Google Search Console

GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE
Getting Started
Sign into your Google account. Make sure you’re using your business (not
personal) account if it’s a business website.
Go to Google Search Console.
Click “Add a property.”
Choose “Website” from the drop-down menu and enter the URL of your site.
Make sure you’re using the exact URL that appears in the browser bar.
Click “Continue.”
Pick a way to verify you own your website (HTML file upload, domain name
provider, HTML tag, GA tracking code, or GTM container snippet).
If your site supports both http:// and https://, add both as separate sites.
Google starts tracking data for your property as soon as you add it to GSC -- even
before it’s verified, you’re the site owner.
Verifying your Site on GSC
Because GSC gives you access to confidential information about a site or app’s
performance (plus influence over how Google crawls that site or app!), you have
to verify you own that site or app first.
Verification gives a specific user control over a specific property. You must have at
least one verified owner per GSC property.
Also, note that verifying your property doesn’t affect PageRank or its performance
in Google search. Of course, the more information you have, the easier it is to
rank higher -- but simply adding your website to GSC won’t automatically make
your rankings go up.
GSC verification methods

1. HTML file upload: Upload a verification HTML file to a specific location of your
website.
2. Domain name provider: Sign into your domain registrar (like GoDaddy, eNom, or
networksolutions.com), and verify your site directly from GSC or add a DNS TXT or
CNAME record.
3. HTML tag: Add a <meta> tag to the <HEAD> section of a specific page’s HTML
code.
4. Google Analytics tracking code: Copy the GA tracking code that you use on your
site. (You need “edit” permission in GA for this option.)
Google-hosted sites, including Blogger and Sites pages, are automatically verified.
If you don’t tell GSC which domain you prefer, Google may treat the www and
non-www versions of your domain as separate -- splitting all those page views,
backlinks, and engagement into two. Not good.
(At this time, you should also set up a 301 redirect from your non-preferred
domain to your preferred one, if you haven’t already.)
GSC users, owners, and permissions
There are two GSC role-types. I know you might be itching to get to the good stuff
(cough the data) but it’s important to do this right.
1. Owner: An owner has total control over their properties in GSC. They can add and
remove other users, change the settings, see all data, and access every tool. A
verified owner has completed the property verification process, while a delegated
owner has been added by a verified one. (Delegated owners can add other
delegated owners.)
2. User: A user can see all data and take some actions, but can’t add new users. Full
users can see most data and take some actions, while restricted users can only
view most data.
Think carefully about who should have which permissions. Giving everyone full
ownership could be disastrous -- you don’t want someone to accidentally change
an important setting. Try to give your team members just as much authority as
they need and no further.
For example, in a company, technical SEO manager is a verified owner. And there
is an SEO content strategist, which means he uses GSC heavily but don’t need to
change any settings, so he is a delegated owner. The members of blogging team,
who use GSC to analyze blog and post performance, are full users.
There’s a third role: an associate. You can associate a Google Analytics property
with a Search Console account -- which will let you see GSC data in GA reports.
You can also access GA reports in two sections of Search Console: links to your
site, and Sitelinks.
A GA property can only be associated with one GSC site, and vice versa. If you’re
an owner of the GA property, follow these instructions to associate it with the
GSC site.
Do you need a site map?
A site map isn’t necessary to show up in Google search results. As long as your
site is organized correctly (meaning pages are logically linked to each other),
Google says its web crawlers will normally find most of your pages.
But there are four situations a site map will improve your site’s crawlability:
1. It’s really big. The more pages you have, the easier it is for Googlebot to miss any
changes or additions.
2. It has lots of “isolated” pages. Any page that has few inbound links from other
pages is harder for a web crawler to discover.
3. It’s new. Newer sites have few backlinks (links from other sites) making them less
discoverable.
4. It uses rich media content and/or shows up in Google News. In these cases, your
sitemap makes it easier for Google to format and display your site in search.
Once you’ve built your site map, submit it using the GSC site maps tool.
GSC site maps report

After Google has processed and indexed your site map, it will appear in the Site
maps report. You’ll be able to see when Google last read your site map and how
many URLs it’s indexed.
GSC dimensions & metrics
There are a few terms you should understand before using GSC.
What’s a Google Search Console query?
This is a search term that generated impressions of your site page on a Google
SERP. You can only find query data in Search Console, not Google Analytics.
What’s an impression?
Each time a link URL appears in a search result, it generates an impression. The
user doesn’t have to scroll down to see your search result for the impression to
count.
What’s a click?
When the user selects a link that takes them outside of Google Search, that
counts as one click. If the user clicks a link, hits the back button, then clicks the
same link again -- still one click. If then, they click a different link -- that’s two
clicks.
When a user clicks a link within Google Search that runs a new query, that’s not
counted as a click.
Also, this doesn’t include paid Google results
What’s average position?

