Google Search Console: The Ultimate Guide for 2025

Adding a domain property will give you the most comprehensive view of your website’s information.

You'll receive data from all URLs under the domain name, including all protocols, subdomains, and paths.

To add a property this way, you'll need to verify it through your DNS (domain name system) provider.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Add your domain in the “Domain” option (without HTTP/HTTPS and www).
2. For example, if your domain URL is “https://www.yoursite.com,” enter “yoursite.com” in the blank space provided.
3. Click “CONTINUE.”

This setup ensures you get a complete overview of your site's performance.

Then, copy the TXT record from the instructions dialog box.

In a new tab, sign in to your account with your domain registrar. For this example, we'll use GoDaddy.

Once you log in, access your DNS settings by clicking on the nine dots in the navigation bar next to your business name and selecting “Domains.”

In your Domain Portfolio dashboard, select the three dots beside your domain name and click on “Edit DNS.”

You should now be in the DNS Management window. Add a new TXT record by clicking “Add” in the DNS Records section.

A form will pop up. Fill it out as follows:

• Type: TXT
• Name: @
• Value: [Paste the TXT record from Google Search Console]
• TTL: 1 hour

When you’re done, click “Add record.”

Now go back to Search Console and click “Verify.”

Adding your site with the “URL prefix” option is useful if you want to view data for a specific section of your site, such as your blog.

Start by entering your URL under the “URL prefix” option, then click “CONTINUE.” For example, you would enter “https://www.yoursite.com/blog/.”

Google allows multiple verification methods for a URL prefix:

• HTML file (recommended)
• HTML tag
• Google Analytics
• Google Tag Manager
• Domain name provider

For this example, we'll use Google's recommended "HTML file" upload method.

Click on "HTML file" to expand the HTML file section, where you'll find the file download button.

Download your HTML verification file and upload it to the root directory (the top-most directory in your site hierarchy) of the website you want to verify.

For example, if you want to verify “www.yourwebsite.com,” upload the file to the root directory of your homepage. If you want to verify “www.yourwebsite.com/blog/,” upload the file to the “/blog/” directory. This will also verify all the child directories under it.

After uploading the file, go back to Search Console and click “VERIFY.”

Similar to adding a domain property, you may need to wait for changes to take effect. If you can’t verify your site immediately, check back later and select the unverified property. Google Search Console will try to automatically verify you.

Tip: If you have any trouble adding or verifying a property, read Google’s guide to GSC verification.

The “Performance” report provides data on how your website is performing on Google. It shows four key metrics:

• Total clicks: The number of times people clicked on your site from the search results.
• Total impressions: The number of times your site appeared in search results.
• Average CTR (click-through rate): The percentage of impressions that resulted in a click.
• Average position: The average position of your site in search results.

To review these metrics for your site, click “Search results” from the sidebar navigation.

Below the chart, you’ll see a table displaying the queries, pages, countries, and devices driving traffic to your site. It also provides information on page experience and the number of clicks you received by date.

Here are two ideas to consider when analyzing your Google performance data:

Low CTR: If your pages rank well but don’t get many clicks, try writing better title tags and meta descriptions. This will make your pages more appealing to users.

Missing Keywords: If you don’t rank for important keywords, your site might not have enough useful content addressing them. Improve your content strategy and produce quality content targeting the terms you want to rank for.

If your website receives traffic from Discover and Google News, you’ll also see specific reports for these segments.

The reports will look similar to the main performance report, showing metrics like clicks, impressions, CTR, and average position.

The “URL inspection” tool helps you check the index status of individual pages on your website and troubleshoot issues that may be preventing your page from appearing in Google’s search results.

Access the tool from the top bar or by clicking “URL inspection” from the navigation bar.

The "Page indexing" report is located under the "Indexing" section. It shows which pages Google can find and index, as well as any related issues. Pages must be indexed to appear in search results, so it's important to avoid any indexation problems.

To access this report, go to "Indexing" > "Pages" on the sidebar. You’ll see two tabs showing the number of indexed and non-indexed pages.

If you notice a sudden drop in the number of indexed pages, it could be a sign that something is wrong.

Scroll down to find out why your pages weren’t indexed.

There are many reasons why some of your pages may not be indexed. For example, your pages might be returning "Not found (404)" errors, or you might have accidentally added the "noindex" tag.

This report will help you identify the problem. To drill down on a particular cause, click on an entry from the "Reason" column.

You’ll see a list of affected pages.

