Google Search Console is the single most important free SEO tool available. It gives you direct data from Google about how your site performs in search, which pages are indexed, what technical issues exist, and how users find your content. Every SEO and GEO strategy should start here.
Key takeaway: Search Console isn’t just a monitoring tool — it’s a diagnostic and optimization tool. The Performance report reveals GEO opportunities, the Pages report catches indexing problems before they cost traffic, and the Core Web Vitals report identifies technical priorities.
How Do You Set Up Google Search Console Correctly?
Setting up GSC properly ensures you capture complete data from day one.
Step 1: Choose your property type.
Google Search Console offers two property types:
| Property Type | Coverage | Verification | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Domain | All subdomains + protocols | DNS only | Most sites (recommended) |
| URL-prefix | Exact prefix only | HTML tag, file, GA, GTM, DNS | Specific subdomain or path |
For most sites, use a Domain property. It aggregates data across www/non-www, HTTP/HTTPS, and all subdomains into one view. If you manage a specific subdomain (like blog.example.com) independently, add a URL-prefix property for it too.
Step 2: Verify ownership.
For Domain properties, add a DNS TXT record. Your domain registrar or DNS provider will have instructions for adding TXT records. The record looks like:
google-site-verification=your_unique_verification_stringFor URL-prefix properties, the easiest method is the HTML tag — add a <meta> tag to your homepage’s <head>:
<meta name="google-site-verification" content="your_unique_string" />Step 3: Submit your sitemap.
Go to Sitemaps → Add a new sitemap → Enter your sitemap URL (usually https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml). Google will fetch and process it. Check back in a few days to verify it was read successfully and shows the expected URL count.
Step 4: Configure settings.
- Set your target country in Settings → International Targeting (if applicable)
- Add team members with appropriate access levels (Full vs. Restricted)
- Enable email notifications for critical issues
Step 5: Connect to Google Analytics.
In GA4, go to Admin → Product Links → Search Console Links. This connects GSC data with your analytics, allowing you to see landing page performance alongside search query data. If you want to go deeper, Comparison Content AI Loves: X vs Y Articles breaks this down step by step.
How Do You Use the Performance Report for SEO Insights?
The Performance report is the heart of Search Console. It shows your search queries, click-through rates, impressions, average position, and landing pages.
Key metrics:
- Clicks — How many times users clicked through to your site from search results
- Impressions — How many times your pages appeared in search results
- CTR — Click-through rate (clicks ÷ impressions)
- Average Position — Your average ranking position for a query
Finding quick-win opportunities:
Filter for queries where you rank in positions 5-15 with high impressions but low CTR. These are keywords where you’re close to page 1 (or already on page 1 but below the fold). Small improvements in content or on-page optimization can push these into top 3 positions.
Filter: Average Position between 5 and 15
Sort: Impressions (descending)The top results are your highest-potential optimization targets. For each:
- Check the landing page — does the title tag include the query keyword?
- Is the content comprehensive for this query?
- Does the meta description compel clicks?
- Are there content gaps compared to the top-3 ranking pages?
Identifying GEO opportunities:
AI search engines answer many queries that previously drove clicks. Look for queries with:
- High impressions but declining clicks over 6 months
- Informational queries (how to, what is, why does)
- Queries where your position is stable but CTR is dropping
These are likely being answered by AI Overviews or other AI search features. They’re prime candidates for GEO optimization — create content specifically designed to be cited by AI engines when answering these queries.
Comparing time periods:
Use the date comparison feature to identify trends: (We explore this further in On-Page SEO Checklist 2026: 25 Essential Optimizations.)
- Compare this month vs. last month for short-term changes
- Compare this quarter vs. same quarter last year for seasonal analysis
- Compare pre-migration vs. post-migration to measure migration impact
Pay attention to impression changes independently of click changes. Rising impressions with stable clicks means new keyword visibility. Dropping impressions with stable clicks means you’re losing visibility but retaining your most engaged audience.
How Do You Diagnose and Fix Indexing Issues?
The Pages report (formerly Coverage report) shows which of your pages Google has indexed and why others were excluded.
