Google Search Console for online stores: set it up and make sense of the data
Which pages do customers find, and which remain invisible? Use Search Console to make practical decisions, rather than collect another set of numbers.
Quick answer
Google Search Console shows how your online store appears in Google Search and which pages Google indexes. Keep ownership of the account, check important category and product pages, and compare search queries with the pages that actually receive visits. This free tool does not replace revenue tracking or an informed assessment of the findings.
A report containing many excluded URLs can look alarming. Yet not every address generated by an online store is a separate sales page. A sorting view serves a different purpose from your most important product category. At sjmedia, we therefore start by asking: which pages should customers actually find through Google?
How do you set up Search Console for your store?
Add your store as a property and verify ownership. A Domain property combines protocols and subdomains and requires verification through your domain provider or DNS. A URL-prefix property covers only the address range entered; several verification methods may be available, depending on the website. Follow Google’s ownership verification instructions.
- Use a company account with secure, long-term access. Give your agency its own access rather than sharing a password.
- Check whether a suitable property already exists. Keep existing data and access when changing agency.
- Submit your store’s current XML sitemap. First check that it contains the intended, accessible URLs.
- Record the setup date and subsequent changes to the store, domain or tracking. This makes later analysis easier.
Search Console itself does not require an additional visitor-tracking script. Verifying ownership and setting up supplementary analytics are separate tasks. Search Console is free; using it is not a requirement for Google to find a website. Google explains what the tool provides.
Which three checks should retailers start with?
| What you notice | What we check next |
|---|---|
| An important category receives little search traffic | Review queries and landing page together: does the page match the products and selection criteria people search for? |
| Many pages are not indexed | Distinguish important sales pages from variants, redirects and URLs deliberately excluded from indexing. |
| Figures change after an update | Compare time periods, devices and page groups; consider technical changes and seasonality. |
The Performance report includes clicks, impressions, click-through rate and average position. Use filters for pages, queries, countries and devices. An average position across the whole store is not a fixed ranking for every keyword. Not all search queries are shown individually either. Performance report documentation.
Should every product and filter page be indexed?
No. What matters is whether the right pages are indexed. The Page indexing report also includes legitimate exclusions, such as duplicates. Investigate unusual groups, then inspect individual URLs. A status such as “Crawled – currently not indexed” is initially a finding, not a confirmed explanation of its cause. Google explains indexing statuses.
For an initial store check, we suggest selecting the homepage, two important categories and three representative products. Check that these are the intended landing pages. Once you understand the pattern, you can decide whether to correct an individual product description or a shared template. This is a working method, not a substitute for a complete technical analysis.
What do clicks tell you about sales and AI visibility?
A click is not an order. We would therefore compare search data with orders or qualified enquiries, where your measurement setup allows this. Also separate searches for your company name from general product searches. Both can be valuable, but they answer different questions.
Google includes traffic from AI Overviews and AI Mode in Search Console’s overall web search traffic. An increase in this report therefore does not prove that AI answers caused it. Search Console does not provide a complete measure of visibility in ChatGPT or Claude either. Google on measuring its AI features.
How often should you check Search Console?
For a stable store, a scheduled monthly review is a sensible starting point. After a relaunch, major template changes or an unusual drop, check promptly and more frequently. The important thing is to have someone responsible for turning a finding into a task and checking the results later.
Do missing pages mean you need another ecommerce platform?
Not automatically. Our work focuses on PrestaShop, and we understand the difference between a platform limitation and an unsuitable configuration. We first check settings, internal links and the affected template. The same principle applies to Shopify, Shopware and company websites: changing platforms is a project decision, not a standard response to an indexing report.
Sources & further reading
- Google: About Search Console · accessed on
- Google: Verify site ownership · accessed on
- Google: Performance report · accessed on
- Google: Page indexing report · accessed on
- Google: AI features and your website · accessed on