How to Use Google Search Console: A Beginner’s Guide

Google Search Console is a free tool that shows you how Google sees your website — which of your pages are indexed, which keywords you rank for, which pages have errors, and how your site performs on speed metrics. It is the most authoritative source of SEO data available because it comes directly from Google.

Many business owners have Search Console connected but rarely look at it. This guide covers the reports that matter most and what to do when you find something worth acting on.

The Performance report: your most useful starting point

The Performance report (under the Search Results section) shows how your site performs in Google search — total clicks, impressions, average click-through rate, and average position. Filter by Pages to see which pages receive the most clicks, and by Queries to see which keywords people use to find you.

Look for queries where you have a high number of impressions but a low click-through rate — these are searches where you appear in results but people are not clicking. This often indicates a meta title or description that is not compelling enough, or a position far enough down the page that users rarely reach it. Either optimise the content to improve rankings or rewrite the meta description to be more enticing.

Coverage: finding and fixing indexing problems

The Coverage report (under Index) shows which pages are indexed, which are excluded and why. Common exclusion reasons include: "Submitted URL not found (404)" — the page no longer exists; "Noindex tag" — you have explicitly told Google not to index the page; "Discovered, currently not indexed" — Google has found the page but not yet crawled and indexed it.

Review the Errors section regularly. A page returning a 404 that should exist has either been accidentally deleted or had its URL changed without a redirect. A page marked noindex that should be indexed has a technical error in the page template. Both warrant immediate fixing.

Core Web Vitals and the URL Inspection Tool

The Core Web Vitals report shows how your pages perform on Google's page experience metrics — Largest Contentful Paint (how quickly the main content loads), Interaction to Next Paint (how quickly the page responds to clicks), and Cumulative Layout Shift (whether content jumps around as it loads). Pages with poor scores across these metrics may be disadvantaged in rankings compared to faster competitors.

The URL Inspection Tool lets you check the status of any specific URL on your site — whether it is indexed, when it was last crawled, whether there are any canonical or redirect issues, and what the crawled version of the page looks like. Use it to investigate specific pages rather than scrolling through full reports, and use the Request Indexing button to expedite indexing for newly published or updated pages.