Connect Google Search Console

• Google's own answer beside ours. We ask Google about your pages: whether each one is in Google, which main version of it Google chose, and when Google last crawled it.
• Issues from Google. When Google hasn't indexed a page you want indexed, sees noindex on it, treats it as missing, chose a different main version, or couldn't fetch a page we could, it becomes an issue tagged "From Google".
• Alerts about your key pages. When Google drops your homepage or a key page from its index, can no longer fetch it, or chooses a different main version for it, an alert goes wherever the site's alerts go.
• Proof the site is yours, in one step, when your Google account is an owner or a full user of the site in Search Console.

Our access is read-only, so we change nothing in Search Console, and we never ask Google to index or crawl a page. Google's answer about a page links to it in Search Console, where you can click "Request indexing" yourself.

• A Google account that Search Console lists as an owner or a full user of the site. A restricted user's account can be linked, but it doesn't prove the site is yours: verify the site one of the other ways, and Google's answer follows.
• To be an owner or admin of your team here.
• A property in Search Console that covers the whole site.

Search Console has two kinds of property, and either one works:

• A Domain property, such as example.com, covers the whole domain: with and without www, http and https, and every subdomain. Our list shows it as "example.com (domain)".
• A URL-prefix property, such as https://www.example.com/, covers only addresses that start with exactly that, so it has to match the site's address here, down to https and www. One for a folder, such as https://example.com/blog/, isn't enough.

No Search Console yet?

Add the site at search.google.com/search-console and prove it to Google in one of Google's ways, such as a DNS record. That takes much the same work as our own ways, so you can also simply verify the site here. Once Google lists you as an owner, come back and connect it.

1. Open the site's Settings, then the Connections tab. The Search Console panel is there.
2. Press Connect Search Console. Google's sign-in opens.
3. Choose the Google account that has the site and allow access. Leave the Search Console box ticked, or we can read nothing.
4. Google sends you back here, and we link the property that covers the site with the most access, a Domain property first. If the site wasn't verified yet and the account is an owner or a full user, it is now.

A site that is not verified offers the same button on the Setup tab, under Ownership. If your team has connected a Google account before, the panel lists its properties instead: choose one under Property and press Link. To link a different one later, press Change. A connected Google account serves every site in the team.

If the message says none of the account's properties covers the site, add the site in Search Console, or ask its owner to give your account access, then connect again to refresh the list.

• On the site's overview, the Google Search Console panel says how many of the pages you want indexed Google has not indexed.
• In Fix first and on the Issues tab, issues read from Google carry the "From Google" tag.
• On an issue, each page shows What Google reports. On a page's own details, the Is it in Google? panel gives Google's answer first.

Google allows 2,000 page checks a day for each property, shared with your other tools. We ask about up to 1,500 of a site's pages a day: the homepage and key pages first, then fixed pages and the last deploy's pages until Google has crawled them again, then pages with open issues, then the rest. Under Advanced in the panel you can lower the number, or set 0 to stop.

An issue from Google closes on its own once Google reports the change. Google decides when it crawls the page again.

• Unlink, in the panel, ends the link for this site. What Google reported about it is deleted, and the issues read from it close. The Google account stays connected for the team's other sites.
• Disconnect, next to an account under Your team's Google accounts, removes our access at Google, unlinks every site linked through it, and deletes what Google reported about them.

Google can also end our access: when it is removed in the Google account, when the account's password changes, or after six months unused. While our Google app is in testing, it also ends after seven days. The panel then shows Access lost, and the team's owner and whoever connected the account get an email. Until it is connected again, Google's answer stops updating and no alert comes from it.

To reconnect, press Connect the account again in the panel and sign in with the same Google account.

If Search Console was the site's proof of ownership, unlinking, disconnecting or losing access ends it. Unless a DNS record, the meta tag or the file is in place, the next ownership check starts the grace period, and monitoring pauses when it ends.