Microsoft Advertising: The Paid Channel You Forgot

Almost every Search Console account handed to me sits in one of two states. Nobody has opened it since the day it was set up, or the owner has it bookmarked and reads the average position column like a league table, twice a day, worrying about a number that moves for reasons they cannot influence.

Both are easy to understand. It is free, it is the only place Google reports its own data about your site, and it becomes genuinely useful once you know which four or five screens matter and what the numbers cannot tell you.

After 13 years of working with it, my view has settled. Google Search Console is a diagnostic instrument, not a scoreboard, and most of it can be ignored most weeks. What follows is what to set up, what to read, what to leave alone, and a monthly routine that takes about twenty minutes.

What Search Console Is, and Who It Is For

What it reports on, and what it cannot see

Google describes the service in one line: "Search Console provides information on how Google crawls, indexes, and serves websites." That framing tells you which questions the tool can answer. Whether a page is indexed. Whether Google hit an error fetching it. Which queries returned your pages in results. Whether any manual action or security problem exists.

What it cannot see is everything that happens after the click. No revenue, no form submissions, no behaviour on the page, no attribution. Those are analytics questions, and expecting search reports to answer them is the root of most disappointment with the tool.

Why it is not Google Analytics

The two get confused at least once in every project. Search Console reports on Google's side of the transaction: what it crawled, what it kept, and what it served for which query. Analytics reports on your side: what happened after someone arrived. One tells you whether you were shown, the other tells you what the visit was worth.

Setting It Up Properly on a WordPress Site

Domain property versus URL prefix

A domain property covers every version of your site: secure and unsecured, www and non www, and every subdomain. A URL prefix property covers one address pattern only. Choose the domain property. Otherwise half your reporting lives somewhere else and you spend a month wondering why part of the site is missing from the numbers.

Verifying ownership and adding users

Verification through a DNS record or an uploaded file both work, and the choice matters less than who holds access afterwards. Ask for your own user with full permission. If a developer or agency holds the only verified property and you have no login, fixing that is the first task, ahead of any reporting question.

The Five Reports Worth Your Attention

Performance: queries, pages and countries

The Performance report shows what your pages were served for, and Google describes the default window plainly: "The default view of the report shows click and impression data for your site in Google Search results for the past three months." Read it by query first, then by page, then narrow the date range when you want to investigate something specific.

Page Indexing: what the states really mean

The Page Indexing report groups addresses by state: indexed, crawled but not indexed, discovered but not indexed, alternate page with a proper canonical, and several more. Read the states as a queue of decisions running from discovery down to confirmation. A page sitting in discovered but not indexed has a different problem from one sitting in crawled but not indexed, and the fixes are not interchangeable.

Sitemaps, Core Web Vitals and Links

The remaining reports are useful on the days you need them and quiet the rest of the time. Sitemaps tells you whether the file was read and how many addresses were accepted. Core Web Vitals groups page experience problems. Links shows what Google sees pointing at your site, internal and external, which is occasionally revealing when an internal link you expected is not being counted.

Reading the Performance Report Without Panicking

Clicks, impressions, CTR and average position

Four numbers and one habit. Clicks are visits from search. Impressions are how often you appeared. The ratio between them is your click through rate. Average position is the mean rank of your topmost result across every query and location where you appeared, which is why it can look worse in a month when traffic actually grew.

Why your rank tracking tool disagrees with Google

Because they measure different things. Google explains one reason clearly: "Even if a query appears in your list, you might not see your site in results if you run the same query in Google Search. This is because Search results are specific to the time, place, device, and recent history of the person searching." A rank tracker checks one query, from one location, on a schedule. Treat the two as instruments rather than verdicts. The full detail sits on the Performance report help page.

Diagnosing a Page That Will Not Index

URL Inspection and the live test

URL Inspection is the workhorse. Google describes it as the tool that "provides information about Google's indexed version of a specific page, and also allows you to test whether a URL might be indexable." Use the live test after a fix, so you are comparing against what exists now rather than what Google last saw.

Requesting indexing the right way

One request after a real change, then patience. Google also names the limit of the tool: "The URL Inspection tool doesn't take into account all requirements for appearing on Google." A page can be perfectly indexable and still never appear for the query you care about, because indexability and relevance are separate tests. Both are covered on the URL Inspection help page.

