If you want to know how your website is doing on Google, the first tool you need is Google Search Console. It’s free, it comes from Google itself, and it shows things no other tool can see with the same accuracy.

In this guide you’ll see how to connect it, which reports matter and how to turn them into actions.

Set-up and verification

  1. Sign in to Search Console with your business Google account.
  2. Add a property. The “Domain” type covers every version of your site — with and without www, http and https.
  3. Verify ownership with the DNS record Google gives you. Your hosting provider or web developer usually does this.

Data is collected from the moment of verification, so it’s worth doing it from your site’s first day.

Submit your sitemap

A sitemap is a list of your pages that helps Google find them. Most modern sites generate one automatically. In the “Sitemaps” section, add its address and check that the status is successful.

The performance report

This is where the most valuable information lives. You see:

  • Total clicks: how many people clicked your site in the results.
  • Total impressions: how many times it appeared.
  • Average CTR: the share of people who saw it and clicked.
  • Average position: where you appear on average.

The “Queries” tab shows the actual searches people use. You’ll often discover you’re found with words you didn’t expect — ideas for new content or for improving existing pages.

A useful trick

Sort queries by impressions and look for those with many impressions but a low CTR. It usually means the page title or description isn’t persuasive. Better wording can bring more clicks without any change in position.

The pages (indexing) report

It shows which pages Google has indexed and which it hasn’t, with a reason for each. Not every exclusion is a problem — a login page, for instance, doesn’t need to appear. But make sure your key pages (services, products, articles) are indexed.

URL inspection

Type a page address into the search bar at the top and you’ll see whether it’s indexed, when Google last visited and whether there are issues. After an important change, you can request indexing again.

Page experience and security

The Core Web Vitals reports show whether your pages load quickly and steadily for real users. The security and manual actions sections alert you if Google detects a problem — ideally they’ll always be empty.

Your 15-minute monthly check

  1. Compare clicks and impressions with the previous month.
  2. Look at the top queries and top pages.
  3. Find queries with many impressions and a low CTR.
  4. Check the pages report for new issues.
  5. See whether there are security or Core Web Vitals alerts.

Search Console doesn’t improve rankings by itself, but it shows you where to focus. If you’d like help interpreting it or making the fixes, M. Dimopoulos offers SEO and technical support.