How to Add a Site to Google Search Console and Use It
Practice3 minInnovialabs editorial team
In short
Add a Domain property via a DNS record, submit your sitemap, then regularly check the Performance, Pages and Core Web Vitals reports and inspect important URLs with the URL Inspection tool.
The short answer: how to connect a site
Google Search Console is a free Google service that shows how the search engine sees your site: which pages are indexed, which queries bring you impressions and where technical problems are. Setup takes a few minutes:
- Sign in with the company's Google account (not an employee's personal one).
- Click "Add property" and choose a type: Domain or URL prefix.
- Verify ownership using one of the available methods.
- Submit your sitemap under "Sitemaps".
Data starts collecting after verification, so connect the service as soon as the site goes live.
Domain vs URL prefix
| Property type | What it covers | How to verify |
|---|---|---|
| Domain | All subdomains and protocols: http, https, www, m. | DNS TXT record only |
| URL prefix | Only URLs with the given prefix, e.g. https://example.com/ | HTML file, meta tag, Google Analytics, Tag Manager, DNS |
For most sites a Domain property is the better choice: you see the full picture and lose nothing when some traffic lands on the www or non-www version. A URL prefix property is handy when you have no DNS access or want to analyze one section, such as /blog/, separately.
Verification methods
- DNS TXT record — added at your registrar or DNS panel. The most reliable option because it survives redesigns.
- HTML file — uploaded to the site root. Do not delete it after verification.
- Meta tag in the
<head>of the homepage. Easy to lose when the template changes. - Google Analytics or Tag Manager — if they are already installed and you have admin rights.
Example DNS record:
Type: TXT
Name: @
Value: google-site-verification=your_code
DNS changes can take time to propagate. If verification fails at first, try again later.
The key reports
Performance. Clicks, impressions, CTR and average position by query, page, country and device. Look for queries with many impressions but few clicks: they are candidates for better titles and descriptions.
Pages (indexing). Which URLs are indexed and why the others are not. Common reasons: "Discovered – currently not indexed", "Duplicate", "Excluded by noindex tag". Not every exclusion is an error: utility and duplicate pages should stay out of the index.
Core Web Vitals. Groups of URLs with poor, needs-improvement and good LCP, INP and CLS on mobile and desktop. The data comes from real Chrome users, so low-traffic sites may see an empty report.
Sitemaps. Processing status of your sitemap and the number of discovered URLs.
The URL Inspection tool
Paste an address into the search bar at the top of the interface and you will see:
- whether the page is in Google's index;
- which canonical URL Google chose and whether it matches yours;
- whether the page was reachable during the last crawl;
- how Googlebot rendered the page ("Test live URL").
After fixing something, click "Request indexing". It speeds up recrawling but does not guarantee indexing. Requests are limited, so save them for important pages.
Common mistakes
- Verifying with a meta tag and removing it during a template update.
- Adding only the
http://version and missing allhttps://data. - Panicking over excluded pages without checking the reason.
- Sharing the account password instead of adding colleagues under "Users and permissions".