Google Search Console is a free tool from Google that helps you monitor, maintain, and optimize your site’s presence in Google Search results.
Search Console helps you understand how Google crawls, indexes, and serves your site, and what you can do to improve your appearance on Google Search to bring more relevant traffic to your website.
You do not need to sign in to Search Console every day; if Google finds new issues on your site, you receive an email alert from Search Console, but it is recommended to check your account around once a month or when you make content changes to ensure your data is stable.
Key goals and benefits
Search Console helps you measure your site’s search traffic and performance, fix technical issues, and make your site shine in Google Search results.
Search Console tools and reports help you see which pages and queries are driving impressions and clicks, understand indexing status, and diagnose crawling and serving problems.
The tool helps you submit sitemaps and individual URLs for crawling, review your index coverage, and confirm that Google has the freshest view of your site.
Ownership verification and basic setup
To get started, you must verify site ownership to gain access to all the information Search Console makes available.
Once verified, you can ensure Google can find and read your pages using the Index Coverage report, which shows which pages are indexed, errored, or excluded.
You can optionally submit a sitemap via Search Console to speed up discovery and monitor related data.
Search performance and analytics
The Search performance report shows how much traffic you are getting from Google Search, including breakdowns by queries, pages, and countries, with metrics such as impressions, clicks, click‑through rate, and position.
If your traffic is decreasing, you can use traffic‑drop debugging suggestions to help you prioritize which queries or pages to fix.
Search Console also helps you understand how your site appears in search, including which enhancement‑type features (such as AMP, rich results, and page experience) are enabled for your content.
Crawling, indexing, and page inspection
The Index Coverage report helps you see which pages are indexed, which have errors or warnings, and which are excluded from Google Search, so you can understand how issues might affect your organic traffic.
The URL Inspection tool shows the current index status of a page, lets you test a live URL, request Google to crawl it, and view detailed information about how Googlebot loaded and rendered the page.
Search Console lets you submit individual URLs for crawling when you publish new content or update existing pages.
Security, spam, and manual actions
The Security Issues report shows when Google finds that your site might be hacked or used in ways that could harm visitors or their devices, so you can take action to secure your site.
The Manual Actions report shows if Google has issued a manual action against your site, which can cause some or all of it to not appear in Google Search results, and explains where to learn more and how to fix the issue.
Removals and site‑migration tools
The Removals tool lets you temporarily hide pages from Google Search; a successful removal request lasts about six months, giving you time to permanently fix or remove the content.
The Change of Address tool helps you tell Google about a site migration from one domain or subdomain to another and helps migrate your Google Search results from the old site to the new one.
Structured data and rich results
The Rich result status reports show what structured data Google can or cannot read from your site, with detailed information on errors that prevent rich‑result display, warnings, and information about how to debug and fix them.
Search Console helps you monitor how your recipes, jobs, products, and other structured‑data‑backed content perform in rich results and refine your markup if needed.
Page experience and Core Web Vitals
The Core Web Vitals report shows how your pages perform in real‑world usage data, including loading, interactivity, and visual stability, helping you ensure your site delivers a good page experience on mobile and desktop.
Search Console helps you track whether your site is using HTTPS and other page‑experience‑related signals that matter to search ranking.
Alerts, email notifications, and issue management
Search Console sends email alerts when Google finds issues such as indexing, security, spam, or manual‑action problems on your site, along with the affected URLs.
You can tell Google when you have fixed an issue, and track the status of resolved items within the interface.
Search Console helps you monitor threats, confirm that your site is safe, and keep your visitors protected.
Guides and learning resources
Google Search Central provides documentation and guides on how to use Search Console, including an “Intro to Google Search Console” video and other training materials.
There are tailored guides for SEO specialists, digital marketers, and site administrators, as well as detailed reports and instructions for web developers responsible for technical health and crawlability.
Related tools and integrations
Search Console integrates with Google Analytics and other Google products, helping you correlate on‑site behavior with search performance.
It also connects with developer‑facing tools such as Google Search for Developers, Web Fundamentals, and App Indexing resources to help you build sites that are healthy, findable, and Search‑optimized.
