Guides / Prompting and shipping
How to Set Up Google Search Console for Your Website
Add your site to Google Search Console: pick a domain or URL-prefix property, verify ownership, submit a sitemap and read the reports that matter.
Mythex Team · · 6 min read
To set up Google Search Console, sign in at search.google.com/search-console, add your site as a property, verify that you own it (with a DNS record for a domain property, or an HTML tag or file for a URL-prefix property), then submit your sitemap. After that, check the Page indexing report for pages Google can't index and the Performance report for the searches that bring people in. The whole setup takes about fifteen minutes.
What Search Console is for
Google Search Console is Google's free tool for site owners. It is the only place Google tells you directly how it sees your site:
- Which pages are indexed, and why others are not
- Which searches show your site, how often (impressions), how often people click, and your average position
- Problems such as pages blocked by robots.txt, redirect errors, broken structured data or security issues
- Requests — you can submit sitemaps and ask Google to recrawl a changed page
It does not track what people do on your site; that is what Google Analytics is for.
Choose a property type
The first decision is the property type. As of September 2026, Google's help documentation describes two:
| Domain property | URL-prefix property | |
|---|---|---|
| Example | example.com | https://www.example.com/ |
| Covers | All subdomains (www, app, blog…) and both http and https | Only URLs starting with that exact prefix |
| Verification | DNS record only | HTML file, HTML meta tag, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager (not DNS) |
| Best when | You control the domain's DNS | You can't edit DNS, e.g. a site on a platform's subdomain |
A domain property gives the most complete picture, so use it if you can edit your domain's DNS. If your site lives on someone else's domain — yourapp.someplatform.com — you can't add DNS records there, so use a URL-prefix property and verify with an HTML tag or file.
You can have both: verifying a domain property also verifies URL-prefix properties under it.
Step by step
1. Make sure the site is on its final address
Set up Search Console on the domain you intend to keep. If you are moving to a custom domain soon, do that first — see how to connect a custom domain — so your search history builds on the right address.
2. Add the property
- Go to search.google.com/search-console and sign in with the Google account that should own the site. Use a business account you will keep, not a personal one you might lose access to.
- Open the property menu and choose Add property.
- Enter either your domain (for a domain property) or the full URL including
https://(for a URL-prefix property).
3. Verify ownership
Domain property (DNS): Search Console shows a TXT record. Add it at your DNS provider — the company where your domain's DNS is managed, which may be your registrar or your hosting platform. Then click Verify. DNS changes can take a while to spread; if it fails, wait and try again.
URL-prefix property (HTML tag): Search Console shows a <meta name="google-site-verification" ...> tag. It must be in the <head> of your home page, in the HTML the server sends — not added later by JavaScript. Publish, then click Verify.
Add this Google Search Console verification tag to the head of the home page, in the static HTML (not injected by JavaScript): <meta name="google-site-verification" content="PASTE-YOUR-CODE" />. Keep it on every future version of the site.
URL-prefix property (HTML file): download the file Search Console gives you and serve it at the root of the site, for example https://example.com/google1234abcd.html. Open that URL in a browser before clicking Verify to make sure it loads.
Leave the tag, file or DNS record in place. Google rechecks verification, and removing it can remove your access.
4. Submit your sitemap
A sitemap is an XML file listing the pages you want indexed (see what is a sitemap). If your site doesn't have one, ask for it:
Add a sitemap.xml at the site root listing every public page with its full https URL, and exclude login, admin and API routes. Add a robots.txt that allows crawling of public pages, blocks /admin and /api, and points to the sitemap.
Then in Search Console, open Sitemaps, enter the sitemap URL (for example sitemap.xml) and click Submit. The status should change to "Success" once Google fetches it. As of September 2026, Google's limits are 50,000 URLs or 50 MB uncompressed per sitemap; larger sites use a sitemap index. Google notes that submitting a sitemap does not guarantee every URL will be crawled.