Along with a link to learn how to fix the issue at the very top.

If you implement any fixes, you can click “VALIDATE FIX” to help Google recognize the changes. This can prompt Google to re-evaluate and potentially index the affected pages.

The “Sitemaps” report displays your sitemap submission history and alerts you to any issues with your submitted sitemap. To access the report, navigate to “Sitemaps” from the sidebar.

You’ll find the following information:

• URL: The URL specified when you submitted your sitemap
• Type: The type of sitemap (e.g., XML, RSS, etc.)
• Submitted: The date you originally submitted the sitemap
• Last read: The last date Google crawled the sitemap
• Status: The crawl status (e.g., “Success,” “Has errors,” or “Couldn’t fetch”)
• Discovered pages: The total number of pages Google found in the sitemap

The “Page Experience” report provides information about your website’s performance in terms of user experience.

User experience is measured by the following criteria:

• Core Web Vitals: Metrics from Google that measure loading, interactivity, and visual stability of webpage content.
• Mobile Usability: Whether your site is usable on mobile devices.
• HTTPS: Whether your site’s connection is secure.

To review your site’s user experience, navigate to the “Page Experience” report in the left-hand sidebar.

The results are split between mobile:

And desktop,

The percentage of “Good URLs” indicates how many URLs provide an optimal page experience to users. Look through each report to see where you fall short.

For example, you might find that 15 URLs from your property failed the Core Web Vitals test, and 224 URLs failed the Mobile Usability test.

Click on these numbers for a full issues report.

Here, we see that 15 URLs failed the Core Web Vitals test due to high LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) load times.

Click on an entry to see which pages have the LCP issue.

To fix Core Web Vitals issues, we recommend getting help from a developer on your team unless you’re highly experienced in technical SEO. After you’ve fixed the issue, alert Google of the change by clicking “VALIDATE FIX” at the top section of the error report.

The “Enhancements” report shows information about any structured data Google detects on your website and whether any issues are present.

Structured data provides Google with additional information about your page. Google uses this information to create rich results in the SERP, which can potentially improve CTR for your pages.

Google lists the types of structured data it detects under the “Enhancements” section in the sidebar.

It looks like this:

Click on a specific type for the full report. Here, we clicked on “Breadcrumbs.”

The report indicates problems by showing "Invalid" items. Ideally, your "Invalid" items count should be zero. If there are any issues, the affected pages won’t appear as rich results in search results.

Google issues a manual action if a website breaches Google’s spam policies. Websites with manual actions, or penalties, may rank much lower in Google search results or may not rank at all, leading to a significant loss of traffic.

To check whether you have a manual action from Google, visit the “Manual actions” report in Search Console.

If the report says “No issues detected,” you don’t need to do anything.

However, if you see “Issues detected” in this report, you have a serious problem that needs immediate attention. Address each issue promptly.

Learn how to address specific penalties in Google’s guide to the manual actions report.

The “Links” report helps you track your external links, or backlinks, which are links on other domains pointing to your domain. Backlinks are an important Google ranking factor.

To view this report, navigate to “Links” on the sidebar.

You’ll see your site’s total number of backlinks at the top:

Under that, view your top linked pages, the ones receiving the most backlinks:

Plus, which sites are linking to you most:

As well as the most common anchor text people use when they link to you:

The “Links” report also shows which pages on your site have the most internal links, or links from pages on your domain. Internal links are important for SEO for two main reasons:

• They help users and crawlers navigate your site more efficiently.
• They transfer authority to other pages on your site, which can help them rank higher.

To the right of the report, you’ll find information on your internal links, including the total number of internal links and your top linked pages.

The “Shopping” report is for online stores and product review sites that have implemented product markup on their websites. It shows data about issues with your product-related structured data.

Depending on the structured data Google finds on your site, you’ll see a combination of the following reports:

• Product snippets: Detects structured data issues for product snippets in search results.
• Merchant listings: Detects structured data issues for free listings across Google.
• Shopping tab listings: Detects structured data issues for items that appear in the Shopping tab in Google Search results.

Navigate to the specific report from the sidebar to review these details.

And you’ll see whether there are any “Invalid” items.

If “Invalid” items are present, the affected pages won’t appear as rich results on Google. Review the "Invalid" items in the report to identify the errors.

After fixing the issues, use Google's Rich Results Test to check your structured data code. The tool will let you know whether your new code is working and whether your entry is eligible for a rich result.