search-console

Google Search Console

Workflow

1. Property Setup

Verify ownership via DNS TXT record (most reliable):

google-site-verification=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Alternatives: HTML file upload, HTML meta tag, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager.

Prefer a Domain property (example.com, verified by DNS TXT). It aggregates every protocol and subdomain (http, https, www, m., blog.) into one dataset, so you see the whole site without managing many properties. Add a URL-prefix property (https://example.com/) only when you need narrower scope — e.g. delegating reporting/ownership for one subfolder to a team, isolating a staging host, or because a tool requires a URL-prefix siteUrl. URL-prefix properties match the exact protocol + host you enter and do not include subdomains.

The siteUrl you use in the APIs must match the property type exactly: Domain → sc-domain:example.com; URL-prefix → https://example.com/ (with trailing slash). Mismatches return 403 PERMISSION_DENIED even when you own the site.

2. Page Indexing Audit

The old Coverage report ("Valid / Valid with warnings / Excluded / Error") is gone. Current GSC has a Page indexing report that splits URLs into two buckets — Indexed and Not indexed — and lists a reason per URL. There is no "Valid with warnings" tier; warnings now live under structured-data / enhancement reports, not page indexing.

Reading the report:

• Open Indexing → Pages. The top chart shows the indexed vs not-indexed split over time.
• Each reason row links to a sample of affected URLs (the table is a sample, capped at ~1,000 rows — see API/BigQuery below to get the full list).
• A reason being non-zero is not automatically a bug: most healthy sites permanently carry "Alternate page with proper canonical", "Page with redirect", and "Excluded by 'noindex' tag" rows. Triage by intent, not by zeroing every bucket.

Not-indexed reasons — likely cause and fix:

Reason	What it usually means	Action
Crawled - currently not indexed	Google fetched it but chose not to index — thin/duplicate/low-demand content	Improve depth & uniqueness; strengthen internal links from indexed pages; consolidate near-duplicates
Discovered - currently not indexed	Known URL not yet crawled — usually crawl budget / crawl demand, weak internal linking, or slow server, not "needs more backlinks"	Improve internal linking & site speed; reduce low-value URL sprawl (faceted/param URLs); ensure it's in the sitemap. On large sites this is a crawl-prioritization signal, not a quick fix
Duplicate without user-selected canonical	No rel=canonical; Google clustered it with another URL	Add an explicit self-referencing or correct canonical
Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user	You declared a canonical; Google overrode it	See canonical workflow below — usually conflicting signals or a stronger duplicate
Alternate page with proper canonical	Expected — this URL canonicalizes elsewhere	None if intentional; if the wrong URL won, fix canonical/internal links
Excluded by 'noindex' tag	Has noindex (meta or X-Robots-Tag)	Remove noindex only if the page should rank
Blocked by robots.txt	Disallowed before crawl (so Google can't even read a noindex)	Unblock in robots.txt if it should be crawled
Page with redirect	URL 3xx-redirects	Expected; update internal links to point at the destination
Soft 404	Returns 200 but looks empty/error-like	Add real content or return a proper 404/410
Blocked due to other 4xx / Server error (5xx) / Not found (404)	Fetch failed	Fix status codes; 5xx during a crawl spike implies capacity/crawl-rate issues