Using Google Search Console with your website

Google search console provides actionable reports, tools, and learning resources designed to get your content on Google Search. You can use Google Search Console both for websites and for mobile applications; if you have a mobile application, read this page instead.

Sign up for Search Console if you haven’t already: it’s easy and it’s free.

Managing your website with Google Search Console Day to dayRelax — Search Console will email you if any unusual events occur with your properties. Unusual events include indications that your website has been hacked or problems that Google had when crawling or indexing your site. We will also email you if we detect that your site violates any of Google’s search quality guidelines.

Note: It can take some time after verifying your site to start seeing data in Search Console reports, so add your site and verify it soon. We’ll let you know when your data becomes available.

Monthly

Every month or so, take a look at your Search Console dashboard; the dashboard is the simplest way to get a quick health check on your site:

• Make sure that you aren’t experiencing an increase in errors for your site.
• Check that you don’t have any unusual dips in your click counts. Note that a weekly rhythm of weekend dips, or dips or spikes over holidays, is normal.

When your content changes

Check Search Console whenever you make important site changes to monitor your site’s behavior in Google Search.

Adding new content to your site:

• Test that Google can access your pages using the Fetch as Google tool.
• Tell Google which pages to crawl by updating your sitemap.
• Tell Google which pages not to crawl using robots.txt or noindex tags.
• A few weeks after you post content, confirm that the number of indexed pages in your site is rising and that you don’t have any blocked resources that might impair Google’s crawling of your pages.

Adding new properties:

• A new mobile site: We recommend using a single site that adapts to users on any device, but if you decide to have a separate site for mobile users, be sure to add it to Search Console, and add <link rel=”alternate”> tags to connect it to your existing site.
• A new app: Get your app on search.
• New international content: Be sure to target the correct country with your site and add hreflang link tags to your pages.

If you change your site’s domain name:

• Use the change of address tool to point Google search to your new location.

Removing a page from search results:

• Use the URL removal tool and take other appropriate steps to block crawling and/or indexing.