This is the mean ranking of your page(s) for a query or queries. Suppose a guide
to SEO tools is ranking #2 for “SEO software” and #4 for “keyword tools.” The
average position for this URL would be 3 (assuming the ranking for literally
nothing else).
What’s CTR?
CTR, or click-through rate, is equal to Clicks divided by Impressions, multiplied by

100. If our post shows up in 20 searches, and generates 10 clicks, our CTR would
be 50%.
Filtering in Google Search Console
GSC offers several different ways to view and parse your data. These filters are
incredibly handy, but they can also be confusing when you’re familiarizing
yourself with the tool.
Search type
There are three search types: web, image and video.
You can also compare two types of traffic. Just click the “Compare” tab, choose
the two categories you’re interested in, and select “Apply.”
This can lead to some interesting findings. For example, The colour theory
101 post is getting more impressions from image search than web (although the
latter is still generating more clicks!).
Date range
GSC now offers 16 months of data (up from 90 days). You can choose from a
variety of pre-set time periods or set a custom range.
As with search type, you can also compare two date ranges in the “Compare” tab.
Queries, page, country, device, search appearance
Click “New” next to the Date filter to add up to five other types of filters: query,
page, country, device, and search appearance.
These filters can be layered; for instance, if we want to see data for SEO-related
queries appearing on mobile search, we would add a filter for queries containing
“SEO” on mobile devices. If we want to limit the results even further to posts on
the Marketing Blog, I’d add another filter for Pages containing the URL
“blog.hubspot.com/marketing”.
You can get very specific here -- I recommend playing around with different
combinations of filters so you see what’s possible.
Index coverage report
Each page is assigned one of four statuses:
1. Error: The page couldn’t be indexed.

2. Warning: The page is indexed, but has a problem.
3. Excluded:
Submitted sitemaps
How to Use Google Search Console
1. Identify your highest-traffic pages
2. Identify your highest-CTR queries
3. Find your average CTR
4. Monitor your CTR over time
5. Monitor your impressions over time
6. Monitor your average position over time
7. Identify ranking increases and decreases
8. Identify your highest-traffic queries
9. Compare your site’s search performance across desktop, mobile, and tablet
10. Compare your site’s search performance across different countries
11. Learn how many of your pages have been indexed
12. Learn which pages haven’t been indexed and why
13. Monitor total number of indexed pages and indexing errors
14. Identify mobile usability issues
15. Learn how many total backlinks your site has
16. Identify which URLs have the most backlinks
17. Identify which sites link to you the most
18. Identify the most popular anchor text for external links
19. Identify which pages have the most internal links
20. Learn how many total internal links your site has
21. Find and fix AMP errors
22. See Google how Google views a URL
23. Go to the old version of Search Console
Can you see why I love GSC? Let’s dig into each use case.
1. Identify your highest-traffic pages
2. Click Performance.
3. Click the “Page” tab (next to Queries).
4. Change the date range to “Last 12 months”. (A full year gives you a
comprehensive overview of your traffic, but feel free to adjust the time period.)
5. Make sure “Total clicks” is selected.
6. Click the small downward arrow next to “Clicks” to sort from highest to lowest.
1. Identify your highest-CTR queries
2. Click the “Queries” tab.
3. Change the date range to “Last 12 months”. (A full year gives you a
comprehensive overview of your traffic, but feel free to adjust the time period.)
4. Make sure “Average CTR” is selected.
5. Click the small downward arrow next to “CTR” to sort from highest to lowest.
Note: It’s useful to look at this in tandem with “Impressions” (check “Total
impressions” to see this information side-by-side). A page might have high CTR
but low impressions, or vice versa -- you won’t get the full picture without both
data points.
2. Look at average CTR

2. Click the date to adjust the time period. Choose whatever range you’re interested
in. (Alternatively, click “Compare” to analyse two date ranges at once.)
3. Look at “Average CTR”.
6. Look at “Total impressions”.
7. Go to Status > Performance.
9. Look at “Average position”.
3. Monitor your CTR over time

I recommend keeping an eye on CTR. Any significant movement is significant: If
it’s dropped, but impressions have gone up, you’re simply ranking for more
keywords, so average CTR has declined. If CTR has increased, and impressions
have decreased, you’ve lost keywords. If both CTR and impressions have gone up,
congrats -- you’re doing something right!
4. Monitor your impressions over time
As you create more content and optimize your existing pages, this number should
increase. (As always, there are exceptions -- maybe you decided to target a small
number of high conversion keywords rather than a lot of average conversion
ones, are focusing on other channels, etc.)
5. Monitor average position over time
Average position isn’t that useful on a macro level. Most people are concerned
when it goes up -- but that’s short-sighted. If a page or set of pages starts ranking
for additional keywords, average position usually increases; after all, unless you’re
ranking for the exact same position or better as your existing keywords, your
“average” will get bigger.
Don’t pay too much attention to this metric.
6. Identify your highest-ranking pages

