By Rahul Saini, Author at Search Counsel Co. Last updated [July] 2026.

Set it up

Getting started takes a few minutes, then a few days for data to appear.

1. Add your property. Choose a domain property to cover every subdomain and protocol at once (the cleaner option if you can edit DNS), or a URL-prefix property to track one exact version of the site.
2. Verify ownership. A domain property verifies with a DNS record; a URL-prefix property can verify with an HTML tag or file, Google Analytics, or Tag Manager.
3. Submit your sitemap. In the Sitemaps report, submit your XML sitemap URL so Google can find all your pages.
4. Wait for data. Reports populate over the next few days, then keep building. Search Console holds about 16 months of history.

The reports that matter

Search Console has a lot of reports. Here’s what each one answers, so you know where to look:

The Performance report is where you’ll spend most of your time. Its four core metrics, clicks, impressions, CTR, and average position, plus the filters that make them useful, get their own full breakdown. The Core Web Vitals report matters too, but it’s a monitoring surface here; the actual speed and stability fixes live in our Core Web Vitals guide.

The new AI report (2026)

For two years, site owners had no first-party data on how they appeared inside AI answers. That changed on June 3, 2026, when Google added a dedicated Search Generative AI performance report to Search Console, a standalone view that isolates your visibility inside AI Overviews, AI Mode, and generative features in Discover.

Here’s what it shows and, just as important, what it doesn’t:

• What’s in it: impressions, the specific pages that appeared, countries, devices, and dates down to hourly granularity.
• What’s missing: clicks, CTR, average position, and query data. It’s impressions only for now, so it shows where you’re visible, not what that visibility earned. Google has said more metrics will follow.
• It’s a breakout, not new data. These impressions were always counted in your overall Performance totals; the report just separates them. Data starts around mid-May 2026 with no historical backfill, so capture a baseline as soon as you get access.
• It groups all AI features together. You can’t yet split AI Overviews from AI Mode.

Read those impressions as a resonance signal, not traffic: a page with heavy AI impressions is content the model finds worth citing. Cross-reference it against the organic clicks the same URL earns in the standard Performance report, and pair it with GA4’s AI Assistant traffic source for the click side. The KPI framework for all of this, citation rate and AI share of voice, is in our guide to AI visibility KPIs, and the work of actually improving those citations lives in our AI visibility deep-dive.

Google also shipped an opt-out toggle alongside the report, under Settings, that removes your content from AI features without affecting your normal Search rankings. For almost every site, leave it alone. Opting out forfeits AI impressions and traffic, and the decision should be made on your own data, not instinct. If you’re weighing that call more broadly, our guide to AI crawler access covers the trade-offs.

Indexing and URL inspection

A page can’t rank or be cited if Google hasn’t indexed it. The Pages report shows how many of your URLs are indexed and groups the rest by reason, from “crawled but not indexed” to “excluded by noindex.” Work through the reasons that affect pages you actually want ranking, using our guide to fixing indexing problems to diagnose each one.

For a single URL, use the URL Inspection tool at the top of Search Console. It tells you whether that exact page is indexed, lets you run a live test, and lets you request indexing after you publish or update something important.

Data limits and the escape hatch

Search Console’s interface is powerful but capped: it shows about 1,000 rows per report and holds roughly 16 months of history. For anything bigger, connect Search Console to Looker Studio for live client-ready reports, or bulk-export to BigQuery to keep and query the full data over time. Our SEO Reporting Dashboard template pulls this into one view, and the Looker Studio dashboard guide walks through building it.

Three workflows to run monthly

• Find low-CTR pages. Sort the Performance report for pages with high impressions but low click-through, then sharpen their titles and descriptions. The full method is in finding and fixing low-CTR pages.
• Find striking-distance queries. Filter for queries ranking around positions five to fifteen. These are page-two terms a focused improvement can lift onto page one, faster than starting from scratch. Rank movement over time is covered in keyword rank tracking.
• Check indexing and monitor changes. Confirm new pages get indexed, and after any migration or redesign, watch the Pages report and Performance trend for sudden drops.

FAQ

The one thing to do next

If you haven’t already, verify your property and submit your sitemap today, then check back in a few days and run the three monthly workflows above. Search Console is the foundation every other measurement sits on, and it feeds straight into your SEO reporting. Pair it with GA4 and you can see both your visibility and what it’s worth.