Google Search Console: The Free Tool Most Businesses Aren't Using Properly

Google Search Console is the single most valuable free tool available to any business with a website, yet most Australian businesses either never set it up, set it up and never log in, or check it without knowing what they are actually looking at. Unlike paid SEO platforms that estimate your traffic and guess at your rankings, Search Console gives you the real data — straight from Google — about exactly which searches your pages appear for, how often people click through, which pages Google has chosen not to index, and where your site has technical problems that are silently costing you visibility. In 2026, with AI Overviews reshaping search results and zero-click queries accelerating, understanding your Search Console data is no longer optional. It is how you know whether your SEO is actually working.

What Google Search Console Actually Tells You

Search Console answers four fundamental questions about your website that no other tool can answer with the same accuracy.

What searches does your site appear for? The Performance report shows every query that triggered an impression for your site in Google Search. This is not estimated data — it is Google telling you directly what people searched for and whether your pages showed up. You see the exact query, how many times your page appeared (impressions), how many times people clicked through, your average position, and your click-through rate (CTR).

Which pages does Google actually know about? The Indexing report reveals which of your pages Google has crawled and indexed, which it has crawled but chosen not to index, and which it has discovered but not yet visited. This is critical because a page that is not indexed simply does not exist in Google Search, regardless of how good the content is.

Does your site have technical problems? Core Web Vitals, mobile usability, HTTPS status, and structured data validation reports tell you whether your site meets Google's technical requirements. These are not abstract scores — they directly affect how Google treats your pages.

How does Google see your site? The URL Inspection tool lets you check any specific page to see exactly how Google renders it, whether it is indexed, which canonical URL Google has selected, and when it was last crawled. This is the equivalent of asking Google directly what it thinks about a specific page.

Why Most Businesses Get It Wrong

The most common problem is not that businesses lack access to Search Console — it is that they misunderstand what the data means and what to do with it. Here are the patterns we see repeatedly across Australian business websites.

Mistake 1: Never checking it at all. This is the most common scenario. A developer or agency set it up during the website build, and nobody has logged in since. Meanwhile, Google might be flagging indexing errors, mobile usability problems, or security issues that are actively suppressing your visibility. A monthly check — even 15 minutes — is enough to catch problems before they compound.

Mistake 2: Obsessing over average position. Average position is one of the most misleading metrics in Search Console. A page ranking at position 3.4 one week and 3.8 the next has not meaningfully changed. Positions fluctuate constantly based on personalisation, location, device, and the queries being aggregated. What matters far more is the trend in impressions and clicks over time. If impressions are growing but clicks are flat, you have a CTR problem — your titles and descriptions are not compelling enough. If clicks are growing but impressions are flat, your existing pages are performing better but you are not reaching new queries.

Mistake 3: Looking only at aggregate data. The default Performance report view shows totals across your entire site. This hides what is actually happening. A site that looks "flat" in aggregate might have mobile traffic growing 30% while desktop traffic declines 25%. Or Australian traffic might be strong while accidental international impressions are dragging down averages. Always segment by device, country, and search type to understand the real story.

Mistake 4: Ignoring the Indexing report. Many businesses create content, publish it, and assume Google will find and index it. The Indexing report frequently tells a different story. Pages with a status of "Crawled — currently not indexed" mean Google visited the page, read it, and decided it was not worth including. This is not a technical error — it is a quality or relevance signal. The fix is better content, stronger internal links, and clearer alignment with search intent, not resubmitting the URL and hoping.

Mistake 5: Not using date comparisons. Search Console data without context is just numbers. The comparison feature — accessible by clicking the date range selector and choosing "Compare" — lets you see two time periods side by side. Compare this month to last month for short-term trends. Compare this quarter to the same quarter last year for seasonal businesses. Compare before and after a site change to measure impact. Without comparisons, you cannot distinguish between normal fluctuation and genuine change.

The Reports That Actually Matter in 2026

Search Console has expanded significantly over the past year. Not every report deserves your attention equally. Here is where to focus.

