Google Search Console is the website owner's window into Google. It tells you exactly how many times each page was shown in search results, how many clicks it received, which keywords people use to find you, and whether Google has any problems indexing your content. No other tool provides this level of accurate and unbiased information because the data comes directly from Google itself, not from third-party estimates. For this reason every serious website owner must connect GSC and review it regularly, otherwise SEO decisions are essentially made in the dark.
Adding and verifying your site
When you add a site to GSC, Google asks you to verify ownership. The most reliable method is DNS verification, where you add a special TXT record to your domain's DNS settings, which then confirms ownership of the entire domain including all subdomains in one step and survives any site rebuild. If you cannot access DNS, you can use an HTML meta tag on the homepage or upload a verification file, but these methods often break when the site is redesigned. If Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager is already installed, GSC will detect them automatically and verification takes a single click.
Performance report
The Performance report is the most valuable part of GSC. It shows how many times your site appeared in Google search over the past 16 months (impressions), how many clicks it received, the average click-through rate and the average position. Most importantly, you get separate statistics for every individual query, which reveals exactly which phrases people use to find you and whether your content matches their intent. If a page ranks between positions 8 and 15 but has a very low CTR, this clearly signals that the meta title and description need to be rewritten to make the snippet more compelling in the search results.
Coverage and indexing issues
The Coverage report shows in detail which pages Google has indexed, which it has refused to index and the exact reason for each decision. All 404 errors, server errors, soft 404s, pages blocked by robots.txt and canonical conflicts are grouped into separate categories with concrete URL lists. If an important page sits in the status "Discovered — currently not indexed", this means Google found it but considered it not valuable enough to add to the index, which is a direct signal to seriously improve the content and internal linking.
Sitemap, URL Inspection and Core Web Vitals
Submitting your sitemap.xml to GSC helps Google discover new and updated pages faster, especially on large sites with deep structure. The URL Inspection tool gives full diagnostics for any single page, showing whether it is indexed, when it was last crawled, how it renders on mobile and whether structured data is valid. The Core Web Vitals report shows real LCP, INP and CLS measurements collected from actual Chrome users and these metrics are official ranking factors, so moving pages out of the "Poor" zone directly improves your visibility in search results.