Search Console is a free web service provided by Google that will provide useful insights about your website’s performance on Google Search Engine.
One important component of Google Search Console is Search Analytics. With the help of Search Analytics reports you can measure your site’s search performance. For example, you can check which queries bring users to your site and take action to optimize your content to drive even more users.
Beside Search Analytics, there are other notable components enabling you to:
- detect and fix issues with your content
- submit sitemaps and individual URLs for crawling
- test your site’s mobile usability
- monitor and tweak structured data like products, reviews, local businesses
Creating your first Search Console account
- To create a Google Search Console account start here and follow these steps:
- if you have a Google account and you are not signed in, please sign in using your email address and password.
- if you don’t have a Google account, choose Create account and follow the steps to create your first Google account. Afterwards click on the link above to create a Search Console account.
- On the Welcome screen, enter your website’s URL. Please make sure it’s the exact URL of your site.
- Click on Add Property button.
- Google will try to verify your website using multiple methods and suggest the best option for verification.
- You can use any of the methods, but we recommend using the HTML file upload option. To verify the ownership:
- download the file called google*******.html
- upload it to your root directory using FTP or a file manager provided by your hosting company
- click on Verify
- Afterward, press Done
Add more Properties to Search Console
To add more Properties to your account follow these steps:
- Click on the newly created property. The property is located at the top left of your screen
- Click Add property
- Follow the steps described on Creating your first Search Console account section.
Details about data collection
Data collection for a property starts when the property is added to a Search Console account. However, on new accounts and properties, data will be available only after a few days.
Data collection continues as long as one user has that property in his account, whether or not it is a verified owner.
Data is only retained for a sixteen months interval. Everything before passed sixteen months is automatically deleted.