How to setup Google Search Console (Google Webmaster Tools)

Name: GSC Domain Verify
Uploaded: 2022-10-23
Duration: 20 s
Description: How to verify you own your Domain in Google Search Console

How to setup Google Search Console under 5 minutes

I have GSC open in 2 to 10 tabs at any given time. It’s helpful on a macro and micro level—both when I need to see how many impressions our website is gaining or figure out if my customers’ webpages are all indexed by Google and in good shape.

How many times do customers come to me and complain that they have no traffic, no visits at all? I ask them every time:

Did you check in the Google Search Console that your pages are being indexed by Google? Did you check Google Search Console Insights? And guess what, in 99 out of 100 cases, is the answer.

Many customers do not even know that this significant tool exists. So if you are asking yourself how to install Google Search Console (formerly known as Google Webmaster Tools) or how to setup Google Search Console on WordPress this is the right article for you. Follow this link to our blog post if you want instead know more about Google Search Console Insights.

According to Google, whether you’re a business owner, SEO specialist, marketer, site administrator, web developer, or app creator, Search Console will be helpful. I would even say that every website owner who takes his site somewhat seriously needs to know the basics of GSC.

I remember how overwhelming it was the first time I opened GSC a couple of years ago. There were plenty of labels I didn’t understand (index coverage?! ), filters I couldn’t find, and graphs that were hard to understand. Obviously, the more I used it, the easier it got.

But if you want to skip the learning curve, I’ll tell you everything about how to use Google Search Console like a pro.

This guide covers:

Adding your website to Google Search Console
Setting up owners, users, and permissions
Submitting a sitemap
Understanding dimensions and metrics

First things first: If you haven’t already signed up for GSC, it’s time to do so.

Google starts tracking data for your property as soon as you add it to GSC—even before it’s verified that you’re the site owner.

Verifying Your Site on GSC

Because GSC gives you access to private information about how a site or app is doing and lets you control how Google crawls that site or app, you have to prove you own it first.

Verification lets a certain user take control of a certain property. Each GSC property must have at least one verified owner. Adding a property does not affect your website on Google Search, it only enables you to track your site’s performance on Google.

Keep in mind that verifying your property has no effect on its PageRank or how well it does in Google search. You can, of course, use GSC data to figure out how to rank higher, but adding your website to GSC won’t make your rankings go up by itself. Nevertheless, it makes, of course, sense to verify if the website itself has been indexed by Google-a website that has not been detected by Google cannot rank at all.

GSC VERIFICATION METHODS

Verification via Domain registrar / DNS Configuration

Sign into your domain registrar (like GoDaddy, Hostinger, Strato, IONOS or networksolutions.com), and verify your site directly from GSC. As an alternative, you can add a DNS TXT or CNAME record to the existing DNS configuration of your domain.

There is only one way to verify a domain-level property, and that’s through your DNS provider (or domain name system provider). Here’s the screen you’ll start with.

This will display detailed instructions specific to your provider. If you want to know how to implement Google Search Console for your digital marketing strategy, using this method, you might want to work with either your developer or DNS provider. If you don’t see your provider, you can leave it as “Any DNS service provider.”

Next, hit the “Copy” button to copy the TXT record provided to you by Google.

Once you’ve copied the TXT record, open your domain registrar’s site in a new tab (for example GoDaddy, BlueHost, Hostgator, DreamHost, Hostinger, Ionos, etc…) and log into your account with them.

Navigate to the list of domains you own and select the domain name you wish to configure. Find the option to manage your DNS records. This will be located in different places, depending on your provider’s site. Look for any mention of “DNS” or “DNS Configuration” and click it.

For example, on GoDaddy you would go to “My Account > My Products” and select “DNS” next to your domain.

You’ll then be brought to a Domain Management screen, where you’ll find a list of your DNS Records. Select “Add” to create a new one.

Select “Type” choose TXT. Under “Host” type in the @ symbol. Leave “TTL” at 1 hour. And, most importantly, paste the TXT record you got from Google into the field for “TXT Value.” Then hit “Save.”

This will add a new TXT record for Google Search Console. (In case you’re wondering, a TXT record is used to provide info about your domain to an outside source — e.g. show Google you own a domain.)

The process we just outlined above for GoDaddy is very similar for all domain providers. You can even use the same entries for “Type,” “Hostname,” and “TTL.” Some providers will ask for “TXT Record” instead of “TXT Value.”

