Search Console

What Google built it for

Google describes Search Console as a free service for monitoring, maintaining and troubleshooting your site's presence in Google Search. You do not have to sign up for it to appear in results. What it adds is Google's side of the picture: confirmation that Google can find and crawl your site, help with pages that are not indexed, the searches that show your site and how often people click, alerts when Google runs into indexing or spam problems, and a list of the sites that link to yours (Search Console Help).

Google also says business owners should be aware of the service even if they will never use it themselves (Search Console Help). You may never log in yourself. The account should still be in your business's name.

The four numbers in the Performance report

The Performance report rests on four numbers (Search Console Help). Clicks count the times someone went from a Google result to your site. Impressions count the times your site appeared in results, whether anyone clicked or not. Click-through rate is clicks divided by impressions. Average position is where your highest result appeared in the search results, averaged across those appearances.

By default the report covers the past three months, and it can group the figures by search query, page, country or device. The newest data can be preliminary, so a dip on the last day of the chart may change once collection is complete (Search Console Help). Grouped by query, it shows the words people typed when your site appeared, some about your work and some not.

Who should own the account

Each site you add is called a property, and each property has owners and users. An owner has full control, including adding and removing users, and only an owner can give anyone access. Every property needs at least one verified owner, someone who proved ownership with a token such as a file placed on the site. An owner can also name a delegated owner, who needs no token. Below them sit full users, who can view all the data and take some actions, and restricted users, who can view most of it (Search Console Help).

The verified owner should be your business, on a Google account your business controls. Our terms say you own every account, page and piece of content. If a web designer or an agency set Search Console up under their own login, become a verified owner yourself now, while they are still around to help.

Giving an agency access

For an audit, Google advises giving the auditor read access to Search Console and holding back write access at that stage (Google Search Central).

Whoever you hire should be added under their own Google account, as a user an owner can remove. Nobody needs your password. The steps for adding a read-only user are in our access guide.

How it differs from the free scan

The free scan reads your public pages as your server sends them and reports what it finds on those pages today. Search Console shows Google's own records of your site: what it crawled and indexed, and the searches that showed it. The scan cannot see those records.

Our Roadmap Audit reads the two together. Its summary names a full crawl with your Search Console and Analytics data, which is why it asks for read-only access and the scan asks for none.

Questions

Does Search Console cost anything?

No. Google offers it as a free service (Search Console Help). What it costs is attention: someone has to open the reports and act on what they show. If nobody at your business will, add a person you trust as a user and keep ownership yourself.

Why are my impressions going up while my clicks stay flat?

Your site is being shown more often without earning more visits. Impressions count every appearance in results, and clicks count only the visits that followed (Search Console Help). Group the report by query to see which searches grew. If they are searches you do not serve, the flat clicks cost you nothing. If they are searches you want, work on the page that appears for them.

The person who set up our Search Console has left. How do we get back in?

Verify ownership yourself. A property always needs a verified owner, and becoming one means proving you control the site with a token, such as a file placed on it (Search Console Help). Whoever runs your website can put the file in place. Once you are an owner, you decide who else has access.

Where this fits in our work

We handle this as part of SEO: A written plan built from your own Search Console and Analytics data, then the fixes and pages that plan calls for, month by month.

Related reading

Posts that use this term

• Can I see what ChatGPT or Google's AI says about my business? No assistant shows you the words it used about your business, so you ask. A list of questions to put to each one, and what to record each round.
• What happens to my Google ranking if I change my business name or address? A move keeps your profile and, for most businesses, your reviews. A new name may not. Where Google draws the line, and what to update first.

Related terms

• Canonical tag: How a page tells Google which address is the main copy when the same content lives at more than one.
• Duplicate content: The same or very similar content at more than one address, when it is harmless, and when copied town pages become a problem.
• Orphan page: A page on your site that no other page links to, why search engines and visitors struggle to find it, and how to give it a home.

Sources

• Search Console Help: About Search Console. Checked September 26, 2026.
• Search Console Help: Performance report (Search results): Overview and basic setup. Checked September 26, 2026.
• Search Console Help: Managing owners, users, and permissions. Checked September 26, 2026.
• Google Search Central: Do you need an SEO?, updated June 5, 2026. Checked September 26, 2026.