SEO Term Definition
Google Search Console
Google Search Console (GSC) is a free Google tool that shows how your site performs in Google Search — including impressions, clicks, rankings, crawl errors, and indexing status.
Reviewed by Alexander Yarovenko · Updated: 2026-09-18
What is Google Search Console?
Google Search Console (GSC) is a free web service by Google that helps website owners monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot their site's presence in Google Search results. Previously known as Google Webmaster Tools, GSC provides data that no other tool can offer — direct insight from Google itself about how it sees and crawls your site.
Key Features of GSC
- Performance Report — clicks, impressions, CTR, and average position for every query and URL
- URL Inspection — check the indexed version of any URL, request re-indexing
- Coverage Report — see which pages are indexed, excluded, or erroring
- Core Web Vitals — field data on LCP, CLS, and INP from real users
- Sitemaps — submit sitemaps and monitor how many URLs Google has discovered
- Manual Actions — alerts if Google has penalised your site
- Links Report — top linking domains and most linked internal pages
How to Set Up GSC
- Go to search.google.com/search-console
- Add a property (domain or URL prefix)
- Verify ownership via DNS record, HTML file, or Google Analytics
- Submit your sitemap
GSC vs Google Analytics
| Search Console | Google Analytics | |
|---|---|---|
| Focus | Search performance (pre-click) | On-site behaviour (post-click) |
| Data source | Google's index and crawl data | User sessions on your site |
| Best for | Rankings, indexing, crawl errors | Traffic, conversions, user behaviour |
Decision guide
| Use when | Use Search Console to understand Google Search visibility, indexing and crawl signals; it is not a complete analytics or rank-tracking system. Interpret sampled and aggregated reports within their stated dimensions. |
|---|---|
| How to verify | Verify every relevant property, submit the canonical sitemap, and annotate deployments outside GSC. Compare queries, pages, countries and devices over equivalent periods, then inspect representative URLs before changing a template. |