With your TXT record added, return to the Google Search Console set up and select “Verify.”

If everything went according to plan, you should see a message like this and you finally took all necessary steps to how to setup Google Search Console :

Keep in mind, updating DNS records can take up to 72 hours. If your ownership isn’t verified immediately, come back in a few hours or the next day, and check again.

HTML FILE

Google recommends verifying via an HTML file. (But remember, this is just for URL-prefix properties. Ultimately, they recommend you create a Domain property, if possible.)

For this method, you need to upload an HTML file to the root folder of your website. It’s easy to do, but the downside is you will need to have access to your server, either via FTP or a cPanel File Manager. If you’re not familiar with either don’t attempt to verify via this method.

If you are comfortable working with your site’s server, here’s how you verify using an HTML file:

Download the file provided by Google. (By clicking the download box shown in the image above.)
Access the root directory (aka public_html) of your site.
Upload the file.
Return to Search Console, and select “Verify”

HTML TAG

Add a <meta> tag to the <HEAD> section of a specific page’s HTML code. If you are using WordPress, you can use special plugins which make it effortless to add this meta tag to the head section of your website.

Using WordPress, there are two ways you can do this:

Adding the meta tag directly to your header.php file
Using a plugin to add to the header

More than likely you’ll go with option two. Because if you’re comfortable working with the header.php, you’re better off verifying via HTML file.

Here are the steps to add the GSC HTML tag to WordPress using a plugin:

Copy the tag.
Log into your site’s WordPress admin in a new tab.
Install the Insert Headers and Footers plugin on your site.
Go to Settings>Insert Headers and Footers.
Past the Search Console meta tag in the “Scripts in Header” field.
Return to Search Console, and select “Verify”

GOOGLE ANALYTICS TRACKING CODE

Copy the GA tracking code that you use on your site. (You need “edit” permission in GA for this option.)

Important to remember:

You obviously need to have Google Analytics set up and authorised before you can use this method.
This needs to be using the global site tag (gtag.js) used by the lastest version of Google Analytics.
You must have the correct user privileges for the Analytics account on your Google profile. You must be able to edit the Analytics account; ‘view only’ access is not eligible to verify the Search Console profile.

If you are happy you meet the criteria, click the ‘verify’ button.

Common reasons for this not working:

Search Console and Google Analytics are on different Google account profiles. This is one of the reasons it’s a smart idea to set them both up using the same profile. You can’t use this method if you have different log in details for Google Analytics and Search Console.
A legacy tracking code. You can check this if the tracking code fires at the bottom of the page, not the top (google-analytics.com/ga.js).
You don’t have the right access permissions in Google Analytics (user view as opposed to editor access).
Your Google Analytics account doesn’t use the global site tag. There have been different versions of Google Anlaytics over the years, and most legacy versions should have automatically transferred to the newer Universal Analytics tracking script, which isn’t the same tag as the global site version.
The gtag.js is often used for sending data to Adwords, so if your site doesn’t have this feature activated, you may be using the Universal tag instead. Some businesses use Google Tag Manager to handle Google Display and Adwords data. If so, there’s a dedicated method for this (see below).

GOOGLE TAG MANAGER CONTAINER SNIPPET CODE

Copy the GTM container snippet code associated with your site. (You need View, Edit, and Manage container-level permissions in GTM for this option.)

Important to remember:

You need to have Google Tag Manager set up and authorised on the same Google profile. Like Analytics verification, this relies on you having the same profile for both products; it won’t work if you use different log in details for Tag Manager and Search Console.
If your site uses Tag Manager to handle data for search and display adverts (many do, as it offers a bit more flexibility than Global Site Tag tracking), this is probably the best option for you.
You need to be using the ‘container’ snippet.
You must have ‘manage’ user access for Tag Manager.If you’re happy that you meet the requirements, click ‘verify’. Google-hosted sites, including Blogger and Sites pages, are automatically verified.

GSC Users, Owners, and Permissions

There are two GSC role-types which you have to be aware of:

Owner
In GSC, the person who owns a property has full control over it. They can add and remove other users, change the settings, see all the data, and use every tool. A verified owner has gone through the process of checking the property, and a delegated owner has been added by a verified owner. (Owners with delegation can add other owners with delegation.)
User
A user can see all the information and do some things with it, but they can’t add new users. Full users can see most of the data and do some things with it, while limited users can only see most of the data.

