How do I add my website to Google Search Console?

Q: How do I add my website to Google Search Console?

Open the property selector, click Add property, pick Domain or URL prefix, enter your site and verify ownership. Data starts within a few days.

In Search Console, open the property selector, choose Add property, and pick a property type: Domain for the whole domain, or URL prefix for one exact address. Type your site, then prove you own it, by DNS record for a Domain property or by one of several methods for a URL-prefix property. Data starts appearing within a few days.

Domain or URL prefix: which should I add?

The choice decides which URLs the property collects data for, so it is worth a minute's thought.

	Domain property	URL-prefix property
You enter	`example.com` (no `https://`, no `www`)	`https://www.example.com/`
Covers	Every subdomain and both `http` and `https`	Only URLs starting with exactly that prefix
Verification	DNS record only	HTML file, HTML tag, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager or DNS
Good for	One view of the whole site	A single section, or when you cannot edit DNS

If you can add a DNS record, a Domain property is usually the better starting point, because it catches traffic on every protocol and subdomain. A URL-prefix property is the practical choice when someone else controls DNS, or when you want a separate view of a subfolder such as https://example.com/blog/. You can have both for the same site, and an account can hold up to 1,000 properties, according to Google's Add a website property help.

Step by step

Sign in to Search Console with the Google account that should own the property. Use a shared or company account if more than one person will need to manage it later.
Open the property selector and click Add property.
Choose Domain or URL prefix and type the address in the matching box.
Follow the verification steps Search Console shows. You can finish now, or click Verify later and come back.
Click Verify. Once it succeeds, the property appears in your selector.
Submit a sitemap in the Sitemaps report so Google has a full list of the pages you care about.

Common mistakes when adding a site

Typing https:// or www into the Domain box. A Domain property takes the bare domain only.
Choosing the wrong prefix. https://example.com/ and https://www.example.com/ are different URL-prefix properties. If your site redirects to www, the non-www property will show almost no data.
Expecting data at once. The Performance report fills in over the following days; an empty property on day one is normal.
Removing the verification record afterwards. Search Console checks it periodically, and you lose verification if the DNS record or file disappears.

Verification itself has more options and failure modes than fit here; How do I verify my website? covers each method, and Domain property vs URL prefix goes deeper into the choice above.

What to do after adding the site

Adding the property is the first of a few setup steps. Submit a sitemap (How do I submit a sitemap?), add colleagues as users rather than sharing your login, and give the data a week to build up before drawing conclusions. The full sequence is in How do I set up Google Search Console?, and if the site is brand new, How do I submit my website to Google? covers getting it found.

How AutoPSEO helps

AutoPSEO cannot add or verify a property for you; that stays in Search Console. Once the property exists, connect the same Google account to AutoPSEO and every property it can read is imported on its own, with nothing to configure per site (Connecting Search Console).