Index status categories:
| Status | Meaning | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Indexed | Page is in Google’s index | Monitor — no action needed |
| Crawled - not indexed | Google saw it but chose not to index | Improve content quality, add links |
| Discovered - not indexed | Google knows the URL but hasn’t crawled it | Crawl budget issue — improve site structure |
| Page with redirect | URL redirects to another page | Expected for redirected pages |
| Not found (404) | Page returns 404 error | Fix the page or remove internal links to it |
| Soft 404 | Page exists but looks like an error page | Add real content or return proper 404 |
| Blocked by robots.txt | Robots.txt prevents crawling | Update robots.txt if unintentional |
| Noindex tag | Page has a noindex directive | Remove if unintentional |
| Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as canonical | Google chose a different canonical | Verify canonical tag is correct |
Fixing “Crawled - currently not indexed”:
This is the most frustrating status because it means Google crawled your page but decided it wasn’t worth indexing. Common causes:
- Thin content — The page doesn’t offer enough unique value. Solution: expand the content significantly, add unique insights, data, or perspectives.
- Duplicate content — Too similar to another indexed page. Solution: differentiate the content or consolidate with a canonical tag.
- Low authority — The page has few internal links and no external links. Solution: add internal links from relevant pages, build the page’s authority.
- Quality signals — Boilerplate-heavy pages with little original content. Solution: increase the content-to-template ratio.
After making improvements, use the URL Inspection tool to request reindexing. Note: Google processes these requests within days, but indexing decisions may take weeks.
Fixing “Discovered - currently not indexed”:
This means Google found the URL (through sitemaps or links) but hasn’t allocated crawl resources to it yet. This is a crawl budget signal — Google isn’t prioritizing these pages.
Solutions:
- Add internal links to these pages from higher-authority pages
- Ensure they’re in your XML sitemap
- Improve server response time (faster site = more crawl budget)
- Reduce the total number of low-value pages Google has to crawl
How Do You Use URL Inspection for Debugging?
The URL Inspection tool lets you see exactly what Google knows about a specific URL. It’s your primary debugging tool for individual page issues. This relates closely to what we cover in How Do AI Search Engines Decide What to Cite?.
What URL Inspection shows:
- Index status — Is the page indexed? If not, why?
- Crawl details — When was it last crawled? What HTTP status did Google get? Can Google access the page?
- Rendered HTML — What does the page look like after Google’s renderer processes JavaScript?
- Mobile usability — Does the page pass mobile usability checks?
- Structured data — What schema markup did Google detect? Any errors?
Debugging workflow:
When a page isn’t ranking as expected:
- Enter the URL in URL Inspection
- Check if it’s indexed. If not, the reason is shown.
- Click “View Crawled Page” to see what Google sees. If content is missing, you have a rendering issue.
- Click “Test Live URL” to trigger a fresh crawl and see current status.
- Compare the crawled HTML with your actual page — any differences indicate JavaScript rendering issues.
For AI search debugging:
If your page isn’t being cited by AI engines, use URL Inspection to verify:
- The page is indexed (unindexed pages can’t be cited)
- The full content is visible in the rendered HTML (not hidden behind JavaScript)
- Structured data is properly detected
- No canonical or redirect issues divert to a different page
Requesting indexing:
After fixing issues, click “Request Indexing” in URL Inspection. This adds the page to Google’s priority crawl queue. Limits: you can request indexing for a limited number of URLs per day (the exact limit varies but is approximately 10-12 per day per property).
What Can You Learn from Core Web Vitals Reports?
Search Console’s Core Web Vitals report shows your site-wide performance based on real user data from the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX).
Report structure:
The report groups URLs by similar CWV performance. You’ll see three categories:
- Good — All three metrics pass thresholds
- Needs improvement — At least one metric is in the yellow zone
- Poor — At least one metric is in the red zone
Each category shows which metric is the issue and which URL group is affected. URL groups are pages that share the same template/code, so fixing one typically fixes the whole group.
Using the report effectively:
- Start with the “Poor” URLs — these have the highest impact opportunity
- Click into a URL group to see representative URLs
- Run those URLs through PageSpeed Insights for specific fix recommendations
- Prioritize fixes by the number of URLs in each group (fixing a template used by 10,000 pages has more impact than one used by 10)
Mobile vs. Desktop:
The report separates mobile and desktop data. Focus on mobile first — Google uses mobile-first indexing, and most CWV issues are worse on mobile due to slower processors and connections.
Timeline:
CWV data uses a 28-day rolling window. After deploying fixes, you won’t see the report update for up to 28 days. Use PageSpeed Insights for immediate lab data validation, then wait for the field data to catch up in Search Console.
