Search and measurement
Search Console in your first month
A new site shows little in Search Console for a while, and that is expected. This note says what to set up, what to look at each week, and which numbers to leave alone.
Google Search Console is free, and it is the closest thing you have to a direct line from Google about your site. It is also easy to misread, especially in the first weeks, when there is little to see. This is what to do and what to expect.
Day one: prove the site is yours
Search Console needs you to verify ownership. For a domain property Google uses a DNS record only. For a URL-prefix property, which covers one exact web address, you can use an HTML file, an HTML tag in the home page, a Google Analytics or Tag Manager link, or DNS. If your site sits on an address supplied by a hosting company and you do not control its DNS, a URL-prefix property is the practical choice. Leave the verification in place once it has worked.
Submit the sitemap
A sitemap is a file listing the pages you want found. In the Sitemaps report, enter its address and submit it. Google’s help page recommends first testing the sitemap address with the URL Inspection tool. The status should read Success. Submitting only tells Google where the pages are: the help page states there is no guarantee that a listed page will be crawled or indexed.
Week by week
Week one: look, do not poke. Open the Pages report (page indexing). It shows which of your addresses Google has indexed and gives reasons for the ones it has not. Do not read every “not indexed” line as an error: on a new site many pages are simply waiting. The help page says plainly that indexing is never instant and that Google does not promise to index every page.
Use URL Inspection for one important page. It shows when Google last visited and whether the page can be indexed. You may request indexing for a page once the problem that blocked it is fixed. Asking again and again does not speed anything up.
Weeks two to four: watch the trend. Check the Pages report once a week for new problems. If a report lists an issue affecting many addresses, fix the cause and use the Validate fix button on that issue; Google says validation can take about two weeks or longer.
Reading the Performance report
The Performance report for search results shows four numbers.
- Impressions: how often a page of yours appeared in a result.
- Clicks: how often someone clicked through.
- Click-through rate: clicks divided by impressions.
- Average position: where your topmost result appeared on average.
You can group by query, page, country or device. The default range is the last three months. Early on, the numbers are small, and a few impressions are a start, not a failure. Two cautions from Google’s own help: the newest data can be preliminary and change over the next few hours, and results differ by searcher, place and device, so searching for your own business is not a reliable check.
A useful first view for an Indian business
Once a few weeks of data exist, set up one view and look at it the same way each time:
- Add a filter for Country and choose India. Compare with all countries to see how much of your search visibility is domestic.
- Add a filter on Query that excludes your business name and your own name. Brand searches show people who already know you; the remaining queries show whether strangers find you for what you sell.
- Look at Pages next. Which page gets the impressions for each kind of query? A page that appears for a query it was not written for may need a clearer section, or a new page if the question is a real one.
- Add Devices. Expect most of the impressions to be on mobile and check that those pages are quick on a phone.
- Save the numbers in a table with the date. Compare the same number of weeks, not neighbouring days.
Do not read average position as the rank for one search: it is an average over many searches, places and devices.
The Core Web Vitals report
This report shows real-visitor measures of loading, responsiveness and visual stability, but only once enough people have visited. A new site may show nothing there yet, which does not mean a problem. Lab tools such as PageSpeed Insights can test a page before real data exists, and they are labelled as lab results.
What to ignore early
- A “not indexed” count that moves around in week one.
- Average position for single, rare queries.
- Comparing yourself with a site that has existed for years.
What to do if you suspect a real problem
If the Sitemaps report says “Couldn’t fetch”, check the sitemap address and that your robots file is not blocking it. If an important page is excluded and the reason is something you did, such as a leftover instruction not to index it, fix it, then inspect the page again. If nothing you did explains it, wait and keep publishing useful pages.
Measuring enquiries with GA4 and Search Console explains how to combine this view with what visitors do once they arrive.