Google Search Console
By Google
Google Search Console is a free tool from Google that lets website owners monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot how their site appears and performs in Google Search results.
Definition
Google Search Console is a free tool from Google that lets website owners monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot how their site appears and performs in Google Search results.
Overview
Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools) gives site owners visibility into how Google's crawler sees and indexes their pages — something that isn't captured by on-site web analytics tools, which only measure activity after a visitor arrives. Once a site is verified as owned (via DNS record, HTML file, or tag), Search Console reports on which pages are indexed, which search queries surface the site, click-through rates, and average ranking position for those queries. Beyond performance reporting, Search Console surfaces technical issues that hurt SEO: crawl errors, mobile usability problems, structured data (schema markup) issues, Core Web Vitals performance signals, and manual actions or security issues Google has flagged, such as malware or spam penalties. Site owners can also submit XML sitemaps to help Google discover new or updated pages faster, and request indexing for specific URLs. Because it reflects Google's own view of a site rather than third-party estimates, Search Console is considered essential alongside Google Analytics for anyone managing organic search performance — Analytics shows what happens after a click, while Search Console shows what happens before and during the click from the search results page itself.
Key Features
- Reports which pages Google has indexed and flags indexing issues
- Shows search queries, impressions, clicks, and average position for the site
- Surfaces crawl errors, mobile usability, and structured data problems
- Reports Core Web Vitals and other page-experience performance signals
- Supports XML sitemap submission and manual URL indexing requests
- Flags manual actions, security issues, and malware detected by Google
- Free to use for verified site owners
Use Cases
Frequently Asked Questions
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