new reasons for pages not being indexed?
- Experience and security: anything turned red?
- Write one action for the month, such as rewriting a title, adding a missing service page or asking your developer to fix errors.
Keep notes in a simple document. After six months, you'll understand your site's patterns better than most agencies' reports would tell you.
Three situations and what to check
Calls from Google dropped this month. Open Performance and compare with the same month last year, not just last month, to rule out seasonality. Then check Pages for new indexing problems and Security for warnings. If nothing changed on your side, look at the queries that lost clicks and search them yourself to see what's different in the results.
You launched a new website. For the first four weeks, check the Pages report twice a week for 404 errors and pages not indexed. Inspect your top service pages individually. Missing redirects show up here first.
A new page isn't getting any traffic. Inspect its URL. If it's not indexed, request indexing and make sure the page is linked from your menu or a related page. If it is indexed but has no impressions, the topic may not match what people search, or the page may be too thin to compete.
How to use it for local SEO
Search Console covers your website, not your Google Business Profile. For profile calls and direction requests, look at the performance section of the profile itself. Still, Search Console helps local businesses a lot: filter queries by your city name, check how service pages perform for "service + city" searches and spot neighborhoods or suburbs that people search for. The keyword research guide shows how to turn those queries into new pages.
If something looks wrong and you're not sure why, a one-on-one consultation is $65/hour; I'll go through your data with you on Zoom and explain what it means. For a full review of your site's search health, see my SEO audit, and if you need connected reporting for several tools, Looker Studio reporting brings Search Console, Analytics and ads into one dashboard.
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Search Console
questions
What's the difference between Search Console and Google Analytics?
Search Console shows what happens on Google before someone visits your site: which searches show your pages, how often, at what average position and how many people click. Analytics shows what visitors do once they arrive: pages viewed, forms sent, calls clicked. You need both. Search Console tells you whether you're found; Analytics tells you whether that turns into business.
Why don't Search Console clicks match my Analytics visits?
They measure different things in different ways. Search Console counts clicks from Google search results; Analytics counts sessions on your site and can miss visitors who block tracking or leave before the page loads. Some queries are also hidden in Search Console for privacy. Expect the numbers to differ and look at trends rather than exact matches.
Who should own the Search Console account?
You, the business. Verify the property with a Google account the business controls, then add your developer or marketer as a user. If an agency verified it under their account and you part ways, you can lose years of data. Check the Users and permissions settings today and make sure you're listed as an owner.
How far back does Search Console data go?
The Performance report keeps about 16 months of data. If you want a longer history, export the data regularly or connect it to a reporting tool such as Looker Studio. That's useful for comparing seasonal businesses year over year, for example a landscaper comparing spring traffic across several years.
Want me to walk you
through your data?
Add me as a user to your Search Console and book a call. I'll show you what your data says, what to fix and what to ignore. A consultation hour is $65; the first 30 minutes are free.