How to set up Google Search Console, without the jargon

There is a tool that shows you what your customers search for, how often your website appears and whether anyone clicks. It costs nothing, it belongs to Google, and it takes twenty minutes to set up. Roughly half of all small business websites still do not have it. If you take only one thing from these guides, take this one.

What Search Console is

Imagine somebody wrote down every question people ask Google where your website appeared somewhere in the results. How often it was shown. What position it held. Whether anyone clicked. That is Google Search Console.

It is not an SEO tool that gives you advice. It is a measuring instrument. And without one, everything you do afterwards is guesswork.

Set up in twenty minutes

You need a Google account and access to your domain or website settings. Nothing else.

Step 1: open the account

Go to search.google.com/search-console and sign in. Use a company account, not your personal one. If you ever hand over access, that decision saves you a lot of trouble.

Step 2: add the property

Google asks which type you want. Choose Domain, not URL prefix. The domain version covers your whole website whether it runs with or without www, on http or https. The other version covers exactly one spelling, and later you will be missing data without noticing.

Step 3: prove ownership

For the domain version this happens through a DNS record. Google shows you a string that you add as a TXT record at your domain provider, usually under DNS management in the control panel.

The step where most people give up

This is exactly where people stop. The DNS record sounds technical, and the control panel looks like somewhere you could break something.

You cannot. An extra TXT record changes nothing about your website, your email or anything else. It is a note that Google is allowed to read. Leave it in place after verification, otherwise you lose access at the next check.

If you are unsure, almost every host will add it for you in five minutes. One phone call and it is done. That is not embarrassing, that is efficient.

After verification nothing happens at first. Google needs one to three days before the first numbers appear. Set yourself a reminder for next week.

The four numbers that matter

The first time you open it you see a chart and a long list. Ignore everything except four values.

Set the range to the last three months and open the Queries tab. What you see there is the most honest market research you will ever get: the actual words people type before they land on your site.

What to actually do with it

The near misses

Filter to positions 8 to 20. These are searches where you almost reach page one. The leverage is greatest here, because moving from 12 to 7 beats any new page. More on the timeline in our guide on how long it takes.

The wasted impressions

Look for rows with many impressions and almost no clicks. You are being shown but nobody clicks. That is almost always the headline and the two lines underneath, not the page content.

The surprises

Almost every business finds searches here it never expected. A joiner suddenly sees "woodworm treatment", an accountant sees "cross-border tax at source". Those are ready-made topics, delivered by your own customers. How to turn that into a system is covered in this guide.

Three mistakes we see constantly

1. URL prefix chosen instead of domain. Then half your data is missing later and you wonder why the numbers look weak. Add a domain property alongside it.
2. Set up once and never opened again. The data is only worth something if somebody reads it. Twenty minutes once a month is plenty.
3. Bing forgotten. Bing has a smaller share but adds information you cannot get elsewhere, such as who links to you. Setup takes five minutes because Bing can import from Search Console.

Conclusion

Search Console is free, takes twenty minutes and is the only source that tells you what is actually happening. Everything you change without it is a guess.

And if you then discover you have the data but no time to turn it into pages every month, that is exactly where Tevorian comes in. We read the same numbers, every day, and turn them into finished guides on your website.