Performance Report: Your Search Reality Check

This is the report most people think they understand but use superficially. The real value comes from filtering and segmenting.

Filter by query to find your quick wins. Sort by impressions (highest first), then look for queries where your average position is between 5 and 20 and your CTR is below 2%. These are pages that Google is already showing for relevant searches but that are not getting clicks — either because the ranking is too low, or because the title and meta description are not compelling enough. Improving these is often the fastest path to more traffic without creating new content.

Filter by page to find underperformers. Your most important commercial pages (services, products, key landing pages) should be getting impressions and clicks. If they are not appearing in the Performance report at all, Google does not consider them relevant for any meaningful queries. This usually means the content does not match how people actually search, or the page lacks sufficient internal links and authority signals.

Use the new branded vs non-branded filter. Introduced in November 2025, this is one of the most useful additions to Search Console in years. It lets you instantly separate traffic from people who already know your brand (branded queries) from people discovering you through topic searches (non-branded queries). For most businesses, non-branded traffic is where growth comes from. If your non-branded impressions are declining while branded traffic holds steady, your content strategy needs attention.

Try the AI-powered configuration (if available). Google began rolling out an experimental feature in December 2025 that lets you describe the analysis you want in natural language — for example, "Show me mobile queries containing 'training' in the last 6 months compared to the previous 6 months." The system automatically configures the filters, date ranges, and comparisons. It is not available to all accounts yet, but if you see it, it dramatically reduces the time spent setting up reports.

Indexing Report: What Google Actually Knows

The Indexing report is where most businesses get the biggest surprises. Check this monthly and pay attention to these statuses.

"Crawled — currently not indexed" is the most important status to monitor. It means Google visited the page, evaluated it, and decided not to include it. Common causes include thin content, duplicate or near-duplicate content across multiple pages, poor internal linking, and content that does not align with any meaningful search intent. The fix is almost always content improvement, not technical troubleshooting.

"Discovered — currently not indexed" means Google knows the URL exists (probably from your sitemap or internal links) but has not prioritised visiting it. This often affects sites with large numbers of pages — Google allocates crawl budget based on perceived importance, and low-authority pages on large sites may wait weeks or months for a visit.

"Duplicate, Google chose different canonical" means Google found what it considers the same content at multiple URLs and chose a different version than the one you intended. This is extremely common on sites with URL parameters, trailing slashes, www vs non-www variations, or city-specific pages with largely identical content. Fix this with proper canonical tags and consistent internal linking.

Core Web Vitals: The Technical Baseline

Google's Core Web Vitals measure real-world loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability. In 2026, the three metrics are Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Interaction to Next Paint (INP), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).

The Search Console report groups your URLs into "Good," "Needs Improvement," and "Poor" based on real user data from Chrome. The key insight most businesses miss is that this is not lab data — it is how actual visitors experience your site. A page might score well in PageSpeed Insights testing but show "Poor" in Search Console because real users on slower Australian mobile connections have a different experience.

Focus on fixing pages in the "Poor" category first, as these are the ones most likely to be affected by ranking signals. Pages in "Needs Improvement" are worth addressing but are less urgent.

Enhancements: Schema Validation

If you have implemented structured data (schema markup) on your site — which you should, as covered in our Post 4 on schema markup — the Enhancements section shows whether Google can read it correctly. Invalid or broken structured data means your pages cannot qualify for rich results like FAQ dropdowns, review stars, course listings, or organisation information panels.

Check this after any site update or template change, as schema markup is fragile and often breaks when developers modify page templates without realising structured data exists in the code.

A Monthly Search Console Routine (15 Minutes)

You do not need to live inside Search Console. A structured monthly check gives you everything you need.

Minutes 1–3: Check for alerts. Look at the top of the dashboard for any messages about manual actions, security issues, or new indexing problems. These are urgent and need immediate attention.

Minutes 3–7: Review Performance trends. Open the Performance report, set the date range to the last 3 months compared to the previous 3 months. Check total clicks, impressions, average CTR, and average position. Are things trending up, down, or flat? Filter by non-branded queries to see organic growth separately from brand awareness.

