How to use Google Search Console: the reports that matter

Add your site to Search Console as a Domain property, verify it with a DNS record, submit your XML sitemap, and then look at five reports once a month: Performance, Page indexing, URL Inspection, Sitemaps and Core Web Vitals. That covers most of what a business website needs from the tool. The rest is useful when something goes wrong.

Search Console is free and is the only place Google tells you directly how it sees your site. We set it up on every site we build and use it as the starting point for our technical SEO and performance audits. This guide covers the setup and how to read each report without getting lost in it.

How do you set up Search Console properly?

Choose a Domain property. Search Console offers two property types. A Domain property (example.com) covers every subdomain and both http and https. A URL-prefix property (https://www.example.com/) covers only URLs that start with that exact prefix. Use a Domain property as the main one, so nothing falls through a gap. Add URL-prefix properties later only if you need separate data for a subfolder, such as /blog/.

Verify with DNS. A Domain property can only be verified with a TXT record at your DNS provider. Search Console gives you the record; you add it where your domain's DNS is managed (the registrar, Cloudflare, or your host). Verification usually completes within minutes, though DNS changes can take longer to spread.

Make the business the owner. Verify the property with a Google account the business controls, then add your developer or agency as a user. If the only owner is a freelancer's personal account, you lose the history when they leave. Who owns your website? covers the other accounts this applies to.

Submit the sitemap. In the Sitemaps report, enter the sitemap URL (often /sitemap.xml or /sitemap_index.xml) and submit. Also list it in robots.txt with a Sitemap: line, so other search engines find it.

Data starts collecting from the moment Google can attribute it to the property, and some reports take a few days to fill.

What does the Performance report tell you?

The Performance report (Search results) shows four numbers for any period up to 16 months:

• Clicks: how many times someone clicked through to your site from Google Search.
• Impressions: how many times your site appeared in results.
• CTR: clicks divided by impressions.
• Average position: the average position of your topmost result.

Below the chart, the table groups the same numbers by query, page, country, device, search appearance or date. The search type filter now splits Web into "text-based" and "multimodal" (searches made with images, such as Google Lens), alongside Image, Video and News.

Three ways to use it that pay off:

1. Compare periods. Use the date filter's compare option, last three months against the same three months a year ago, to separate real trends from seasonality.
2. Find pages with impressions but few clicks. Sort pages by impressions, then look at CTR. A page ranking in the top five with a CTR far below its neighbours usually has a title or description that does not match what people searched. Rewrite it, and check the result in our SERP snippet preview before publishing.
3. Separate brand from non-brand. Filter queries with "Custom (regex)" to exclude your brand name. Non-brand clicks are the ones your SEO work is responsible for.

Treat average position with care. It averages across every query and every searcher's location and device, so a page can rise for its main query while its average falls because it started appearing for many new, lower-ranking queries.

Where does AI Overviews and AI Mode traffic show up?

Clicks and impressions from AI Overviews and AI Mode are counted in the Performance report under the Web search type, mixed in with ordinary results. Search Console's help explains the counting: an AI Overview occupies a single position, and every link inside it gets that position. A follow-up question in AI Mode counts as a new query.

Since August 31, 2026, Google has made the Generative AI performance report available to all sites. It shows impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode by page, country, device and date; a site with very few such impressions may not see it at all. As of October 2026 it shows impressions only; clicks stay in the main Performance report. Under Settings there is also a Search generative AI control that lets you exclude your site from those features. AI Overviews and your traffic covers what the numbers mean and whether excluding your site is ever sensible.

How do you check whether pages are indexed?

Two tools, two scales.

URL Inspection checks one URL. It shows whether the URL "is on Google", when it was last crawled, whether crawling and indexing were allowed, which canonical you declared and which Google chose, and any structured data found. "Test live URL" fetches the current version. "Request indexing" asks Google to recrawl it, with a daily limit per property.

The Page indexing report (Pages, under Indexing) shows every URL Google knows about, split into indexed and not indexed, with a table of reasons. Do not aim for everything to be indexed. Redirects, duplicates and deleted pages are meant to be left out. Look for pages you care about sitting under a reason you can fix, such as "Excluded by 'noindex' tag" or "Blocked by robots.txt". Why your pages are not indexed goes through every reason and its fix.

Which other reports are worth a regular look?

The Core Web Vitals report uses field data from real Chrome users over the previous 28 days, grouped into similar URLs. It is the version of "speed" that Google's ranking systems care about, which is not the same as a PageSpeed score; page speed vs Core Web Vitals explains the difference.

Enhancement reports appear only for structured data types Google found on your site. If you remember an FAQ report, it is gone: Google stopped showing FAQ rich results in May 2026 and removed the report the following month.

What can you safely ignore?

• Not reaching 100% indexed. Google's own help says you should not expect it.
• Small day-to-day movements in clicks or average position. Look at weeks and months.
• The total number of external links. It is a sample, not a count, and it is not a measure of quality.
• Every email Search Console sends. Read them, but a "new reason preventing your pages from being indexed" message about a handful of old 404s needs no action.
• "Discovered - currently not indexed" on a few low-value URLs. It matters only when important pages sit there for weeks.

A fifteen-minute monthly routine is enough for most business sites: Performance compared with last year, Page indexing for new reasons affecting real pages, Core Web Vitals on mobile, and the two security reports. Search Console's Performance report documentation is worth reading once in full. For the wider set of checks behind this routine, use our technical SEO checklist.