Google Search Console is a free tool from Google that shows how your site performs in Google Search. It tells you which searches bring visitors, which pages Google has indexed and why others are left out, and whether your pages pass Core Web Vitals. Verify your site, submit a sitemap, then check the Performance and Pages reports every week.
How do you add and verify a site in Search Console?
Open Google Search Console, add a property, and prove you own the site. Google offers two property types, and the right one depends on how much of the site you want to see.
| Property type | Covers | How to verify |
|---|---|---|
| Domain property | Every subdomain and both http and https, e.g. all of example.in | A DNS TXT record added at your domain registrar or DNS host |
| URL-prefix property | Only URLs starting with the exact prefix, e.g. https://www.example.in/ | HTML file upload, HTML meta tag, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, or DNS |
A domain property is the better default because it shows everything in one place. If you cannot edit DNS, a URL-prefix property with the HTML meta tag works. Keep the verification file or tag in place; removing it can cost you access later.
What does the Performance report show?
The Performance report shows clicks, impressions, click-through rate (CTR) and average position for your pages in Google Search, for up to the last 16 months. You can filter and compare by query, page, country, device, search appearance and date.
Useful ways to read it:
- Sort queries by impressions and look for high impressions with low CTR. Those pages need a better title tag or meta description.
- Filter by page to see every query one page ranks for. If two pages compete for the same query, you may have keyword cannibalisation.
- Compare the last three months with the same period last year to separate seasonal dips (for example, after board exam results) from real losses.
- Filter by country, such as India, if you only serve Indian students.
Data usually appears with a delay of a couple of days, so do not judge yesterday's numbers.
What does the Pages (indexing) report tell you?
The Page indexing report lists how many of your known URLs are indexed and groups the rest by the reason they are not. Each reason links to example URLs, so you can see exactly which pages are affected.
Common reasons and what they mean:
- Excluded by 'noindex' tag: fine for thank-you or login pages, a problem for course pages.
- Duplicate without user-selected canonical: Google picked another URL as the main version. Add a canonical tag.
- Crawled - currently not indexed: Google saw the page but chose not to index it yet, often because the content is thin or similar to other pages.
- Discovered - currently not indexed: Google knows the URL but has not crawled it yet.
- Not found (404) and Page with redirect: usually harmless, unless these URLs are in your sitemap or internal links.
Not every page needs to be indexed. Focus on pages that should rank but do not.
How do you use URL Inspection?
Paste any URL from your property into the search bar at the top of Search Console to see Google's indexed version of it. The report shows whether the page is indexed, the canonical Google chose, the last crawl date, and whether mobile crawling succeeded.
Click Test live URL to check the current version, for example after fixing a noindex tag. If the test passes, Request indexing asks Google to recrawl the page. There is a daily limit on requests, and requesting does not guarantee indexing, so use it for important new or fixed pages, not every URL.
How do you submit a sitemap?
Open Sitemaps, enter your sitemap URL such as https://www.example.in/sitemap.xml, and submit it. Search Console then shows whether Google could read the file and how many URLs it found. See the XML sitemap guide for what to include.
What does the Core Web Vitals report show?
The Core Web Vitals report groups your URLs as Good, Needs improvement or Poor for LCP, INP and CLS, separately for mobile and desktop. It uses field data from real Chrome users, so pages with little traffic may not appear.
Fix the issue with the most affected URLs first. After a fix, click Validate fix; Google tracks the pages over about 28 days before marking the issue passed. The Core Web Vitals guide explains each metric.
Common mistakes
- Verifying only
https://example.inwhile the site actually runs onhttps://www.example.in. - Panicking over every excluded URL instead of checking which ones matter.
- Requesting indexing repeatedly for the same page.
- Never adding team members, so access is lost when one person leaves. Use Settings > Users and permissions.
- Removing the verification tag during a site redesign.
How do you check this with Spider?
Start with a page audit, which flags whether an analytics or tag manager script is installed. Then connect Search Console in Spider to see index status, cannibalisation and content decay reports built from your own data. Google's Search Console Help covers every report in detail.
Check this on your own site
Spider's free check tests this and about 100 other things on any page, and links each problem to a guide like this one.
