Advantage of adding website to google search console
In today’s competitive world its become very essential to have your own website for all kind of businesses be it Startup, small household business or MSME, to reach out to massess and promote and sell your product or services. Once you create your website it is very essential to make your website to be able to search on Serach engine. Google is most widely used search engine in world. This article will give you the step by step detail understanding on adding your website to Google serach console.
What is google search console
Google Search Console is a free service offered by Google that helps you monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site’s presence in Google Search results. It is a new upgraded version of Google Webmaster tool. Though its not mandatory to add your site to Google search console manually to make your site available in google search but adding it fast track the process of having your new site in google search and also it bring lots of benifits as given below which ultimately help your site rank up in Google search
Benifits of Google search console
- Confirm that Google can find and crawl your site.
- Fix indexing problems and request re-indexing of new or updated content.
- View Google Search traffic data for your site: how often your site appears in Google Search, which search queries show your site, how often searchers click through for those queries, and more.
- Receive alerts when Google encounters indexing, spam, or other issues on your site.
- Show you which sites link to your website.
- Troubleshoot issues for AMP, mobile usability, and other Search features
Refer below article to have detail understanding of Google search console
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9128668?hl=en&ref_topic=9128571
Step by Step guide to add your website to Google Search console
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Lets now go in depth steps to add website to Google search console
As a first step open the google page and login to google with your gmail credentials by clicking on Sign in
If you have cached your google user ID in your browser then it will display it. If you want use the same user ID click on it or if you want to use different user ID click, Use another account
Below window will be displayed. If you have clicked on cached user ID it will be displayed in Email or phone. If not, you have type in your gmail id and then click on Next
Type in your password and then click on Next
Now you have to select Google app Search Console, click on Google app icon marked in red circle below. You will get the list of apps, scroll down and click on More from Google
Below page will be displayed scroll down in it and expand For business
Now click on Search Console marked in red circle
Below window will be displayed. There are two options been given here
Domain: This option you can use if you have domain-level property that Includes all subdomains (m, www, and so on) and multiple protocols (http, https, ftp). In this you will have only one option for verification i.e., Domain Name provider
URL prefix: This option you can use if you have only URLs with the specified prefix, including the protocol
In this you have multiple options of verification as given below
- HTML file
- HTML tag
- Google Analytics
- Google Tag Manager
- Domain Name provider
You can refer the below google article to understand all the verification methods in detail
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9008080
You can refer below google article for more details of both the options (Domain and URL prefix)
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/34592
I will be explaining URL Prefix option in this article
Type in the URL prefix you want to enable for Google search and then click on Continue
Below window will be displayed
Below window is then displayed giving you the various options for verification. Verifying through one option is mandatory but later you can choose to get it verified for other option as well. I will show you that in the end of this article.
For this article I will be explaining in detail the option Domain Name provider
You can verify ownership at the domain level by adding a DNS record in your domain name provider. Search Console supports both the TXT DNS format and CNAME format for DNS verification.
- Use a CNAME record if you are verifying a domain or subdomain-level property that is itself defined using a CNAME record
- Use a TXT record for all other cases.
I will explain in this article of using Txt record as it required for most of the scenarios as explained above
I will also cover in few brief steps for CNAME record also later
Expand the Domain name provider option. It gives you the value for txt record to be created in your External DNS service provider site where you have created your domain
Login to your DNS service provider site in below I am using GoDaddy. Go to your Product page. On the domain for which you want to manage the DNS record, click on Manage DNS as shown in below picture
Your DNS management page for your domain will be opened
In DNS management page click on ADD
Below content will be displayed in the page
Click the drop-down button for Type and select the type of record you want to create. For our purpose we will select TXT
After selecting TXT, it will ask to fill Host, TXT value and TTL
In the Host type @, in TXT value copy paste the TXT value from Domain Name provider verification page in Google search, in TTL give 1 hour from the drop-down menu. Then click on Save
Once you created the TXT record, go back to Domain Name provider verification page in Google search and click on Verify
Google search find the TXT record in your Domain and will display below Ownership verified page. Click on Done. (Sometimes immediately after creating the TXT record Google search will not able to find the record, you may have to wait for 24 hours at least so that your record is replicated to all the external DNS servers and then complete the verification by login into Google search again)
Your Google search console will be displayed. After adding your site in the Google search, it will take at least 24 to 48 hours for your site to be search in Google search.
Refer the below Google link to understand more in detail how the google search works
Enable other alternate method for verification:
As I said above you can choose to get your URL verified for more than one options. I will show you below how to do it.
Go and login to Google search console. In that click on Settings and then click on Ownership verification marked in red circle.
Below page will be displayed. In this page expand the drop-down button of the option given in Additional verification methods, which you want to use to get your URL verified and follow the instruction given. I have already given the Google article above in this article explain in detail all the options
Verification of ownership using CNAME record (Domain Name provider)
Open the below Google link
https://www.google.com/webmasters/verification/home
Below page will be displayed. Click on Add A Property
Type in the URL of your website and click on Continue
Below page will be displayed click on Add a CNAME record
Below page will be displayed. Login to your DNS service provider site and create the CNAME record in your domain as given by Google webmaster link. Once done click on Verify
Note: Once you add website to google search it will take atleast minimum 24 hours to be available in google search