2. Click the “Page” tab.
3. Change the date range to “Last 28 days.” (You want an up-to-date,
accurate snapshot of your pages.)
4. Make sure “Average position” is selected.
5. Click the small upward arrow next to “Position” to sort from smallest
(good) to highest (bad).
7. Click the “Page” tab.
8. Change the date range to “Last 28 days.” (You want an up-to-date,
accurate snapshot of your pages.)
9. Make sure “Average position” is selected.
10. Click the small downward arrow next to “Position” to sort from highest
(bad) to lowest (good).
Because you’re looking at average position by URL, that number is the mean of all
of that page’s rankings. In other words, if it’s ranking for two keywords, it might
be #1 for a high-volume query and #43 for a low-volume one -- but the average
will still be 22.
With that in mind, don’t judge the success or failure of a page by “average
position” alone.
7. Identify your lowest-ranking pages

8. Identify ranking increases and decreases
2. Click the “Query” tab.
3. Click “Date range” to change the dates, then choose the “Compare” tab.
4. Select two equivalent time periods, then click “Apply.”
At this point, you can look at the data in GSC, or export it. For an in-depth
analysis, I highly recommend the second -- it’ll make your life much
easier.
To do so, click the downward arrow beneath “Search Appearance,” then
download it as a CSV file or export it to Google Sheets.
After you have this data in spreadsheet form, you can add a column for the
position differences (Last 28 days Position - Previous 28 days Position), then sort
by size.
If the difference is positive, your site has moved up for that query. If it’s negative,
you’ve dropped.
9. Identify your highest-traffic queries

2. Click the “Query” tab.
3. Click “Date range” to choose a time period.
4. Make sure “Total clicks” is selected.
5. Click the small downward arrow next to “Clicks” to sort from highest to
lowest.
Knowing which queries bring in the most search traffic is definitely useful.
Consider optimizing the ranking pages for conversion, periodically updating them
so they maintain their rankings, putting paid promotion behind them, using them
to link to lower-ranked (but just as if not more important) relevant pages, and so
on.
10. Compare your site’s search performance across desktop, mobile, and tablet
2. Go to the “Devices” tab.
3. Make sure “Total clicks,” “Total impressions,” “Average CTR,” and “Average
Position” are selected.
4. Compare your performance across desktop, mobile, and tablet.
11. Compare your site’s search performance across different countries
2. Go to the “Countries” tab.
3. Make sure “Total clicks,” “Total impressions,” “Average CTR,” and “Average
Position” are selected.
4. Compare your performance across nations.
12. Learn how many of your pages have been indexed
1. Start at “Overview.”
2. Scroll down to the Index coverage summary.
3. Look at the “Valid pages” count.
13. Learn which pages haven’t been indexed and why
1. Go to Overview > Index coverage.
2. Scroll down to the Details box to learn which Errors are causing indexing
issues and how frequent they are.
3. Double-click on any Error type to see the affected page URLs.
14. Monitor total number of indexed pages and indexing errors
1. Go to Overview > Index coverage.
2. Make sure “Error”, “Valid with warnings”, “Valid”, and “Excluded” are all
selected.
The total number of indexed pages on your site should typically go up over time
as you:
• Publish new blog posts, create new landing pages, add additional site pages,
etc.
• Fix indexing errors
If indexing errors go up significantly, a change to your site template might be to

blame (because a large set of pages have been impacted at once). Alternatively,
you may have submitted a sitemap with URLs Google can’t crawl (because of
‘noindex’ directives, robots.txt, password-protected pages, etc.).
If the total number of indexed pages on your site drops without a proportional
increase in errors, it’s possible you’re blocking access to existing URLs.
In any case, try to diagnose the issue by looking at your excluded pages and
looking for clues.
15. Identify mobile usability issues
1. Click Mobile Usability.
2. Make sure “Error” is selected.
3. Scroll down to the Details box to learn which Errors are causing mobile
usability issues and how frequent they are.
4. Double-click on any Error type to see the affected page URLs.
16. Learn how many total backlinks your site has
1. Click Links.
2. Open the Top linked pages report.
3. Look at the box labelled “Total external links.”
4. Click the downward arrow next to “Incoming links” to sort from highest to
lowest backlinks.
Every backlink is a signal to Google that your content is trustworthy and useful. In
general, the more backlinks the better! Of course, quality matters -- one link from
a high-authority site is much more valuable than two links from low-authority
sites. To see which sites are linking to a specific page, simply double-click that URL
in the report.
17. Identify which URLs have the most backlinks