How Do You Use Search Console for International SEO?
If your site serves multiple countries or languages, Search Console has specific tools for international targeting.
International targeting settings:
In Settings → International Targeting, you can set a target country for URL-prefix properties. This tells Google which country your content primarily serves. Domain properties don’t have this option (use hreflang instead).
Hreflang monitoring:
Search Console reports hreflang errors in the Pages report. Common hreflang issues:
- Missing return links (page A references page B, but B doesn’t reference A)
- Invalid language codes
- Hreflang pointing to non-existent or non-indexable pages
- Missing x-default tag
Search performance by country:
Filter the Performance report by country to see how your site performs in each market:
- Which countries drive the most impressions and clicks?
- How do rankings differ by country?
- Which pages perform well in unexpected markets?
This data helps prioritize international content and identify markets where you’re underserving demand.
What Advanced Search Console Techniques Should You Know?
Regex filtering:
The Performance report supports regex in query and page filters. This is powerful for analyzing specific content types or keyword patterns:
^how to.*seo— Queries starting with “how to” containing “seo”.*vs.*— All comparison queries/blog/.*geo.*— All blog pages with “geo” in the URL
API access:
The Search Console API provides programmatic access to performance and indexing data. Use it to: For more on this, see our guide to GEO vs SEO: What’s the Difference and Do You Need Both?.
- Build custom dashboards with more than 16 months of data (the UI limit)
- Automate weekly reporting
- Cross-reference GSC data with analytics and rank tracking data
- Pull data for more than 1,000 queries per page (the UI export limit)
Python example using the official client library:
from google.oauth2 import service_account
from googleapiclient.discovery import build
credentials = service_account.Credentials.from_service_account_file(
'service-account.json',
scopes=['https://www.googleapis.com/auth/webmasters.readonly']
)
service = build('searchconsole', 'v1', credentials=credentials)
request = {
'startDate': '2026-01-01',
'endDate': '2026-01-31',
'dimensions': ['query', 'page'],
'rowLimit': 25000
}
response = service.searchanalytics().query(
siteUrl='https://yourdomain.com',
body=request
).execute()Search Console Insights:
Search Console Insights (accessible from the overview page) combines GSC and Analytics data to show your content performance in a more visual format. It highlights trending content, top-performing pages, and how users discover your content.
Bulk data export:
For large sites, enable Search Console Bulk Data Export to BigQuery. This removes the 1,000-row limit and provides complete data for advanced analysis. Particularly useful for enterprise sites with thousands of ranking keywords.
Links report:
The Links report shows:
- External links — Which sites link to you, top linked pages, and anchor text
- Internal links — How your internal linking distributes across pages
Use this to identify:
- Pages with strong external authority that should link to important internal pages
- Pages with very few internal links (orphan pages at risk of deindexing)
- Unexpected referring domains (potential spam or negative SEO)
How Should You Use Search Console Data for GEO Strategy?
Search Console data isn’t just for traditional SEO. It contains signals that directly inform your GEO strategy.
Identifying AI-vulnerable queries:
Pull queries with high impressions but declining CTR over the past 12 months. Cross-reference with queries that AI engines commonly answer (informational, definitional, comparison, how-to). These are the queries where AI search is eating your clicks — and where GEO optimization matters most.
Content gap analysis for AI:
Look at queries where you get impressions but rank in positions 6-20. These are topics Google considers you relevant for, but your content isn’t strong enough to rank well. AI engines may not cite you for these topics either. Strengthen this content, and you improve both traditional rankings and AI citation potential.
Monitoring AI search impact:
Watch for these patterns in your GSC data:
- Impression increases with click decreases = AI answering your queries
- New queries appearing that you’ve never targeted = AI driving discovery
- Position stability with CTR decline = AI features above your organic result
Track these trends monthly. They tell you where your industry’s AI search landscape is shifting and where to focus your GEO efforts. Our robots.txt for AI Crawlers — Complete Setup Guide guide covers this in detail.
Using GSC data to optimize for citations:
Pages that rank in positions 1-3 for informational queries are most likely to be cited by AI engines. Focus your GEO optimization on pages that are already ranking well — add structured data, improve content clarity, and include quotable statements that AI engines can extract as citations.
Search Console won’t show you AI citation data directly (yet), but it gives you the foundational data to build a GEO strategy on top of your existing search performance.