Alerts, Manual Actions and Security Issues

Check these three on your first visit and monthly afterwards. Manual actions are rare and always explicit, naming the reason and the affected section. Security issues flag hacked content, malicious redirects and unwanted software, and they are worth acting on the day they appear. Beyond the reports, Search Console sends email when it finds something, and those messages are one of the few notifications from Google worth keeping switched on.

Both reports are the definitive answer to the question owners ask most often after a bad month. If a penalty exists, it appears here with a description. If nothing appears here, the cause is elsewhere.

A Monthly 20 Minute Routine

The three questions to answer each month

Did more of the right people find us, judged by clicks and impressions on the queries that matter commercially. Did anything break, judged by the Page Indexing report and the error counts. And what changed, judged by comparing this month with the same month last year rather than with last month. Those three questions take less time than scrolling the interface randomly, and they produce a decision rather than a feeling.

What to export and keep

Export the Performance report by query and by page, and note the indexed and excluded address counts. The interface keeps a limited window, so two or three quarters of exported history is the only dependable way to tell whether a change helped. Once you have that export habit, the next step is usually joining it to the behaviour data, which is when you need the analytics layer as well.

Mistakes That Make Search Console Useless

Four mistakes do most of the damage. Checking daily and reacting to incomplete data. Reading average position as a score rather than an average. Comparing a thirty day period with a ninety day period and drawing a conclusion. And treating the tool as a submission queue rather than a report.

Google's own advice on frequency is the plainest sentence in the documentation: "There is no need to sign in to the tool every day." Its guidance adds that a monthly check, or a check after site changes, is enough. One more fact catches people out. The removals tool is temporary rather than permanent, because "a successful request lasts only about six months, to allow time for you to find a solution to either allow the content to be seen or to remove it permanently." If you need a page gone for good, the temporary request is not the mechanism. The whole picture is on Google's page about getting started with Search Console.

What to Do When the Numbers Fall

Work through a short order. Check Manual Actions and Security Issues first, because they are definitive. Then check the Page Indexing report for a fall in indexed addresses. Then check whether an address pattern changed, including a redirect that stopped resolving or a template edit that added a noindex instruction. Then look at the queries themselves, because a fall in brand queries and a fall in non brand queries mean different things. If the reports are clean and the queries moved, the cause is usually competitive or intent related rather than technical.

Two habits make all of this quicker. Keep the technical SEO checklist this feeds into beside the account, and read the reports with a consultant to read it with you at least once a quarter. If you are starting from scratch, the questions owners ask about Search Console cover the setup problems that come up most.

Search Console FAQ

Do I need Search Console if my developer already set it up?

Yes, and you should hold your own access. Google describes it as a free service that helps you monitor, maintain and troubleshoot your site's presence in search, and it is the only place that reports Google's own data about your property. If your developer or agency owns the only verified property, ask to be added before anything else happens.

How often should I check it?

Google's own guidance is that there is no need to sign in every day, and that a monthly check, or a check after site changes, is enough. Weekly is reasonable if you are publishing actively. Daily checking mostly produces worry, because the newest data is incomplete and average position moves for reasons outside your control.

Why does my position look worse in Search Console than in my rank tracker?

Because they measure different things. Average position in Search Console is the average position of your topmost result across many queries and many searchers, and Google notes that results are specific to the time, place, device and recent history of the person searching. A rank tracker checks one query from one location on a schedule. Treat them as two instruments, not two verdicts.

What does it mean when a page says it is discovered but not indexed?

It means Google knows the address exists and has chosen not to index it yet, or has not got to it. The usual causes are quality, duplication, thin content or a crawl decision rather than a technical block. Check for a self referencing canonical, confirm the page is linked internally, and improve the page rather than requesting indexing repeatedly.

Can Search Console tell me if I have been penalised?

For manual actions, yes. The Manual Actions report shows whether Google has applied one and where. It cannot show algorithmic ranking changes, which appear as gradual or abrupt declines with no notification. If traffic falls and the Manual Actions and Security Issues reports are clean, the cause is usually competitive or intent related.

What should I export and keep?

Keep a monthly export of the Performance report by query and by page, and a monthly count of indexed versus excluded addresses. Over two or three quarters that history is the only dependable way to tell whether a change helped, because the interface keeps only a limited window and comparisons get muddled by seasonality.