How to submit a website to Google Search Console

01Domain or URL-prefix property?

Search Console offers two kinds of website property, described in Google's help article on adding a property.

02Step by step

The whole process usually takes ten to twenty minutes, most of it waiting for DNS.

1. 1Open Search ConsoleSign in at search.google.com/search-console with the Google account you want to own the data.
2. 2Add propertyChoose Domain and type your domain without https or www, or choose URL prefix and paste the full address.
3. 3Verify ownershipFor Domain, copy the TXT record Google shows and add it at your domain registrar or DNS host, then click Verify. For URL prefix, the HTML tag method is often easiest in builders.
4. 4Submit your sitemapOpen Sitemaps, enter the sitemap path (often sitemap.xml) and submit. The status should show Success.
5. 5Inspect your home pagePaste the home page URL into the top search bar, then click Request indexing if it is not on Google yet.
6. 6Add users if neededUnder Settings, add your developer or agency with the permission level they need instead of sharing your login.

03Verification problems and fixes

DNS changes can take time to propagate; if verification fails, wait and try again before changing anything. Make sure the TXT record is added at the DNS provider actually serving your domain, which may be your host or Cloudflare rather than the registrar. If you use the HTML tag method, the tag must be in the head of the home page and the page must be public. What is DNS? explains where records live.

Keep the verification record or tag in place afterwards. Removing it can unverify the property.

04What to look at after setup

Once data appears, a few reports cover most of what a small site needs.

• Performance: searches you appear for, impressions, clicks and average position.
• Page indexing: which pages are indexed and why others are not.
• URL Inspection: the status of one page and when Google last crawled it.
• Sitemaps: whether Google could read your sitemap and how many URLs it found.
• Core Web Vitals: real-user speed data, once you have enough traffic.
• Manual actions and Security issues: rare, but check if traffic suddenly vanishes.

05Common mistakes

Adding a URL-prefix property for http:// when the site runs on https:// leaves the property empty; Google says to check you used the right protocol if data does not appear after several days. Requesting indexing for every page daily does nothing useful. And submitting a sitemap that lists redirected or noindexed URLs sends mixed signals; your sitemap should list only the pages you want indexed.

If pages still do not appear after a few weeks, why is my website not showing on Google? has the diagnosis, and how to get my website on Google covers the wider process.