Google Search Console is the only place you can see the searches that led people to your site. Analytics tells you what visitors did once they arrived; Search Console tells you how they found you, and what Google thinks of your pages.
It is free, takes under an hour to set up, and most small businesses either do not have it or have never opened it.
- 1
Add and verify the property
Go to search.google.com/search-console and add a Domain property rather than a URL prefix — it covers every subdomain and both http and https in one. Verification is a DNS record added at your domain registrar. If your site is on Vercel, Cloudflare or similar, this is a two-minute job in the dashboard.
- 2
Submit your sitemap
Under Indexing, then Sitemaps, submit yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml. Most modern sites generate one automatically. This is not strictly required for Google to find your pages, but it removes any ambiguity about which pages you consider important and speeds up discovery of new ones.
- 3
Check what is actually indexed
The Pages report shows what Google has indexed and, more usefully, what it has not and why. "Discovered – currently not indexed" usually means Google looked and did not think the page was worth storing. "Crawled – currently not indexed" is a stronger signal that the page is thin or duplicated.
- 4
Read the Performance report properly
Set the date range to the last three months and switch on all four metrics. Clicks and impressions are obvious; position and click-through rate are where the insight is. A page ranking eighth with a high click-through rate is worth pushing. A page ranking third with a poor one has a title and description problem, not a ranking problem.
- 5
Find the queries you did not know about
Sort queries by impressions and look for ones you never targeted. These are questions people are asking that your site is nearly answering. They are the cheapest content opportunities you will ever find, because Google has already decided you are relevant — you just have not written the page yet.
- 6
Check Core Web Vitals and mobile usability
Under Experience, review Core Web Vitals. These are measured on real visits rather than a lab test, so they reflect what your actual visitors experience on their actual devices. Anything marked poor on mobile is worth acting on; the desktop figures matter far less for most businesses.
- 7
Set a monthly habit
Fifteen minutes a month is enough. Check for new indexing errors, look at which queries have moved, and note any page that has dropped sharply. Search Console keeps sixteen months of data, so the trend is more informative than any single reading.
Two things people misread
Average position is an average across every impression, so a page ranking first for a rare search and fortieth for a common one shows a misleading middle figure. Always look at position per query, not sitewide.
Impressions are not visitors. An impression means your page appeared somewhere in the results, including at the bottom of page four where nobody scrolls. Rising impressions with flat clicks usually means you are becoming visible for terms that are not quite right.
Frequently asked questions
Yes, and you want both. Search Console covers what happens in the search results before someone clicks. Analytics covers what happens on your site after. Neither tells you the other half.
Would rather we did it?
These guides are here so you can do it yourself. If you would rather hand it over, that is what we do.
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