The 15-minute monthly Search Console checkup

1. Open the Performance report and compare two 28-day periods

Sign in at search.google.com/search-console and pick your site. In the left menu, open Performance, then Search results.

By default, the report shows the past three months. That's too long to spot what changed recently. Change it:

1. Click the date filter at the top of the report.
2. Choose Compare.
3. Pick the last 28 days against the previous 28 days, then apply.
4. Above the chart, turn on all four metrics: Total clicks, Total impressions, Average CTR and Average position.

Now the chart shows two lines for each metric, and the table below gets a Difference column. That column does most of the work in the next steps.

Why 28 days? It holds exactly four of each weekday. A slow Sunday in one period is matched by a slow Sunday in the other, so the comparison stays fair.

2. Read the four numbers

Here is what each one means, in plain words.

• Clicks: how many times someone clicked through to your site from Google Search. This is the number closest to real visitors.
• Impressions: how many times your site appeared in search results, whether or not anyone clicked. Think of it as how often Google put you in front of people.
• CTR (click-through rate): clicks divided by impressions. Of the people who saw you, the share who chose you.
• Average position: on average, how high your top result appeared. Position 1 is the top. Lower numbers are better.

Read them together, not alone. A few common patterns:

• Impressions up, clicks flat: Google is testing you for more searches, but your listing isn't convincing yet. Step 3 is for you.
• Impressions and clicks both down: often seasonal, or you lost ground on a few searches. Step 5 will show which pages.
• Clicks up, average position worse: usually fine. You started appearing for new, broader searches where you rank lower, which pulls the average down.

3. Find searches with many impressions but few clicks

Click the Queries tab under the chart. Each row is a search people typed before your site appeared.

1. Click the Impressions column header to sort from most to fewest.
2. Scan the top 20 rows. Look for searches with lots of impressions but few clicks, compared with your other searches.
3. Ignore rows where your average position is far down the results (say, past the first page). Few people scroll that far, so a low CTR there is expected.
4. For each search worth winning, click the row, then open the Pages tab. That shows which page Google is showing for it.

That page is your rewrite target. People saw it and passed. Usually the title or description didn't match what they were looking for. Rewrite both:

• Title: say plainly what the page offers and where. Google recommends descriptive, concise titles, unique to each page, with no repeated keywords. "Water heater repair in Fruitvale | Your Company" beats "Home."
• Meta description: a short, specific summary that answers "is this what I'm looking for?" Google writes most snippets from the page itself, but may use your description when it describes the page better.
• The first paragraph: make sure the page answers the search right away. Since Google often pulls the snippet from page text, a clear opening helps twice.

Change one or two pages a month, not ten. Then you can tell what worked when you compare next month.

4. Find searches you have no page for

Stay in the Queries tab, and read further down the list. You will find searches you show up for even though no page on your site really answers them. Google matched you on a passing mention, a blog post or your homepage.

Signs you have a gap:

• The search names a service, a neighborhood or a question you don't have a page about.
• When you click the row and open the Pages tab, Google is showing your homepage or an unrelated page.
• Several similar searches cluster around the same topic, like a service plus three nearby towns.

Each real gap is a page to build. If people search "tankless water heater install" plus your town and you only mention it in a list, a dedicated page has a much better chance of earning the click. Our guide to service pages that get found covers how to write one.

Only build pages for searches that match what you actually do. A page that exists only to catch traffic you can't serve won't help you.

5. Find pages that slipped

Click the Pages tab under the chart. With compare mode still on, each page shows clicks for both periods and the difference.

1. Sort by the Difference column for clicks, so the biggest losses rise to the top.
2. Look at the top three or four. Is this a page that matters, like a main service page, a location page or your contact page?
3. Click the page, then open the Queries tab. Which searches did it lose?

Common reasons a page slips, and what to do:

• Seasonal demand: impressions fell along with clicks for the whole site. Nothing to fix. Compare with the same month last year if you have the data.
• You changed the page: a new title, a redesign or a changed address can all shift results. Check that the page still answers the search clearly.
• A competitor got better: search for the main query yourself and look at who now ranks above you. Is their page more useful, more specific or more current?
• The page fell out of the index: check it in step 6.

Also glance at the pages that gained the most. They show you what's working, so you can do more of it.

6. Check the Page indexing report

In the left menu, under Indexing, open Pages. This is the Page indexing report. It splits your known pages into two groups: Indexed (in Google and able to appear) and Not indexed.

Google says plainly that not indexed is not necessarily bad. Your goal is simple: every page you want people to find should be indexed. The rest can stay out. Scroll to the Why pages aren't indexed table and read the reasons. Here are the ones you'll see most:

• Crawled - currently not indexed: Google read the page and chose not to add it, for now. Google says there's no need to resubmit it. Make the page more useful and clearly different from your other pages, and link to it from your menu or a related page.
• Discovered - currently not indexed: Google knows the page exists but hasn't visited it yet. On a new site this is normal. Link to the page from pages that are already indexed and give it time.
• URL marked 'noindex': the page tells Google to leave it out. If you meant that (a thank-you page, a private page), good. If not, remove the noindex setting. In WordPress, check your SEO plugin's setting for that page.
• Not found (404): the page doesn't exist. That's fine if you deleted it on purpose with no replacement. If the page moved, set up a 301 redirect from the old address to the new one.
• Page with redirect and Alternate page with proper canonical tag: usually nothing to do. Google indexed the page these point to.
• Duplicate without user-selected canonical: Google sees this page as a copy of another one and picked the other. If the two pages should be different, make their content clearly different.

Once a month, check two things only. Is the indexed count steady or rising? And is any important page on the not-indexed list? To check a single page, paste its address into the search bar at the top of Search Console. That's the URL Inspection tool.

After you fix a real problem, open that reason's row and click Validate fix. Google says validation can take about two weeks, sometimes longer, so don't click it twice.

7. Check your sitemap status

In the left menu, open Sitemaps. Each sitemap you submitted shows a status:

• Success: Google read it without errors. You're done.
• Has errors: Google read part of it. Click the row to see which errors, and send them to whoever manages your site.
• Couldn't fetch: Google couldn't get the file at all. Open the sitemap address in your browser. If it doesn't load, that's the problem. If it does load, check that your robots.txt isn't blocking it.

Also look at Last read and Discovered pages. If you added pages this month, the discovered count should go up. If you made big changes, you can resubmit. Otherwise Google rereads it on its own schedule.

8. Write it down in your monthly log

The checkup only pays off if you can compare months. Keep a spreadsheet, or a note on your phone, with one row per month. Use these columns:

After three or four months, the log tells a story. You'll see whether a rewritten title earned more clicks, and whether a new page started showing up. That's how you learn what works for your business, not someone else's.

What to ignore

Search Console has a lot of numbers. Most of them don't need your attention every month.

• Small day-to-day swings. One busy day or one slow day means nothing. That's why you compare 28-day periods. Google also notes the newest data can be preliminary and may change.
• Average position on its own. It's an average across every search you appear for. When you start showing up for new searches, it often gets worse even as clicks grow. Read it next to clicks and impressions, never alone.
• Searching for yourself. Google tailors results by place, device and history. What you see on your phone isn't what a customer across town sees.
• Chart and table totals that don't match. Google counts them in slightly different ways. It's normal.
• Every not-indexed page. Only important pages matter.

For a small site, Google itself says you may not need the Page indexing report much at all. The Performance report is where the useful decisions come from.