Google Search Console step by step: a small business guide

Google Search Console is the free tool that shows how Google sees your site: which searches bring you visits, which pages are indexed and which errors are holding it back. If you have a website and don't use it, you're driving blind. Here's how to use it, step by step.

Step 1: add your site (the "property")

Sign in to Search Console with your Google account and add a property. There are two types:

I recommend the Domain property: you see the whole site at once. The TXT record is added in the control panel of the company where you bought the domain.

Steps 2 and 3: sitemap and URL inspection

Submit the sitemap

The sitemap is the list of pages on your site. In the Sitemaps report, enter its address, for example https://www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml, and submit it. Google will tell you whether it could read it and how many pages it found.

Inspect a URL

Paste any address from your site into the bar at the top (URL inspection). You'll see whether the page is on Google, when the crawler last visited and whether there are any issues. Request indexing asks Google to visit a new or updated page soon. It's neither instant nor guaranteed, but it helps.

Step 4: the Performance report

This is the heart of Search Console. It shows:

• Queries: what people typed into Google before seeing your site.
• Pages: which pages appear and get clicks.
• Clicks and impressions (the times you appeared in the results).
• CTR: the percentage of impressions that turned into a click.
• Average position in the results.

You can filter by country (useful if you target a specific market) and by device. A simple idea to start with: look for queries with lots of impressions but a low CTR. Google already shows you, but people aren't clicking: improve that page's title and description so they match the search better.

Step 5: the Pages (indexing) report

Here you see which pages are indexed and why others aren't. The most common statuses:

A real case: on FindYourNeurotype, Search Console showed that last status. robots.txt stops Google from reading a page, but not from indexing it if it finds links pointing to it. The fix was to remove the robots.txt block and send an HTTP X-Robots-Tag: noindex header instead: Google can read the page, sees the instruction and keeps it out of the index.

Steps 6 and 7: Experience and Links

Under Experience, the Core Web Vitals report shows which URLs load slowly or shift around while loading, and the HTTPS report confirms your pages are served securely. Under Links you see which sites link to yours and your internal links: handy for spotting important pages that barely receive any links.

Bonus: changing domain, Bing and GA4

• Change of address: if you move to a new domain, first 301-redirect every page, then use this tool from the old property (both properties must be verified). Example: Parcelas Patagonia, which moved from .cl to .com with 301 redirects in September 2026.
• Bing Webmaster Tools: import your property from Search Console in two clicks. Bing also feeds AI assistants, as I explain in how to appear in ChatGPT and Perplexity.
• GA4: link Search Console to Google Analytics 4 to see searches alongside visitor behaviour. In this article I show how I analyse that data with AI.

Your 10-minute weekly routine

1. Performance: compare clicks over the last 7 days with the previous week.
2. Check queries with lots of impressions and a low CTR, and pick one page whose title to improve.
3. Pages: has the number of non-indexed pages gone up? Look at the reason.
4. If you published something new, inspect the URL and request indexing.
5. Read Search Console's messages and alerts.
6. Once a month: Core Web Vitals and Links.

If your business is local, complement this with your Google Business Profile (guide in Spanish). And if you'd rather we set it up together, it's part of my SEO service.