Plenty of site owners hear that they need to "connect the site to Search Console", ask their developer to do it, and then never open the tool. Or they open it once, see a message about hundreds of "not indexed" pages, and worry for no reason.
Search Console is a free Google tool that shows you how search sees your site: which phrases it appears for, how often people click it, and which pages made it into the index, which did not, and why. For a mid-sized service company, half an hour a week in it is enough.
How do you add your website to Google Search Console?
Sign in with a Google account and choose the property type. A Domain property covers every version of your site (http and https, with and without www, and subdomains) and is verified with a TXT record in your DNS settings. A URL prefix property covers only one version, and you can verify it with a file or a tag on the page.
We recommend the Domain type because it shows the full picture. Once it is added, submit your sitemap from the Sitemaps section, and add your colleagues as users with suitable permissions in the settings, instead of sharing one account's password.
What does the Search Console Performance report tell you?
This is the most important report in the tool. It shows four numbers: impressions (how many times your site appeared in results), clicks, click-through rate, and average position. Below them are tables of the queries people searched, the pages that appeared, and the countries and devices.
Some practical ways to use it:
- Filter by country. If you serve Jordan and Saudi Arabia, the worldwide numbers mix your customers with visitors who do not matter to you.
- Look for queries with high impressions and few clicks. Usually the page title and description are not convincing searchers, or the page shows up for a query it does not answer well.
- Compare one period with a matching one, such as the last three months against the three before, or against the same months last year. Data goes back up to 16 months.
- Separate searches for your company name from searches for your service. Growth in people searching your name means something different from growth in impressions for "web design in Amman".
Average position is misleading on its own. A page that ranks third for one query and fiftieth for twenty others will have a poor average even though it brings in visitors.
In mid-2026 Google began rolling out reports specific to appearances in AI features such as AI Overviews and AI Mode, starting with a group of sites. Those appearances are already counted in the general Performance report.
How do you read the page indexing report without panicking?
The report splits the pages Google knows about into indexed and not indexed, with a reason for each group. Almost every site has pages that are not indexed, and that is normal.
A page that redirects, an alternate version whose canonical points to another page, or a 404 for an old URL you deleted on purpose are all fine. What deserves your attention is your important service pages and articles if they show up under "Crawled, currently not indexed" or "Excluded by noindex tag". We go through these reasons in detail in why your website is not showing up on Google.
When should you use the URL Inspection tool?
Use it when you want an answer about one page. Is it indexed? Which version did Google pick as the canonical? Does Google see it the way a visitor does? The "Test live URL" button fetches the page right now and shows what reaches Googlebot.
After you publish a new page or change an important one, request indexing here once. Asking again and again does not speed anything up.
Which other Search Console reports are worth a look?
| Report | What it tells you | When to open it |
|---|---|---|
| Sitemaps | Whether Google read your sitemap and how many URLs it found in it | After launch, and after any big change to your URLs |
| Core Web Vitals | Slow or unstable pages on mobile and desktop, based on real visitor data | Monthly, or after a theme change |
| Manual actions | Whether someone at Google has applied a penalty to your site | If traffic drops suddenly |
| Security issues | Malware or hacked content Google has detected | Right away if Google emails you |
| Links | The pages other sites link to most, and your internal links | Every few months |
If a security warning appears, cleaning the site comes before anything else. We explain the steps in what to do if your website is hacked.
What should you check in Search Console every week?
Open the Performance report, compare the last 28 days with the period before, and look at the pages that changed the most. Then glance at the Pages report to see whether a new exclusion reason has appeared. And read the emails from Search Console, since the tool sends an alert when it finds a new problem.
This data is the basis for measuring any SEO work, and we wrote up the full measurement approach in how to measure SEO results.
We set up Search Console and read its reports for our clients as part of our search and AI visibility service. Get in touch and add us as a user on your property, and we will tell you what the numbers say about your site.
Questions our partners ask
Is Google Search Console free?
Yes, completely free. You need a Google account and proof that you own the site, through a DNS record, a file, or a tag on the page.
What is the difference between Search Console and Google Analytics?
Search Console tells you what happens in search results before a visitor arrives: impressions, clicks, queries and indexing. Analytics tells you what visitors do on your site once they are there, from every source.
Do I need to fix every page listed as not indexed?
No. Many of them are left out on purpose, such as redirect pages, duplicate versions and tag pages. Focus on the important pages you want in search results that are not indexed.
Written by the Visual Innovate team, the people who build, host and follow up systems, websites and apps for our clients in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Egypt.
