If you pay for Google Ads, you get a report showing exactly which searches triggered your adverts. If you rely on your website appearing in the ordinary results, there is a free equivalent that many small businesses have never opened: Google Search Console.
Google describes it as a free service that helps you monitor, maintain and troubleshoot your site’s presence in Google Search. You don’t need it for your site to appear in search, but it is the closest thing to a direct line from Google about how your site is performing. This guide covers the parts of it that are worth a small business owner’s time.
Getting it set up
You add your website as a “property” and then prove you own it. Google offers several ways to verify, including adding a small tag to your site, uploading a file, using your Google Analytics or Tag Manager account, or adding a record at your domain registrar. Its verification help page also suggests adding more than one method, in case one stops working later, for example after a website redesign.
There are two property types. A domain property covers every version of your address (http, https and any subdomains) in one place, but can only be verified through your domain’s DNS settings. A URL-prefix property covers one exact address and has more verification options. If you are not comfortable editing DNS, ask whoever looks after your domain or website, as it takes them a few minutes.
Don’t expect instant results. Google says it takes a few days for data to start building up for a new property, so set it up now and look again next week.
The Performance report
Most of your time will be spent in the Performance report. It shows four figures:
- Clicks: how many times someone clicked through from Google to your site.
- Impressions: how many times a link to your site was seen, or potentially seen, in results. Google counts items inside carousels or expandable sections only once they have been scrolled or expanded into view.
- CTR: click-through rate, which is simply clicks divided by impressions.
- Average position: where your link sat in the results, with 1 being the top. If your page appeared at position 2 for one search and 3 for another, the average is 2.5.
The default view shows the last three months, and you can change the date range and filters at the top. Newer data can be preliminary and may change over the next few hours, which is why recent days appear as a dotted line on the graph.
One quirk catches people out. Google’s own explanation of the report’s figures notes that the average position you see can differ from what you see when you search yourself, because of search history, location and other factors. Searching for your own business and finding yourself at the top tells you very little about what a stranger sees.
Reading the Queries tab
The Queries tab groups your data by the search terms people typed. This is where Search Console earns its keep, and it is worth sorting it in a few different ways.
Sort by clicks first to see the searches already bringing people in. Then sort by impressions. Terms with plenty of impressions and few clicks are the interesting ones. They mean Google is showing you, but people are choosing someone else, or you appear too low down to be noticed.
Say you run a cabinet-making business in Stroud and find that “fitted wardrobes Stroud” has hundreds of impressions but almost no clicks. There are a few likely explanations. Your page title might not mention fitted wardrobes at all, your listing might look dull next to competitors, or you might be sitting on page two. Each has a different fix, and Search Console at least tells you where to look. You can then open that page and check whether it really answers what the searcher wanted. Our post on writing a service page that brings in enquiries covers that side of things.
Queries are also a free source of keyword ideas. Searches you did not expect to appear for sometimes point to services customers want that you barely mention on your site. If you are planning new pages, our guide to keyword research for small businesses shows how to turn that into a sensible shortlist.
Using the Pages tab
Switch to the Pages tab and you see the same figures by page rather than by search term. This answers a different question: which parts of your site does Google actually send people to?
Small business sites often reveal a lopsided picture here. The homepage and one blog post might attract nearly all the clicks while the service pages you want to sell get almost none. That is a prompt to look at those service pages: whether their titles and headings match the way people search, whether they link to each other, and whether they say anything more useful than a competitor’s page does.
You can also click a single page and then switch to the Queries tab to see which searches that one page appears for. This is the quickest way to check whether a page is attracting the right audience.
Checking the countries and devices
The Countries and Devices tabs are quick checks. If a local firm is getting a lot of impressions from abroad, that is mostly harmless, though it is worth knowing. The Devices tab matters more. If most of your visitors arrive on mobile and your site is slow or awkward on a phone, that is where your enquiries are leaking away.
What Search Console can’t tell you
It shows what happens in Google Search, up to the click. It does not tell you whether visitors rang you, filled in your form or left after five seconds. For that you need analytics and some form of conversion tracking. Likewise, it won’t show you traffic from adverts, social media or email. Treat it as one piece of the picture, alongside the rest of your reporting. Our post on knowing which marketing is bringing you enquiries explains how to tie the pieces together.
It also works well alongside paid search. If you run Google Ads, comparing your organic queries with your paid search terms can show where you are paying for clicks you would get anyway, and where neither is covering a valuable search. We go into this in how SEO and Google Ads work better together.
A simple routine
You do not need to check Search Console daily. Once a month is plenty for most small businesses. Compare the last three months with the same period a year earlier if you have the data, sort the queries by impressions and clicks, glance at your top pages, and write down one or two things to change. Then check the effect next month. That small habit is more valuable than a dashboard nobody looks at.
If you would rather have someone read the numbers with you and turn them into a plan, that is a big part of our SEO consultancy work for businesses in Gloucestershire, Cheltenham and Bristol. You are welcome to get in touch for a chat about what your own figures are showing.
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