How do I set up Google Search Console from scratch?

Setting up Search Console takes five steps: choose the Google account that will own the site, add the site as a property, verify ownership, submit your sitemap, and give colleagues their own access. The clicking takes under an hour. The waiting takes longer, because data fills in over the following days. After the first week, a short round of checks tells you whether Google is having trouble with the site.

1. Choose the account that will own the property

Whoever verifies the property becomes its verified owner, with full control. Think about who should hold that role before you start:

• Use an account your organisation controls, not a freelancer's or a departing employee's personal Gmail.
• Plan for a second verified owner. Google's permissions help warns that if every verified owner is removed, the remaining users lose access after a grace period, and the data cannot be viewed until someone verifies again.
• Agencies and contractors should get their own user access later, in step 5, rather than borrowing the owner's login.

2. Add the site as a property

Open Search Console, click Add property in the property selector and choose:

• Domain (example.com) to cover every subdomain and both http and https, verified by DNS.
• URL prefix (https://www.example.com/) to cover one exact prefix, with more verification methods.

How do I add my website? compares the two in detail.

3. Verify ownership

Search Console shows the methods available for your property type. DNS is the only option for a Domain property; a URL-prefix property can also use an HTML file, an HTML tag, Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager. If you add a DNS record by hand, Google's verification help notes that some providers take up to two or three days to start serving it. Leave the record or file in place afterwards, because Search Console keeps checking it. Each method is covered in How do I verify my website?.

4. Submit your sitemap

Find your sitemap's address (often /sitemap.xml, or /wp-sitemap.xml on WordPress), open the Sitemaps report, paste it into Add a new sitemap and click Submit. A Success status means Google read it. If your site has no sitemap yet, see How do I create a sitemap?; for statuses and errors, see How do I submit a sitemap?. Sitemaps are one of several things you can send Google; What can I submit to Google Search Console? lists the rest.

5. Give your team their own access

Go to Settings > Users and permissions, click Add user, enter the person's Google account email and choose Full (sees all data, can take some actions) or Restricted (views most data). Only owners can manage users, and a property can have up to 100 users who are not owners. Removing someone later is a single click, which is the point of not sharing a password.

What to check after the first week

• Performance: queries and pages should be appearing. An empty report after several days usually means the wrong property type or prefix.
• Page indexing: your important pages should be indexed. Google says not to expect every URL to be indexed, only the canonical ones that matter.
• URL Inspection: inspect your home page and one key page. If either says "URL is not on Google", the Page indexing section of the result says why.
• Manual actions and Security issues: both should report no issues.
• Core Web Vitals: a new or low-traffic site often shows no data at first, because the report needs enough real Chrome visits.

You can also link the property to Google Analytics; you need to be a verified owner in Search Console and an Editor of the Analytics property.

How AutoPSEO helps

Once the property is verified, connect the same Google account to AutoPSEO and every property it can read is imported on its own. Access is read-only by default; full access is only used to inspect URLs and submit sitemaps on your behalf (Connecting Search Console). Connect a GA4 property per site to see search clicks and on-site behaviour together (Connecting GA4).