What is Google Search Console?
Definition
Google Search Console is a free tool from Google that shows how your website appears in Google Search. It lists the searches that showed your pages, how often people clicked, which pages Google has indexed, and problems that could keep a page out of results. You prove you own the site, then Google shares the data.
What Google Search Console shows a small business
It's the most direct way to see the actual searches that bring people to your site from Google. You may find you show up for "emergency electrician" but barely for "electrician near me", or that a page about one service gets found for another. That tells you what to write next and which pages need work.
It isn't the same as analytics. Search Console covers what happens before the click, in Google's results: how often you appeared, how often people clicked and your average position. Analytics covers what happens after, on your site. Search Console also emails you when Google finds a problem, like pages it can't reach or a security issue, which is often the first sign something broke.
For contractors, the searches show which project types and towns you're found for, and which you aren't, which can shape your next project page. For dental practices, it shows whether treatment pages like implants or whitening get seen or sit unseen on page five. For law firms, it shows which practice area searches reach you, and where a new page could fill a gap.
How to set up Google Search Console
- Sign in to Search Console with the Google account your business uses.
- Add your site as a domain property, using your domain name.
- Verify ownership by adding the TXT record Google gives you to your DNS settings.
- Submit your sitemap, if your site has one, so Google can find every page.
- Check the Performance report each month for your top searches and pages.
- Open the Pages report to see which pages aren't indexed, and why.
- Make sure Search Console's emails reach an inbox you actually read.
How Future handles it
Search Console works with a Future site: verify your own domain with a DNS record, or paste Google's verification tag into Future's search settings. Either way you write no code. On any plan, Future writes the search title and summary for each page and runs its search checks before anything goes live, so Search Console has tidy pages to report on.
Weekly rank tracking on Premier is Coming soon. Until then, Search Console is the free, direct way to see the searches that find you and the pages Google has trouble with.