Google Search Central, formerly Google Webmasters, is an extremely useful tool by Google to help the right people view your content with resources to make your website discoverable to Google Search. It is a tool to index your site, rank your site, and track your performance on Google Search. You will get to know how many clicks your website is getting from Google Search. The Home Page of this tool can be accessed at the following link:
https://developers.google.com/search
- Then click the button Get started when you are logged in to your Google Account.
- On the top right corner, click Go to Search Console
- On the next page, Enter a domain or subdomain such as example.com and click CONTINUE. Alternatively, you can opt for the URL Prefix option that will apply to only URLs under entered address and not all URLs across all subdomains. Domain method requires DNS verification, whereas URL Prefix method allows multiple verification methods
- Click START VERIFICATION. Do not close the tab and dialog box.
- You will be redirected to Sign In to your account with a hosting company such as GoDaddy. Sign in with your username and password
- Click Connect to authorize Google to enable the service(s) Domain Verification for your domain.
- You will receive the message: Ownership verified. Verification method: Domain name provider
- Click GO TO PROPERTY
- A welcome screen will be shown. Click START
- You can now access Google Search Console for your domain anytime by typing https://search.google.com/search-console
- Search Console will deliver key insights including Performance, Coverage, Experience, Enhancements,
The most exciting feature of Google Search Console is Performance. Click Performance in the Left Menu. The performance will show Total clicks, Total impressions, Average CTR, and Average position. When you scroll down, you will see the tabs of Queries, Pages, Countries, Devices, Search Performance, and Dates. On the Queries tab, you will see Top queries made on Google that resulted in visiting your website pages. On the Pages tab, you will see the exact URLs that have been visited by using Google Search Engine.