You access Google Search Console by logging into search.google.com/search-console with the Google account that has verified ownership of the domain. If you see the property selector dropdown in the top-left, your site is already connected—click it to choose the domain or URL prefix property you want to review. The Performance report is where most people start. It shows clicks, impressions, average position, and CTR over the past 3, 6, or 16 months. Filter by query, page, country, or device to spot which keywords drive traffic and which pages rank but don't convert clicks. We check this weekly for client sites to catch ranking drops or new opportunities before they show up in analytics lag. The Coverage (or Pages) report tells you which URLs Google indexed, which it excluded, and why. Look for "Discovered – currently not indexed" or "Crawled – currently not indexed" entries—those often signal thin content, duplicate issues, or crawl budget waste. The Sitemaps section under this report lets you submit or resubmit XML sitemaps; check the "Discovered URLs" column to confirm Google is reading your sitemap. Core Web Vitals and Mobile Usability reports flag page-speed and mobile rendering problems that affect rankings. If you see "Poor" URLs, prioritize fixing LCP, CLS, and INP issues—Google's Page Experience signal weighs these starting mid-2021 and they directly correlate with bounce rate in our portfolio. If the site isn't in Search Console yet, click "Add property," choose Domain (requires DNS TXT record) or URL prefix (works with HTML file upload, meta tag, Google Analytics, or Tag Manager). Domain properties aggregate http, https, www, and non-www into one view, which simplifies reporting for most sites. Verification usually completes in under five minutes; DNS propagation can take up to 24 hours if you go the TXT route. We set up Search Console before launch for every Ottawa SEO client and grant view-only access to stakeholders so they can monitor organic health without risking configuration changes. The API also feeds our automated ranking and indexation dashboards, saving 4–6 hours per week across 500+ domains.