Google Search Console (GSC)

How do you set up the Google Search Console?

Setting up the Google Search Console is the first and most important step for your search engine optimisation

(SEO). With the following steps, you can link your website to the free Google tool in just a few minutes:

1. Choose property type

After signing in to the Search Console with your Google account, you add your website as a so-called “property”. You have two options here:

• Domain property (recommended): This option captures your entire website including all subdomains (like blog.yoursite.co.uk) and connection protocols (http and https).
• URL prefix property: This variant monitors only one exact URL address. It’s perfect if you don’t have access to your domain provider’s DNS settings.

2. Verify ownership

To ensure no one else can access your search data, you need to prove to Google that the website really belongs to you. The most common methods are:

• Via DNS record (mandatory for domain properties): You copy a Google-generated TXT record and add it to the DNS settings at your domain provider (e.g. Strato, IONOS or All-In-One).
• Via HTML tag (ideal for WordPress & Co.): You copy a short code snippet (meta tag) and insert it into the section of your website. With content management systems like WordPress, you can easily add this code in SEO plugins like Yoast SEO or Rank Math.
• Via Google Analytics / Tag Manager: If you already use these tools actively and are logged in with the same Google account, often a single click is enough for automatic verification.

3. Submit sitemap and collect data

Once your verification is successful, you should enter the link to your XML sitemap, e.g. yoursite.co.uk/sitemap.xml, in the SITEMAP menu item. This helps Google bots crawl and index your pages faster.

Quick tip: Be patient after setup. It usually takes between 24 and 48 hours for the first search terms and clicks to appear in your dashboard.

Understanding the dashboard: How to use filters in GSC

Once the first data flows into your Search Console, you’ll find under the menu item

Performance

the core of the tool. To help you keep track in the mountain of search data, Google offers powerful filter functions. Here’s how to use them properly:

• The date filter: By default, Google shows the last 3 months. You can adjust the period via the top filter or – extremely useful for measuring success – directly compare two periods (e.g. the last 28 days with the same period last year).
• Filter by search type: By default, you filter for classic Google web search. But you can also specifically analyse how often your content appears in Google Image Search, the Video tab, or Google News.
• Specific filters (New button): Use the plus sign to dig deeper: Query: Filter by specific keywords (e.g. to see which pages rank for your main topic) or exclude brand queries (your brand name) to measure purely organic traffic. Page: Analyse the performance of a specific URL. Country & device: Find out whether your visitors come more via smartphone or desktop and where they are from.

Error analysis: Identify and fix problems

The Search Console is your early warning system. If Google detects technical issues on your website, you’ll be notified in the

Indexing

section (formerly “Coverage”). Don’t panic when you see error messages – here’s how to interpret the most common warnings:

• Server errors (5xx): Google couldn’t access your website because your server was overloaded or temporarily offline. If this happens frequently, you should contact your hosting provider.
• Not found (404): This page no longer exists but is still linked by Google or another website. The solution: Set up a 301 redirect from the old URL to a new, relevant page.
• Crawled – currently not indexed: Google knows the page but has (yet) not included it in the search index. This often happens with very new pages or content Google doesn’t consider important enough. Check the text quality and internal linking again here.
• Blocked by robots.txt: You have intentionally (or unintentionally) forbidden Google from reading this page via your robots.txt file. Check whether this blocking is intended for this URL.
• Check website – is the page in the Google index? If a single page simply doesn’t appear in the search results, it’s useful to check whether the page is indexed at all. Enter the URL above and check the page. If it’s not in the index, you can request indexing directly.

Fixed the error? If you have repaired an issue on your website, click the “Start validation” button next to the respective error in Search Console. Google will then recheck the affected pages and remove the warning from your dashboard.

Interpreting search results correctly: The 4 core metrics

When you open the Performance report, you see four coloured boxes. These metrics form the foundation of your SEO analysis. To draw the right conclusions for your website, you need to understand how they interact:

• Clicks (blue): How often have users clicked on your website in the search results? This is your actual traffic coming via Google search.
• Impressions (purple): How often did your website appear in the search results when someone searched for a term? A high number of impressions with few clicks shows: The topic is highly sought after, but your page doesn’t yet attract users.
• Average CTR (green): The click-through rate tells you the percentage ratio of clicks to impressions.
• Your lever: If the CTR is low despite good rankings, you should optimise your meta title and meta description to increase click appeal.
• Average position (orange): Where does your website rank on average in the search results? A position of 1–10 means you rank on page 1 on average.

The golden rule when interpreting:

Focus on trends, not daily values. Are impressions rising but clicks stagnating? Then Google is starting to test your content for relevant search terms. Now is the perfect moment to expand and improve the quality of your content!

Data backup: Export reports as CSV

The Google Search Console web interface shows only a limited number of rows by default. If you want to analyse your keywords more deeply, work with Excel, or build your own dashboards, you should use the export function:

1. Set filters: First set the desired period and filters (e.g. by country or directory) in the performance overview.
2. Click export button: At the top right of the dashboard, you’ll find the “Export” button.
3. Choose format: Click on “Google Sheets”, “Download Excel” or directly on “Download CSV”.

What you get with the CSV export: Google packages the data in a ZIP file containing several CSV files. This way you get clean, separate tables for your search queries (keywords), your top pages, countries, devices, and search appearances.

The most important GSC reports

• Performance report — clicks, impressions, CTR, position per search query and URL. A goldmine for CTR optimisation and keyword discovery.
• Indexing report — which URLs are indexed, which are not, and why not (404, noindex, canonical etc.).
• Core Web Vitals — real user data from CrUX, grouped into Good/Needs Improvement/Poor.
• Sitemaps — status of submitted sitemaps and detected issues.
• URL inspection — live check of a single URL: index status, rendered version, last crawl.
• Security and manual actions — spam penalties or hacks become visible here.

GSC API for power users

The GSC API allows retrieving up to 16 months of daily performance data in batches of 25,000 rows. This enables building topic cluster analyses, branded vs non-branded splits, cross-GSC-property reports, and trend charts not accessible in the UI. Rankmio uses this API for keyword tracking, CTR gap analyses, and page performance trends.

GSC vs. Google Analytics

Both tools belong together but measure different things. GSC shows behaviour before the click (which search query leads to SERP visibility), Analytics shows behaviour after the click (what the user does on the site). Only the combination gives the full picture: GSC for discovery and visibility, Analytics for engagement and conversion.