5. Inspect your key pages
Paste your home page URL into the search bar at the top (the URL Inspection tool). It shows whether the page is indexed, when it was last crawled and which URL Google treats as the canonical one. For a new or changed page, Request indexing asks Google to recrawl it — use it for important pages, not for every URL.
For JavaScript-heavy sites, use Test live URL and view the rendered page. If the screenshot is blank or missing content, Google is having trouble rendering it — see SEO for AI-built websites.
6. Add teammates
Under Settings → Users and permissions, give colleagues or an agency access with their own Google accounts rather than sharing a login.
The reports worth checking
| Report | What it tells you | How often |
|---|---|---|
| Performance | Queries, pages, countries and devices, with clicks, impressions, click-through rate and position | Weekly |
| Page indexing | How many pages are indexed and the reason each other page isn't | After launches and big changes |
| Sitemaps | Whether Google can read your sitemap | After changes |
| Core Web Vitals | Pages grouped as good, needs improvement or poor, from real Chrome users | Monthly |
| Manual actions / Security issues | Penalties or hacked content | If you get an email about them |
In the Performance report, sort queries by impressions and look for searches where you appear but rarely get clicked. A clearer title and description, or a better page for that query, is often the quickest win.
"Crawled – currently not indexed" and "Discovered – currently not indexed" in the Page indexing report are common on new sites. They usually mean Google hasn't judged the page worth indexing yet — often because it is thin or very similar to another page — not that something is broken.
Common mistakes
- Verifying with a tag added by JavaScript. Verification reads the raw HTML; client-side tags can fail.
- Removing the verification tag in a redesign and quietly losing access.
- Adding
http://or the wrongwwwvariant as a URL-prefix property and seeing no data. A domain property avoids this. - Blocking the site in robots.txt or leaving a
noindextag from development in place. - Submitting a sitemap full of URLs that redirect, 404 or need a login.
- Requesting indexing over and over. It doesn't speed things up beyond the first request.
- Expecting data on day one. A new site needs to be crawled and shown in results before reports fill up.
Setup checklist
- Site on its final domain with HTTPS
- Property added (domain property if you control DNS)
- Ownership verified; tag, file or DNS record left in place
- sitemap.xml live, listing only real public pages, and submitted
- robots.txt not blocking public pages
- Home page and key pages checked in URL Inspection
- Teammates added with their own accounts
- A calendar reminder to check Performance and Page indexing
Search Console on Mythex
A Mythex app published to your-slug.mythex.ai can't use a domain property, because you can't add DNS records to mythex.ai — add a URL-prefix property and verify with the HTML tag, asking the agent to put it in the page head and then publishing again. With a custom domain (a Pro feature), you can use a domain property: for a domain bought through Mythex, add the TXT record under Domains → Configure → DNS records, which the docs list for exactly this kind of verification (custom domains); for a domain you already own, add it at your DNS provider. The docs' SEO recipe has a starter prompt for titles, sitemap and robots.txt. New Mythex apps are client-rendered by default, so check the URL Inspection screenshot and ask for prerendering if pages render empty.
Questions
Is Google Search Console free?
Yes. Search Console is a free Google service for site owners. It shows how your site appears in Google Search, which pages are indexed, and which searches bring visitors.
What is the difference between a domain property and a URL-prefix property?
A domain property covers every subdomain and both http and https for a domain, and can only be verified with a DNS record. A URL-prefix property covers only URLs that start with the exact address you enter, and can be verified by several methods, such as an HTML tag or file.
Does submitting a sitemap get my pages indexed?
No. A sitemap helps Google discover your URLs, but Google says it may not crawl every URL listed, and crawling does not guarantee indexing. Pages still need to be useful, reachable and not blocked.
What is the difference between Search Console and Google Analytics?
Search Console shows what happens before the click: indexing, search queries, impressions and clicks from Google. Google Analytics shows what visitors do on your site after they arrive, from any source. Most sites use both.
How long until data shows up in Search Console?
Performance data for a newly added site usually starts appearing within a few days, and only once Google has shown your pages in search results. A brand-new site may show little until its pages are indexed.