Think carefully about which permissions should be given to which people. Giving everyone full control could be bad, because you don’t want someone to change an important setting accidentally. Try to give each member of your team just as much power as they really require and no more.

Here are detailed instructions on adding and removing owners and users in Search Console.

There’s a third role: associate. You can associate a Google Analytics property with a Search Console account—which will let you see GSC data in GA reports. GA reports are also available in two sections of the Search Console: links to your site and Site links.

A GA property can only be associated with one GSC site, and vice versa. If you’re an owner of the GA property, follow these instructions to associate it with the GSC site.

Do I Need a Sitemap? How do I submit a Sitemap?

Once you’ve set up your account and verified your website, you might be wondering: “how do I get my business listed in Google search results?”

Well this is straightforward: By submitting a sitemap to Google.

In theory, a sitemap isn’t necessary to show up in Google search results. As long as your site is organized correctly (meaning pages are logically linked to each other), Google says its web crawlers will normally find most of your pages. The experience of eight years running SEO campaigns and fixing customer SEO issues tells a different story—it is always better to submit a sitemap.

There are four situations where a sitemap will improve your site’s crawlability:

It’s huge. The more pages you have, the easier it is for Googlebot to miss any changes or additions.
It has lots of “isolated” pages. Any page that has few inbound links from other pages is harder for a web crawler to discover.
It’s new. Newer sites have fewer backlinks (links from other sites), making them less discoverable.
It uses rich media content and/or shows up in Google News. In these cases, your sitemap makes it easier for Google to format and display your site in search.

Once you’ve built your sitemap, or better said, a WordPress SEO plugin like RankMath or Yoast SEO did it for you, you can submit it using the GSC sitemaps tool.

Just click Sitemaps + “Add a new Sitemap” and enter the URL of the Sitemap XML File. Click Submit and voilà.

GSC Index / Sitemaps Report

After Google has processed and indexed your sitemap, it will appear in the Sitemaps report. You’ll be able to see when Google last read your sitemap and how many URLs have been indexed.

PAGES – Index Coverage Report

The index coverage report shows you the status of every page Google has tried to index on your site. Using this report, you can diagnose any indexing issues.

Each page is assigned one of four statuses:

Error: The page couldn’t be indexed.
Warning: The page is indexed but has a problem.
Excluded: The page is an alternate page with content duplicated from a canonical page. Because of this, it was left out on purpose while the canonical page was found and added to the index.
In the bottom Google Search Console informs you about the different reasons why a page might not have been indexed so far.

REMOVALS

If for any reason you need to get Webpages urgently temporarily removed from Google, this is your option. You can submit one URL alone or several ones with a Prefix. Those URLs will be blocked from being indexed for at least six months, so be careful.

How to use Google Search Console?

Learn how many total backlinks your site has

Click Links.
Open the Top linked pages report.
Look at the box labeled “Total external links.”
Click the downward arrow next to “Incoming links” to sort from highest to lowest backlinks.

Every backlink is a signal to Google that your content is trustworthy and useful. In general, the more backlinks the better!

But Backlink Quality is very important. One link from a high-authority site is worth much more than two links from low-authority sites. Just double-click the URL in the report to find out which sites link to that page. If you want to check the authority score of the particular URL, you can check it via Moz Link Explorer.

Identify which URLs have the most backlinks

Click Links.
Open the Top linked pages report.
Click the arrow to the right of “Incoming links” to sort the list from most to least backlinks.

Adding a link from a page with plenty of backlinks is a good way to help a page rank higher. These backlinks give that URL a lot of page authority, which it can then pass on to another page on your site by linking to it.

If you want to get more know-how why internal linking is so important for your website, we highly recommend our blog post “Why is internal linking important?“.

Identify which sites link to you the most

Click Links.
Scroll down to “Top linking sites” > “More.”

Learn how many total internal links your site has

Click Links.
Scroll down to “Top linked pages” > “More.”
Look at the box labeled “Total internal links.”

See how Google views a URL

Click the white magnifying glass at the top of the page
Enter the page URL. (Make sure it belongs to the property you’re currently viewing.)

Here’s how to figure out what the results mean: If the URL is on Google, it means that it has been indexed and can be found through a search.

That doesn’t mean it will show up, though. It won’t if it’s been marked as spam or if you’ve deleted or temporarily blocked the content. If people Google the URL and it comes up, they can find it.