Minutes 7–10: Scan Indexing health. Open the Indexing report. Check whether the number of indexed pages is stable, growing, or declining. If pages are being removed from the index, investigate. Look at the "Not indexed" section for any new issues, particularly "Crawled — currently not indexed" pages that should be ranking.

Minutes 10–13: Check Core Web Vitals. Open the Core Web Vitals report for mobile. Are any URLs in the "Poor" category? If so, note them for your development team. If everything is "Good," move on.

Minutes 13–15: Review one opportunity. Pick one query or page that stands out — high impressions but low CTR, a commercial page with no impressions, or a new blog post that has not been indexed. Decide on one specific action: rewrite a title tag, add internal links, or improve content depth. One action per month compounds into significant improvement over a year.

Search Console in an AI Search World

Search Console data takes on new significance in 2026 because of how AI is reshaping search results.

High impressions with declining CTR often means AI Overviews. When Google's AI Overview answers a query directly in the search results, users get their answer without clicking through to any website. Your page still receives an impression (it appeared in results), but the click never comes. If you see a pattern of stable or growing impressions paired with declining CTR across informational queries, AI Overviews are likely the cause. This does not mean your content is failing — it means you need to adjust expectations for informational content and focus conversion-oriented effort on commercial and transactional queries where clicks still happen.

"Crawled — not indexed" pages are unlikely to appear in AI answers. If Google does not consider your page worth indexing for traditional search, it is almost certainly not being used as a source for AI Overviews either. Fixing indexing issues is therefore doubly important: it improves both your traditional search visibility and your chances of being cited in AI-generated answers.

Branded query growth signals AI visibility. When people ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's AI about a topic and your brand gets mentioned, some of them will subsequently search for your brand name in Google. Growth in branded queries that you cannot attribute to advertising or PR campaigns may indicate that AI systems are mentioning your business — a signal worth tracking.

The annotations feature helps correlate changes. Google introduced custom chart annotations in November 2025, allowing you to mark specific dates on your Performance report timeline. Use this to note when you published new content, made technical changes, launched campaigns, or when Google algorithm updates rolled out. This makes it far easier to understand why performance shifted at a particular point in time.

Connecting Search Console to Your Broader Strategy

Search Console data is most powerful when combined with other tools and the work covered elsewhere in this blog series.

Link to your AEO strategy (Posts 1–3). Search Console shows which queries your site appears for. Cross-reference these with queries you know trigger AI Overviews. If your pages rank for AI Overview queries but CTR is low, your AEO content is being consumed by AI rather than generating clicks — which means your brand is still getting exposure, but you need to measure success differently.

Link to your schema markup (Post 4). The Enhancements section validates your structured data. If your FAQPage, Article, or LocalBusiness schema has errors, fix them — broken schema means missed opportunities for rich results and reduced machine readability.

Link to your llms.txt strategy (Post 9). The pages you highlight in your llms.txt file should align with the pages that perform well in Search Console. If a page gets strong impressions and clicks, it is worth surfacing to AI systems via llms.txt. If a page is not indexed, it should not be in your llms.txt file either.

Link to GA4 (Post 5). Search Console tells you what happens before someone reaches your site (queries, impressions, clicks). GA4 tells you what happens after they arrive (engagement, conversions, revenue). Connect the two in GA4's Search Console integration to see the full journey from search query to business outcome.

Setting Up Search Console (If You Haven't Yet)

If your business does not have Search Console configured, here is the quick setup path.

Go to search.google.com/search-console and sign in with a Google account. Choose "Domain" property type if you want to track your entire domain including all subdomains, or "URL prefix" if you only need the main site. Domain verification requires adding a DNS record through your hosting provider. URL prefix verification can be done by uploading an HTML file, adding a meta tag, or connecting through Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager.

Once verified, submit your XML sitemap (usually at yoursite.com/sitemap.xml). Google will begin processing your site data within 2–3 days, though a full picture takes a few weeks to build up.

Add your developer, SEO consultant, or marketing team as users so they have direct access rather than relying on screenshots or second-hand interpretations.