Google Search Console
A free tool from Google that shows how a website performs in search: which queries lead to clicks, which pages are indexed and where technical errors are holding rankings back.
Google Search Console, GSC for short, is Google's official free tool for website owners. It shows data nobody else provides: which queries a page actually appears for, how often it is clicked and whether Google even knows about all your pages.
What Search Console shows
The Performance report lists queries, clicks, impressions and the average position in Google Search, broken down by page and query. For example, you might see that your homepage appears in position 4 for "Handwerker Fürstenfeldbruck" (tradesperson Fürstenfeldbruck) but is rarely clicked, a sign that the title tag could be improved.
The Indexing report shows which pages Google has actually added to its search index and why others are missing, for instance because of a noindex tag, a crawl error or a broken redirect. In addition, the Core Web Vitals report checks whether the page's loading time and stability meet Google's thresholds.
Setup: domain or URL prefix
During setup you choose between two property types. The domain property, verified via a DNS record, combines all subdomains and protocols of a domain in one report. The URL prefix property covers exactly one address, such as https://www.example.com, and can be verified via an HTML file, a meta tag or a Google Analytics link. For most businesses, the domain property is the more practical choice.
Right after setup, it pays to submit your sitemap under Indexing → Sitemaps. This speeds up how quickly Google finds new or changed pages, but it does not replace the actual crawling.
What is worth checking regularly
A monthly look is enough for most businesses: new errors in the Indexing report, unusual drops in the Performance report and the manual actions under Security & Manual Actions, where Google reports violations that can remove a site from search entirely. If you relaunch a website or change URLs, check Search Console more closely in the first few weeks afterwards to spot 404 errors and lost rankings early.
Related terms
Submitting a sitemap is usually the first step in Search Console. If you want to control what Google is allowed to crawl in the first place, you will find the basics under robots.txt. For lab measurements of loading time and stability, Lighthouse complements the field data from Search Console.
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