Google Search Console: how to set it up on your website (2026)

What Search Console shows you

Google Search Console is Google’s free tool for site owners. Analytics tells you what visitors do once they arrive. Search Console tells you what happens before that: which searches showed your pages, how often people clicked and whether Google could index the page at all.

The main report is Performance. It shows four numbers for Google Search, per Google’s Search Console help:

• Clicks: how many times someone clicked through to your site.
• Impressions: how many times your site appeared in results.
• CTR: clickthrough rate, clicks divided by impressions.
• Average position: roughly where you showed up in the results.

The default view covers the past three months, and the newest data can be preliminary. Search Console keeps performance data for the last 16 months, according to Google’s Analytics Help page on the Search Console Queries report. That is why it pays to set it up early: you can’t go back and collect history you never had.

What it won’t do is rank your site for you. Search Console is a dashboard, not a switch. It shows you where Google sees problems and which searches you already appear for, so you know which pages to improve first. The work of writing better pages, titles and descriptions still happens in your website builder.

It also only covers Google. Bing has its own dashboard, Bing Webmaster Tools, covered further down, and you can import your site into it once Search Console is running.

What it costs over 3 years

Search Console itself is $0. What you pay for is a website that lets you verify it. On Wix, connecting through the SEO Setup Checklist needs a Premium plan and a connected domain, per Wix’s help center. Wix Light, the cheapest Premium plan, is $17 a month billed yearly.

The domain line is $36.96 when the plan includes year one free, and $48.24 when it doesn’t. The $252 is one Google Workspace inbox for 3 years, the same baseline we use across the site.

Domain property or URL-prefix property

The first choice Search Console asks you to make is the property type. It matters more than it looks.

A Domain property can only be verified with a DNS record at your domain name provider, according to Google’s verification help page. DNS is the address book that points your domain to your website and email. You add the TXT record in the DNS settings at your domain registrar or DNS host.

How to verify: the official methods

Google lists these verification methods:

• An HTML file uploaded to your site.
• An HTML meta tag on your home page.
• Your Google Analytics tracking code.
• Your Google Tag Manager container snippet.
• Automatic verification for eligible Google Sites and Blogger sites.
• A DNS TXT or CNAME record at your domain name provider.

Setup steps by builder

Any site, using DNS

1. In Search Console, add a Domain property and enter your domain name.
2. Copy the TXT record Google shows you.
3. Add it as a TXT record in the DNS settings wherever your domain is managed.
4. Go back to Search Console and click Verify. If it fails, wait a while for DNS to update and try again.

WordPress (self-hosted)

Site Kit by Google, Google’s free official plugin, connects Search Console along with Analytics and PageSpeed Insights. Install it from Plugins, then Add New, activate it and sign in with your Google account. We build on WordPress every week, and on our own sites we also add a DNS-verified Domain property so the data survives any change of hosting.

Wix

Open the SEO Setup Checklist and use Connect to Google. Wix says this verifies the site in Search Console, but it needs a Premium plan and a connected domain, and checklist verification can only be done once. After that you verify by hand, for example with DNS. Details are on Wix’s help page.

Shopify

1. Add a URL-prefix property for your store’s address.
2. Choose the HTML tag method and copy the meta tag.
3. In your theme code, paste it into theme.liquid right below the opening head tag. A TXT record is the alternative.
4. If your store is password protected, turn off private mode first, or verification fails.

Shopify makes your sitemap for you at /sitemap.xml, per Shopify’s help center.

Webflow

1. Add a URL-prefix property and choose the HTML tag method.
2. Copy only the verification ID from the tag.
3. Paste it in Site settings, then SEO, then Google site verification.
4. Publish the site, then click Verify in Search Console.

Steps are on Webflow’s help center.

Squarespace

Squarespace said in 2018 that verifying with Google Search Console takes one click inside Squarespace. We could not confirm the current menu steps from Squarespace’s help center, so check it for the latest path, or use the DNS method above, which works on any site.

Submit your sitemap

A sitemap is a file that lists the pages you want Google to find. Most builders create one automatically. To submit it, open the Sitemaps report, paste the sitemap address into Add a new sitemap and click Submit. You can also list it in your robots.txt file.

Google accepts XML or text sitemaps, sitemap index files, and RSS or Atom feeds. Each sitemap can hold up to 50,000 URLs and 50 MB uncompressed, per Google’s Sitemaps report help. A small business site will never come close.

Check one page with URL Inspection

The URL Inspection tool shows the version of a page Google has indexed, runs a live test of the page as it is now, and lets you ask Google to index it. Use it after you publish an important new page or fix a broken one.

There are limits. Google says requests are subject to a daily limit it doesn’t publish, and a request doesn’t guarantee indexing. For many pages at once, Google suggests a sitemap instead.

A monthly routine that takes 10 minutes

1. Open Performance and compare the last 28 days with the period before.
2. Sort queries by impressions. Searches with many impressions but few clicks often need a clearer page title.
3. Check the Core Web Vitals report for pages rated poor. Our PageSpeed Insights guide explains the fixes.
4. Read any messages from Google about problems it found.

For more on titles, descriptions and what each builder lets you edit, see websites and SEO. New to the term SEO? Start there.

Add Bing Webmaster Tools

Bing Webmaster Tools can import sites straight from Google Search Console, up to 100 at once and 1,000 sites per account, according to Bing’s webmaster blog. Other ways to verify are Domain Connect, an XML file, a meta tag or a DNS record.

Search Console and your Business Profile

If you have a Google Business Profile, Search Console can help there too. Google says Business Profile verification can be instant through Search Console for some businesses. See our Google Business Profile guide for the rest of the process.

What you keep if you change builders

Your Search Console data belongs to your Google account. If you move your site, a Domain property verified by DNS keeps working as long as the domain stays the same and you leave the TXT record in place. A URL-prefix property verified by a tag in your old builder loses verification when the old site goes away, so verify the new site before you switch.

During a move, submit the new sitemap and watch the Performance report for drops. Our website migration guide covers redirects. Before you choose a builder, compare exit scores: self-hosted WordPress 10/10, Squarespace and Shopify 5/10, Wix 3/10. Read leaving your website builder for the full picture.

What to do next

• Add Google Analytics to see what visitors do after the click.
• Go back to the full list of free website tools.