SEARCH CONSOLEA 15-minute monthly check
SELLWRIGHTSearch Console holds most of what Google can tell you about your website, yet many owners only open it after traffic has dropped. A short monthly routine catches problems while they are still small. This is the order we work through, and on a healthy site it takes about fifteen minutes.
Is anything flagged? (1 minute)
Open the Manual actions report and the Security issues report first, because a problem in either outranks everything else on this list. A manual action means a human reviewer at Google found pages that break its spam policies, and those pages can rank lower or drop out of results. Security issues cover hacked content, malware and unwanted software, and social engineering, and affected pages can show a warning in search results or in the browser.
On a healthy site both reports are empty. If either lists something, fix every affected page, then use Request Review in that report and explain what you changed.
How did search traffic move? (5 minutes)
Open the Performance report for Search results and compare the last three months with the same period a year earlier, using the Compare tab in the date filter. A year on year view stops a seasonal dip from looking like a problem. The chart shows clicks, impressions, click-through rate and average position. Then look at three views:
- Pages: which service pages and articles gained or lost clicks.
- Queries: new searches you now appear for, and queries with many impressions but few clicks, where a clearer title or description may help.
- Branded and non-branded: if your property has enough impressions, this query filter separates searches that include your brand name from those that don't. Growth in non-branded clicks usually means people who didn't know your name are finding you.
Ignore the last day or two. Google marks the newest data as preliminary, and it can still change within hours.
Are the pages that matter indexed? (4 minutes)
Open the Page indexing report and check that your key pages are indexed, not that every URL is. Google says plainly not to expect every URL on a site to be indexed, since some are duplicates or carry nothing meaningful. What deserves attention is a service page or recent article listed under Why pages aren't indexed. The reasons we look for most:
- Crawled - currently not indexed: Google fetched the page and didn't index it. Google says there is no need to resubmit it, so look at whether the page says enough to deserve a place.
- Discovered - currently not indexed: Google knows the URL but hasn't crawled it yet, typically because it rescheduled the crawl to avoid overloading the site.
- Not found (404) and Server error (5xx): broken links or a hosting problem, both worth fixing the same week.
After a fix, open the issue and use Validate Fix. Google says validation typically takes up to about two weeks.
Is the site fast for real visitors? (2 minutes)
The Core Web Vitals report answers that with field data from real visits, taken from Google's CrUX report and shown separately for mobile and desktop. It groups similar pages and rates them Good, Need improvement or Poor on loading (LCP), responsiveness (INP) and visual stability (CLS). If you see No data available, there isn't enough real user data yet; it doesn't mean the site is fast.
Is the structured data still valid? (1 minute)
Glance at the rich result reports under Enhancements. There is one for each supported rich result type Google found on your site, such as Breadcrumbs, and each counts items rather than pages. A sudden rise in invalid items often traces back to a template change, so fix the template, not each page.
Are you appearing in AI features? (2 minutes)
The Generative AI performance report (Search) shows how often links to your site appeared in AI Overviews and AI Mode. It reports impressions rather than clicks, and Google finished rolling it out to all websites at the end of August 2026. If the report is missing, your site hasn't yet had enough impressions in those features. Note which pages appear, and compare them with the pages that get clicks in the Performance report.
Where to start
Put fifteen minutes in the calendar for the first working day of each month and work through these reports in this order. Keep a one-line log as you go: the date, clicks and impressions against last year, any key page with a new indexing reason, the Core Web Vitals status and anything you changed on the site. The Performance report only goes back 16 months, so your log, or Search Console's bulk data export, is how you keep a longer history. A few months of notes make it obvious whether a drop lines up with a redesign, a plugin update or the season.
If indexing or speed needs fixing, our SEO and AI search service handles it, and six fixes for a slow website covers the usual speed problems.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Should we use Request indexing for every new page?
Only for the few that matter, such as a new service page. The URL Inspection tool sends a page to Google's indexing queue after a quick check, it has a daily limit, and Google suggests a sitemap when you want many pages crawled. It also won't accept a page that its live test finds can't be indexed.
Why are some search queries missing from the report?
Google leaves some queries out of the Performance report to protect user privacy. Their clicks and impressions still count in the chart totals unless you filter by query, so the table won't add up to the total. For the fullest list of queries, Google recommends the bulk data export in Settings.
Should we set up a Domain property or a URL-prefix property?
A Domain property, if you can add a DNS record to verify it. It covers every subdomain and both http and https, so nothing slips through after a move to www or a new subdomain. A URL-prefix property only covers addresses that start with that exact prefix, which suits watching one section of a larger site.
Who should own our Search Console property?
Someone inside your business, plus a second owner as a backup. An owner has full control, including adding and removing users, while full and restricted users can view data and take only limited actions. Give agencies and freelancers user access where that covers the work, so control stays with you when people change.
What is the new Insights report?
A simpler summary inside Search Console, with cards for clicks and impressions, your content, queries, top countries, branded and non-branded traffic and other traffic sources. It replaces the old standalone Search Console Insights and is being introduced gradually, so it may not be available to everyone yet. It is a good view to share with colleagues who won't use the full reports.
