Google Search Console Guide for Ecommerce
Setting Up Google Search Console
Go to search.google.com/search-console and sign in with the Google account you want to manage your store's data. Click "Add property" and choose the Domain property type if possible (covers all subdomains and protocols) or the URL prefix type (covers one specific version of your URL). For domain verification, you add a DNS TXT record through your domain registrar, which takes a few minutes. For URL prefix, you can verify through an HTML file upload, HTML meta tag, Google Analytics, or Google Tag Manager. Domain verification is preferred because it captures all traffic regardless of whether visitors reach your site through www, non-www, HTTP, or HTTPS.
Navigate to Sitemaps in the left menu and enter your sitemap URL, typically yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml. Click Submit. Search Console shows the submission status and how many URLs were discovered in the sitemap. If your store has multiple sitemaps (a sitemap index), submit the index URL and Google will process all referenced sitemaps. Check back after 24 to 48 hours to confirm the sitemap was processed successfully and note any errors. Most ecommerce platforms generate sitemaps automatically, but verify yours includes all product pages, category pages, and blog content.
The Performance Report: Your SEO Dashboard
The Performance report (Search Results) is the most valuable section of Search Console. It shows every query that triggered your store in Google search results over the past 16 months, along with four key metrics for each:
- Impressions: How many times your page appeared in search results for that query. High impressions mean Google considers your page relevant.
- Clicks: How many times someone clicked through to your page from search results.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR): The percentage of impressions that resulted in clicks. Average CTR varies by position: position 1 gets roughly 27%, position 5 gets about 6%, and position 10 gets around 2%.
- Average Position: Your average ranking position for that query. Lower numbers are better (position 1 is the top result).
Filter the Performance report to find three types of opportunities. First, high impressions, low CTR: sort by impressions descending and look for queries where your CTR is below average for your position. These pages appear in search results frequently but fail to attract clicks, which usually means your title tag and meta description need rewriting to be more compelling. Second, position 8 to 20 keywords: filter for average position between 8 and 20. These are keywords where you almost rank on page one (or are on page one but in lower positions). A small optimization push, like improving the page content, adding internal links, or earning one or two backlinks, can move these to higher positions where they generate significantly more clicks. Third, pages with declining traffic: compare the last 3 months against the previous 3 months. Pages with significant traffic declines may have been affected by algorithm updates, competitor improvements, or technical issues that need investigation.
The Pages Report: Indexing Health
The Pages report (under Indexing) shows how many of your pages Google has indexed and categorizes non-indexed pages by reason. For ecommerce stores, the most common and actionable categories are:
"Crawled, currently not indexed": Google found and read the page but decided not to add it to the index. This typically affects product pages with very thin descriptions (under 100 words of unique content), product pages that are very similar to other pages on your site, and low-authority pages with no internal or external links. Fix by adding substantial unique content to thin pages and building internal links from higher-authority pages.
"Discovered, not yet crawled": Google knows the page exists (from your sitemap or internal links) but has not crawled it yet. For large stores, this is normal; Google prioritizes crawling based on perceived page importance. If important pages remain in this status for weeks, improve their internal link structure so Google assigns higher crawl priority.
"Duplicate without user-selected canonical": Google found multiple versions of the same page and you did not specify which is primary. Add canonical tags to resolve. See the duplicate content guide.
"Excluded by noindex tag": Verify these pages should actually be noindexed. Filter and sorting pages, admin pages, and cart pages are correct exclusions. Product pages or category pages with noindex tags need to be fixed immediately.
Core Web Vitals Report
Under Experience, the Core Web Vitals report shows what percentage of your pages meet Google's performance thresholds, grouped by mobile and desktop. Pages are categorized as Good (meeting all three thresholds), Needs Improvement, or Poor. The report groups pages by URL pattern, so fixing one product page template that fails LCP automatically improves the score for all product pages using that template.
Click into any failing group to see the specific URLs and metrics. The most common failures for ecommerce stores are LCP above 2.5 seconds (usually caused by unoptimized hero images or slow server response) and CLS above 0.1 (usually caused by images without dimensions or late-loading ads). See our site speed guide for fixes.
Links Report
The Links section shows both external links (other websites linking to you) and internal links (links between your own pages). The external links report reveals your most-linked pages, which tells you where your authority is concentrated. If most external links point to your homepage but very few reach product or category pages, you need to improve internal linking to distribute that authority throughout your site.
The internal links report shows which pages have the most internal links pointing to them. Your most important commercial pages (top categories and best-selling products) should have the highest internal link counts. If important pages have very few internal links, add links from related pages, the navigation, blog content, and footer sections.
URL Inspection Tool
The URL Inspection tool lets you check the indexing status of any specific page. Enter a URL to see whether Google has indexed it, when it was last crawled, whether it has any crawl or indexing issues, and which canonical URL Google selected. If a page is not indexed and you believe it should be, fix any issues the tool identifies and click "Request Indexing" to ask Google to recrawl the page. This is especially useful after making significant changes to a page and wanting Google to pick up the updates quickly.
Weekly Search Console Routine
Build a weekly 15-minute routine for monitoring Search Console:
- Check the Performance report for any significant traffic drops in the past 7 days
- Review the Pages report for new indexing errors or increases in excluded pages
- Glance at Core Web Vitals for any new regressions
- Check for new messages or manual actions in the notifications area
- Note any queries gaining impressions where you could create or optimize content
This routine catches problems early and keeps you aware of trends. Combine it with a deeper monthly analysis where you export Performance data, track keyword position changes over time, and update your keyword targeting strategy based on actual search data.