Open the Index coverage card to learn more about the URL’s presence on Google: Which sitemaps point to it, which page led Googlebot to it, when it was last crawled, if you’ve given Googlebot permission to crawl it, if it could actually get it, if it doesn’t want to be indexed, the canonical URL you’ve set for it, and the canonical URL Google has chosen for it.

The Enhancements section gives you information on:

Mobile Usability Issues
HTTPS Status
The AMP version of this page, if it exists, and any AMP-specific issues
Status for job posting and/or recipe structured data

Learn how many of your pages have been indexed

Start at “Overview.”
Scroll down to the Index coverage summary.
Look at the “Valid pages” count.

Learn which pages haven’t been indexed and why

Go to Overview > Index coverage.
Scroll down to the Details box to learn which Errors are causing indexing issues and how frequent they are.
Double-click on any Error type to see the affected page URLs.

Check mobile usability issues

Click Mobile Usability.
Make sure “Error” is selected.
Scroll down to the Details box to learn which Errors are causing mobile usability issues and how frequent they are.
Double-click on any Error type to see the affected page URLs.

How to set up Google Search Console
Frequently Asked Quesitons

What’s CTR?

CTR, or click-through rate, is equal to clicks divided by impressions multiplied by 100. Our CTR would be 50% if our post showed up in 20 searches and generated 10 clicks.

What’s average position?

This is your average ranking for a query or queries. Suppose our blog post to SEO tools is ranking #2 for “SEO software” and #4 for “keyword tools.” The average position for this URL would be 3 (assuming we were ranking for literally nothing else).

What’s a click?

When the user selects a link that takes them outside of Google Search, that counts as one click. If the user clicks a link, hits the back button, then clicks the same link again — still one click. If then, they click a different link — that’s two clicks.

When a user clicks a link within Google Search that runs a new query, that’s not counted as a click. This doesn’t include paid Google results.

What’s an impression?

Each time a link URL appears in a search result, it generates an impression. The user doesn’t have to scroll down to see your search result for the impression to count.

What’s a Google Search Console query?

This is a search term that generated impressions of your site page on a Google SERP. You can only find query data in Search Console, not Google Analytics.

Do I need a Sitemap?

How to install Google Search Console on WordPress?

By installing and activating the Sitekit Plugin published by Google.

How to get Google Search Console?

You cannot get GSC, you can make use of it since it is a Website you can find at search.google.com.

Why Google Search Console is important?

Using GSC is important because you can especially see the status of your Website Pages in the Google Index Database and you can easily check on single URLs if there are any errors you need to fix.

Where is Google Search Console?

You find the GSC directly at its website link search.google.com.

What is a good average position in Google Search Console?

There is no definite answer to this question. If you want to know more about how the average position calculation works, have a look at this video on YouTube Average Position in Google Search Console #AskGooglebot.

How can I check if my Website is in Google?

You can check this via Google Search Console. Run the URL Inspection Feature and GSC will show the current status of your Website within the Google Index.

How do I submit a sitemap via Google Search Console?

Find your sitemap page on your live site. The sitemap is not always in the same place or with the same URL format. You may try searching Google for “site:example.com filetype:xml” or “site:example.com inurl:sitemap” or just going to www.example.com/sitemap.xml, which is the most typical destination.

You may also look in your robots.txt file to see whether the sitemap is referenced there.

Navigate to your Search Console account and find the right property. It’s critical to discover the property for the precise domain for which you want to submit a sitemap – the one that visitors can see.

On the left site navigation pane, navigate to “Sitemaps” under “Index.”

Remove any old, out-of-date sitemaps that have been provided. To access this option, click the three stacked dots in the top right corner.
You may enter your sitemap URL and submit it under “Add a new sitemap.”

NOTE: You just need to input the last part of the URL, not the domain. So long as the sitemap file is saved on the domain that corresponds to your Search Console attribute.

Google will check to see if the sitemap can be located and read. It might take some time for your sitemap to be crawled.

How do I add Google console to my website?

Open the property selector dropdown in any Search Console page, or click here. Select + Add property on the dropdown. With a URL-prefix property, you specify the start of a URL, and any URLs that begin with your prefix will be included in your property.

What is the first step you need to take when setting up Google Search Console?

The first step to get started with Google Search Console is to register with your Google account and add plus verify your website. This will give you access to all Google Search Console tools and reports.

Is Google Search Console free?

Yes, it is free of charge.

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How to setup Google Search Console