How to submit a website to Google Search Console
Add your site as a Domain property, prove you own it with a DNS TXT record, then submit the address of its sitemap. Google decides when to crawl and what to index; Search Console is how you watch that happen and spot the pages it skipped.
What Search Console does and doesn't do
Search Console is Google's free dashboard for site owners. It reports which of your pages are in Google's index, which were left out and why, which searches showed your pages and how often people clicked. It does not make Google index anything. Google's own guidance calls a submitted sitemap "merely a hint" in its sitemap documentation. The value is visibility: without it you're guessing why a page doesn't appear.
Pick the property type
| Domain property | URL-prefix property | |
|---|---|---|
| Example | yourbusiness.com | https://www.yourbusiness.com/ |
| Covers | Every subdomain, plus http and https | Only addresses that start with that exact prefix |
| Verification | DNS record only | HTML file, HTML tag, Google Analytics, Tag Manager or DNS |
| Best for | A domain you control the DNS for | A site where you can edit the page head but not DNS |
Google lists these methods in its verification help. For most small sites the Domain property is the better choice, because it catches www and the bare domain together and survives a later move from one to the other.
Verify and submit, in order
This is how to submit a website to Google Search Console from start to finish, using a Domain property:
- Publish the site first and open it in a browser on the address you want people to use. Search Console can verify an empty domain, but there's nothing useful to report until real pages exist.
- Add a property. In Search Console choose Add property, pick Domain and type the bare name, such as
yourbusiness.com, with nohttps://and nowww. - Copy the TXT record Search Console shows. It starts with
google-site-verification=. - Add it at your DNS provider as a TXT record on the root of the domain (the name is often
@or left blank). Check the domain's nameservers first, so you edit the provider that actually answers for it. - Press Verify. If it fails, wait and try again. New DNS records can take a while to reach every server, sometimes a day or more, though it's often much quicker.
- Find your sitemap address. Most sites serve it at
/sitemap.xml, and theSitemap:line in/robots.txtnames it. - Submit it in the Sitemaps report by entering that address. Its status should read Success within a few hours to a day.
- Inspect your home page with URL Inspection and, if it isn't indexed yet, choose Request indexing. Do this for a handful of key pages only; the sitemap covers the rest.
Leave the TXT record in place after verification succeeds. Search Console checks it again from time to time, and removing it eventually removes your access.
Doing this with an Anticode site
Every published Anticode site serves its own robots.txt and sitemap.xml, so step six is already done: the sitemap lives at /sitemap.xml on the site's address. Anticode doesn't give you a way to add a verification file or tag to a page (the code editor keeps text, section order and colour tokens only), so use DNS verification, which needs a domain whose records you control. That means connecting your own domain, which is available on paid plans. Add the Google TXT record at the same DNS provider where you added the CNAME for the site; the two records don't conflict.
Reading the first reports
Give a new site a week or two before reading much into the numbers. Then check three places:
- Sitemaps
- Shows whether Google could fetch and read the file and how many URLs it found. An error here usually means the address was typed wrongly or the site wasn't live yet.
- Pages (Page indexing)
- Splits URLs into indexed and not indexed, with a reason for each. "Discovered, currently not indexed" means Google knows the URL but hasn't crawled it yet. "Crawled, currently not indexed" means it looked and chose not to include it for now. Neither is a penalty.
- Performance
- Queries, impressions and clicks. Expect it to stay near empty at first; impressions appear before clicks do.
If pages stay out of the index for weeks, work through why a website isn't showing up on Google. Google's page indexing report help explains every status in detail.
Common mistakes
- Verifying a URL-prefix property for
http://or the wrong host. If the site lives onwww, a prefix property for the bare domain reports almost nothing. - Pressing Request indexing over and over. Each property has a daily limit, and repeated requests don't move a page up the queue.
- Submitting a sitemap from another site or tool. Submit the one the live site serves, so its addresses match the pages Google will find.
- Deleting the TXT record during a DNS tidy-up. It looks like clutter but keeps you verified.
Limits
Search Console shows Google only; Bing has its own Webmaster Tools with a similar process. Neither guarantees indexing or rankings. On Anticode, a site on a free name.anticode.dev address can't be verified this way because you don't control that domain's DNS, and Anticode's analytics count views per site rather than per page, so Search Console is where you'll see page-level search data.
Questions people ask
How long after submitting will my site appear on Google?
Often within days, sometimes a few weeks for a brand-new domain. Submitting a sitemap helps Google find pages but doesn't set a date.
Do I need to resubmit the sitemap when I add a page?
No. Google re-reads a submitted sitemap on its own schedule. Resubmit only if the sitemap's address changes.
Can someone else verify my site?
Only someone who can add a DNS record or edit your pages. You can add other people as users inside Search Console without sharing DNS access.
Is the Domain property worth it for a one-page site?
Yes. It takes the same effort and keeps working if you later switch between www and the bare domain.