1. Click Links.
2. Open the Top linked pages report.
3. Click the downward arrow next to “Incoming links” to sort from highest to
lowest backlinks.
If you want to help a page rank higher, adding a link from a page with a ton of
backlinks is a good bet. Those backlinks give that URL a lot of page authority --
which it can then pass on to another page on your site with a link.
18. Identify which sites link to you the most
1. Click Links.
2. Scroll down to “Top linking sites” > “More.”
Knowing your top referring domains is incredibly useful for promotion -- I’d
recommend starting with these sites whenever you do a link-building campaign.
(Just make sure to use a tool like Moz, SEMrush, or Ahrefs to filter out the low-
authority ones first.)
These may also be good candidates for comarketing campaigns or social media
partnerships.
19. Identify the most popular anchor text for external links
1. Click Links.
2. Scroll down to “Top linking text” > “More.”
Anchor text should be as descriptive and specific as possible -- and best case
scenario, include your keyword. If you find websites linking to your pages but
using anchor text like “Click here” “Learn more”, “Check it out”, etc., consider
sending an email asking them to update the hyperlink.
20. Identify which pages have the most internal links

1. Click Links.
2. Scroll down to “Top linked pages” > “More.”
It’s normal for some URLs to have more inbound links. For example, if you run an
ecommerce site, every product page in your “Skirts” category will link back to the
“Skirts” overview page. That’s a good thing: It tells Google your top-level URLs are
the most important (which helps them rank higher).
However, a heavily skewed link distribution ratio isn’t ideal. If a tiny percentage of
your URLS are getting way more links than the rest, it’ll be difficult for the 95% to
receive search traffic -- you’re not passing enough authority to them.
Here’s what a heavily skewed distribution looks like:

The optimal spread looks like this:
Use GSC’s link data to learn how your links are distributed and if you need to
focus on making your link distribution smoother.
21. Learn how many total internal links your site has
1. Click Links.
2. Scroll down to “Top linked pages” > “More.”
3. Look at the box labelled “Total internal links.”
22. Find and fix AMP errors
1. Click AMP.
2. Make sure “Error” is selected.
3. Scroll down to the “Details” box to see which types of issues you have and
how frequent they are.
Google recommends fixing errors before looking at the pages in the “Valid with
warnings” category. By default, errors are ranked by severity, frequency, and
whether you’ve addressed them.
23. See Google how Google views a URL

1. Click the white magnifying glass at the top of the page.
2. Enter the page URL. (Make sure it belongs to the property you’re currently
viewing.)
Here’s how to interpret the results. If the URL is on Google, that means it’s
indexed and can appear in search.
That doesn’t mean it will -- if it’s been marked as spam or you’ve removed
or temporarily blocked the content, it won’t appear. Google the URL; if it shows
up, searchers can find it.
Open the Index coverage card to learn more about the URL’s presence on Google,
including which sitemaps point to this URL, the referring page that led Googlebot
to this URL, the last time Googlebot crawled this URL, whether you’ve allowed
Googlebot to crawl this URL, whether Googlebot actually could fetch this URL,
whether this page disallows indexing, the canonical URL you’ve set for this page,
and the URL Google has selected as the canonical for this page.
The Enhancements section gives you information on:
• The AMP version of this page, if it exists, and any AMP-specific issues
• Status for job posting and/or recipe structured data
24. Go to the old version of Search Console
The new GSC, while intuitive and well-designed, doesn’t have all the features of
the old version. If you want to use the latter, click “Go to the old version” in the
left sidebar menu.

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GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE

Verifying your Site on GSC

GSC verification methods

GSC users, owners, and permissions

GSC site maps report

What’s a Google Search Console query?

Also, this doesn’t include paid Google results

What’s average position?

CTR, or click-through rate, is equal to Clicks divided by Impressions, multiplied by

There are three search types: web, image and video.

Queries, page, country, device, search appearance

Index coverage report

Each page is assigned one of four statuses:

1. Error: The page couldn’t be indexed.

2. Look at average CTR

3. Monitor your CTR over time

5. Monitor average position over time

Don’t pay too much attention to this metric.

6. Identify your highest-ranking pages

7. Identify your lowest-ranking pages

9. Identify your highest-traffic queries

If indexing errors go up significantly, a change to your site template might be to

17. Identify which URLs have the most backlinks

20. Identify which pages have the most internal links

Here’s what a heavily skewed distribution looks like:

23. See Google how Google views a URL

The Enhancements section gives you information on:

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