How do I add my site to Google Search Console?
Updated last week
Google Search Console allows us to monitor our site's performance and learn everything about our visits. How do people find our site? What indexing issues affect our content? How does Google see us? Search Console is free and very convenient.
On the other hand, although Google's robots will sooner or later crawl our site so they can display it in their search results, submitting a map of our content speeds up the process.
Necessary? No. Convenient? Very! That's why, in this guide, we'll see how to create a Google Search Console account if we don't have one yet, how to create a sitemap.xml, and how to upload it. Is your steaming coffee ready? Let's get started.
What is Google Search Console? What is it for?
Google Search Console is a collection of tools and reports about the pages on our website. It allows us to optimize and, sometimes, correct our content so that it is as accessible as possible to users when they perform searches. GSC will show us which queries bring traffic to our website and will analyze our content's impressions, clicks, and position in organic Google searches.
Occasionally, it can send us alerts when problems are detected on our website, so that we can fix them.
What is a sitemap or site map?
A site map is a file that provides information about the pages, videos, and other files on our website (as well as the relationships between them). Search engines (such as Google) read this file to crawl our site more efficiently. The map tells search engines which pages and files are considered important or a priority, and it also provides valuable information about the files themselves that are part of our content. For example, when a page was last updated or the versions of the page in other languages.
We can take advantage of a site map to provide information about certain types of content, such as videos, images, or news.
How do I create a site map?
Good news: sitemaps are generated automatically if we're using WordPress. To check whether one exists, simply add /sitemap.xml to our website's address, that is, mysite.com/sitemap.xml (replacing mysite.com with the actual domain name).
If we have an SEO plugin installed, the two lightweight alternatives we recommend are Slim SEO and The SEO Framework.
If we don't see something like this at either address...
...we must make sure that, for some reason, we are not allowing crawler robots to probe our content. Therefore, let's check that the following option is NOT checked:
To recap, WordPress natively—that is, without the need for third-party components—creates a sitemap.xml file by default.
How do I set up a Google Search Console account?
We must go to https://search.google.com/search-console/
The first thing we'll see is a screen like the following, where we're asked to enter a "property," which is what Google calls our website (that is, the one we own).
We have two options that serve the same purpose: add the domain (mysite.com) or the prefix (https://mysite.com).
We'll add the domain by entering our site's name in the first field, without HTTP/HTTPS or WWW. This way, we'll obtain data for all URLs under the domain name, including protocols, subdomains, and paths. Later in this same guide, we'll walk through the Prefix option and explain the differences between the two options in more detail.
Google will display a pop-up window where it has created a verification code in text (TXT) format. We must click the button indicated in the screenshot below:
For convenience, it's best to open another browser tab. There, we'll log in to the account where we registered our domain.
Next, we'll see how to perform this step via cPanel, then how to do it with the number-one domain sales company, GoDaddy, and finally we'll also demonstrate how to perform the verification, regardless of the company or organization where we purchased the domain name, using an alternative method.
Verification through cPanel
cPanel is a control panel accessed online: it is easy and convenient, and some hosting companies provide it free of charge with their hosting plan (including ours).
cPanel allows us to manage our domain (as well as email, security, webmail, and much more) through an intuitive graphical interface. In this case, we'll see how to add the DNS record provided by Google Search Console using this versatile tool.
First, we must access our cPanel, typically by entering its domain-dependent address in the address bar:
Remember to replace "mysite" with your domain's actual name!
After logging in with our credentials—provided by the company that hosts our site—we'll see a series of tools separated into groups. There, we must look for the ZONE EDITOR icon within the DOMAINS tools group, as indicated in the screenshot below:
We'll click this ZONE EDITOR icon and then click the ADMINISTER button.
On the next screen, we'll look for the ADD RECORD button and click the arrow to expand the alternatives menu. Since we're going to add a TXT record—as requested by Google Search Console—we'll click ADD "TXT" RECORD, as shown in the image below.
We'll fill in the fields provided as follows:
In the first NAME field, we'll enter our domain name without http or www.
Do not change this; it must be TXT (if for some reason it isn't, select it correctly from the drop-down menu).
Here we'll paste the text provided by Google.
Click SAVE RECORD to finish.
Remember that this process may take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours. Therefore, wait a while before returning to Google Search Console to verify it.
Verify ownership with GoDaddy
After logging in to our account, we'll find the domain in question in the products section and click as shown in the screenshot below:
And then:
Note: if this option is not available, our hosting service is managing the DNS, so we will need to contact the company in question.
In the pop-up window's form, we'll fill in the fields exactly as specified in the screenshot below:
That is:
Type: TXT
Name: @
Value: ( Paste the TXT record created for us by Google Search Console )
TTL: 1 hour
After this step, we'll return to the window where Google Search Console is open and click the Verify button.
If we receive an error message, we'll need to wait because the record creation process we completed may take several hours.
Once this step is completed successfully, we'll see the corresponding notice confirming that validation was completed.
Alternative verification method
For this alternative, we'll choose the second option in Google Search Console, namely URL prefix.
As we explained earlier, we didn't choose this method first because it is limited to one address (e.g., https://www.mycompany.com/ and all the content within it), whereas with the Domain verification method explained earlier, we ensure that subdomains are also included in Google's service (e.g., mobile.mycompany.com).
In the field that asks us to "Enter a URL," we'll enter the URL to crawl, such as https://www.mycompany.com. In this case, we must be precise, since some domains have SSL certificates (https) and others do not (http). The same applies to "www." Our site, duplika.com, for example, does NOT use www in its domain.
After entering the correct domain and clicking the CONTINUE button, Google will offer us several verification methods.
HTML file (recommended)
HTML tag
Google Analytics
Google Tag Manager
Domain name provider
We'll use the recommended method, which is very easy: we'll download an HTML file created by Google. This file must be uploaded to the same URL we entered at the beginning of this alternative method.
After these two steps, we'll click the VERIFY button. If we've uploaded the file correctly, we'll see the following pop-up window.
Adding my sitemap to Google Search Console
In the window shown in the screenshot above, we'll click GO TO PROPERTY.
There, we'll find the Sitemaps tool and click it to reach the following section:
As shown in the screenshot above, we'll simply complete our sitemap URL with the filename, as we confirmed here.
After entering the correct path, we'll click SUBMIT and should see a message like the following:
After this step, we've finished the guide to adding our site to Google Search Console and including a site map for immediate crawling.
Thank you for reading, and we wish you success in your ventures.