Google Search Console
Search Console is Google's free tool for seeing how a site performs in Google Search: which queries bring visitors, which pages are indexed, and what is broken. Every client site should have it set up at launch, with the client as an owner. It is where you submit sitemaps and check whether a page can be indexed.
Tool
Web Development
30 minutes to set up
Beginner
Free
What it does
Google Search Console shows what Google sees when it looks at a site. It is free, and you get access by proving you own or control the site, for example with a DNS record, an HTML file or a tag in the page head. Its main reports (as of 2026-09):
- Performance: the search queries that bring people to the site, with impressions, clicks, click-through rate and average position.
- Indexing: which pages Google has indexed and why others were left out, such as redirects,
noindex, duplicates or errors. - URL Inspection: crawl, index and serving details for a single URL straight from Google's index, plus a way to request indexing after a fix.
- Sitemaps: submit your XML sitemap and see how many URLs Google read from it.
- Core Web Vitals and rich results reports, which group real-user performance problems and structured data errors by page type.
- Email alerts when Google detects new issues.
Why a site builder needs it
It turns SEO from guesswork into evidence. After a launch you can confirm the sitemap was read and the important pages are indexed. After a redesign or a platform migration (say, from WordPress to Shopify) you can watch for spikes in 404 errors and fix redirects before traffic drops for weeks. When a client asks "are we showing up on Google?", the Performance report answers with numbers instead of opinions.
Setting it up for a client
Use a Domain property verified with a DNS TXT record when you can: it covers every subdomain and both http and https. Add the client's own Google account as an owner and yourself as a user, never the other way round, so the client keeps access when your contract ends. Submit the sitemap your platform generates (WordPress core, SEO plugins, Shopify and Webflow all produce one). Then check the Indexing report a few days later.
Prerequisites and time
A Google account and access to the site's DNS or code. Setup takes about half an hour; data starts appearing over the following days.
Common questions
Is it the same as Google Analytics? No. Analytics measures what visitors do on the site. Search Console measures how the site appears in Google Search before anyone clicks.
Why is a page "crawled, currently not indexed"? Google chose not to index it yet, often because it is thin or similar to other pages. Improve the page rather than repeatedly requesting indexing.
Does it work for Bing? No; Bing Webmaster Tools is the equivalent there.
Ready to start?
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